Basecamp’s Jason Fried on the Learning Curve of Remote Work

Last week, I reached out to Jason Fried, CEO and co-founder of Basecamp, which provides collaborative software to remote teams large and small. He and his team have been working as a fully remote company for over 20 years, first as the design shop 37signals (also home of Ruby on Rails), now focused on the project management-plus-chat software Basecamp with 3.3 million user accounts.

Fried and I had a conversation on March 16, as many creative workers across the U.S. were starting what was likely the first of many WFH weeks.

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Q. Tell us about Basecamp and your advice to people newly working from home.  

A. We wrote a book about this called Remote: Office Not Required. A lot of what we put in the book is what we’ve lived. We’ve been a remote company for close to 20 years, so we’ve learned a lot. 

This is actually a moment to reconsider how people work. Where people go wrong is when they try to simulate working in an office, but just remotely: same number of meetings, same number of people in meetings, just via videoconferencing. That’s not taking advantage of the potential benefit of remote work: asynchronous work, meaning that you don’t have to do everything in real time anymore. You can give people more time back during the day—long stretches of uninterrupted time where they can do more creative work. 

An advantage of remote work is that it (typically) eliminates many of the interruptions of the office: noise, people tapping you on the shoulder, and intermittent meetings.

 

Q. What would you say to managers and others who are unfamiliar and potentially uncomfortable with this setup?

A. Some managers may wonder how you know work is getting done if you can’t see people. The only way to see if work is getting done is to look at the work. Since people don’t have to look “busy” at home, they can produce work on their own schedule—so it should be a more relaxing way to get work done, once you get over the hump of the unfamiliar. You realize it’s quieter, with fewer interruptions, less distraction, and you have your own time and space. Under typical circumstances, those are the real benefits of remote working. And I encourage people to seek those moments out and not try to simulate what you do in an office (in terms of meetings and daily structure). It’s funny, most companies outsource lawyers or accountants which means they work remotely. We trust professionals to get their work done, and that’s how we should be treating employees. Trust your employees to get their work done. 

 

Q. How do tools fit into the work from home experience?

A. The tools you choose have a big impact on how much work can be done. If you’re expected to be communicating constantly, people will feel more distracted than before, and it will chunk their day up into smaller and smaller bits. So my suggestion (of course, I’m a bit biased because we make Basecamp) is to find a tool that allows for asynchronous work, long-form writing, and collaboration, in your own time. Continuous meetings plus the expectation of immediate answers is why many of us don’t really have time to get actual work done at work anymore. Remote work allows for people to get work done. Encourage slowing things down. Speeding things up and working remotely is a bad combination. 

“We trust professionals to get their work done, and that’s how we should be treating employees. Trust your employees to get their work done.”

Q. What kind of companies or teams does this model work with?

A. Any creative or “information” endeavor, such as software development, journalism, design, consulting, even accounting and law. Once you get used to it, you can actually get more done and do more creative work. If you’re sitting in front of a computer all day, you likely can work well remotely. 

 

Q. What kind of framework do you put in place for a new team member who isn’t used to working remotely and having an unstructured day?

A. As a team lead or a manager, you want to understand there’s a bit of a learning curve. It’s the same as handing someone a guitar who’s never played it before, we shouldn’t expect them to strum a tune right away. Give them a chance to think things through deeply. Compose teams of people who have experience, empathy, and teaching ability to help people along who are new to remote work. Also: lower your expectations of people, especially in the beginning. When we hire someone new, we say the first 90 days are not about work but about getting to know the place, the coworkers, how we get work done, and our values. The same is true for remote work. It will take a few weeks to  understand the surroundings, the tools, and the things you’re not going to do well. Managers need to make sure people have enough space and leeway to practice this. Play up the good sides: you have three to four hours to thoughtfully work on a problem, rather than 15 minutes to quickly produce something in between meetings.

 

Q. What do you say to executives and managers who want to support their newly remote team/company?

A. This is going to be a challenge for people. Full-time work may not be possible for a lot of people with school off and daycare closed and roommates and partners home—though you should still pay them as usual. Recognize the reality of the situation: people may only be able to work 60% of the time right now. It’s important for owners to have an understanding approach [Basecamp sent out the following memo to their team last week to share how they’re handling the situation].

People will have less time, because of family and home life being so different. We’ll have to trim down our days. I hope this experience is going to change some minds, of bosses and managers, who think they couldn’t survive without a certain number of meetings or that people won’t know what to do unless physically in an office with a team. Though we are forced to work from home now, I think it will remain at least optional in the future, which would be a huge collective step forward. 

The important thing is not to try to simulate what you do in the office, but pull back on the number of things you think you need to do. We have to curb our ambitions right now, and be empathetic about the situation we’re in. You can’t expect that everything is going to be normal.

 

Q. And what do you say to people who now are home with kids, parents, roommates, partners, when they’re not used to that as a work environment?

A. This is a renegotiation of boundaries and space. It’s new territory, even for the Basecamp team that’s been doing this for 20 years now. Our head of operations was talking about how she now has her husband and child home with her and it’s chaos. Companies need to be fair and realize that they’re not going to be able to do everything they want over the next few months given the reality of what’s going on right now. It should help the transition into remote work when people (and their managers) realize they will not have the full day to themselves of working that they’re used to.

“We have to curb our ambitions right now, and be empathetic about the situation we’re in.”

Q. So you see a more empathetic approach, as you mentioned before, to be necessary in this moment?

A. It’s more flexible, and in some ways it’s really healthy. It just goes to show, work is not that important. We like the work, but if we slow down for 90 days because people have other things going on in their lives, things are going to be fine. This is a good reminder that we don’t need to be going full-speed all the time. This is obviously a very scary moment, but hopefully we can realize that work can be different, in a good way.

 

Q. What does this moment signify for us, in terms of the nature of work and our perception of it? 

A. This is a break in momentum, which is the healthy side of what’s happening. Momentum can be powerful: doing today what I did yesterday because it worked. A lot of companies are on autopilot, without taking time to reconsider how they do things. When something knocks you off course—this is as off-course as we could imagine—it gives people a moment to look around and see what needs to change. We don’t need to do everything as we did in the office. What happens if we don’t? 

 

Q. What would you say to managers who may be using this as an experiment as to how valuable WFH is to their team or organization?

A. My take on how to evaluate this is: how does it feel? It’s not about numbers or measuring productivity or deadlines or number of meetings. When this is all over, do we feel like we want to work from home more, maybe two days a week? It’s a shock to the system and it’s awkward right now, so we need to take some time to get used to it. But when this is over, will people want to go back to office work only?  

 

 Our takeaways:

• Reconsider how we work: as an individual, as a team, as a company. What policies can you collectively reevaluate? What meetings are expendable? How can you trim down the must-dos in your day?
• Flexibility and empathy are key. This is new for a lot of people, and these are without a doubt extenuating circumstances. Be patient with yourself and your teammates. 
• Adjust expectations as a manager: how many meetings are necessary, how heavily to rely on chat software, how productive people will be when faced with a huge shift in home and work environment. Lower your expectations and be flexible.
• Evaluate how it feels, not how the numbers look. 

from Adobe 99UAdobe 99U https://adobe.ly/3dzIaPh

An Announcement About the Adobe 99U Conference 2020

One of the highlights of our year is connecting with the creative community at the annual Adobe 99U Conference. In light of our current public health situation, we have decided to transform this year’s gathering from an in-person event to a free, digital experience. 

The health and safety of 99U attendees and presenters is our top priority, and it is impossible to know for sure when it will be time again for large public gatherings. But it is definitely the time for people in creative professions everywhere to connect and talk about how to nurture their creative selves during this difficult period. Now more than ever, we need to lean on one another to navigate our work and careers. 

So, while we’re sad to lose the chance to see so many friends in person, we’re excited about the opportunity to bring the ideas and insights of 99U to life in a new format–and to open it up to every creative worldwide at no cost. 

We’ll announce more details soon about the virtual 99U Conference and how you can attend. To make sure you don’t miss out, sign up for the 99U newsletter.  

Refunds:

If you have already registered for the Adobe 99U Conference 2020, we’ll refund your registration fee in full. If you had previously cancelled a registration, we’ll retroactively refund your cancellation fee. Refunds will be automatically processed within the next week. If you have any questions, please reach out to our team at 99Uconference@adobe.com. 

Hotel Reservations:

If you booked a hotel room with our partners at the Ace Hotel New York for the conference, all reservations will be automatically cancelled within the next week. If you would like to keep your reservation for any reason, please contact their reservations team at +1-212-679-2222.

A Note of Appreciation:

We want to acknowledge the incredible amount of hard work by the 99U team; our production partners, Preview Events; and hundreds of other speakers, vendors, friends, partners, and colleagues who have done so much behind the scenes in preparation for this year’s conference, and are lending their expertise and support to this new event format. 

 

In challenging times, creativity is more important than ever, and we are looking forward to bringing the creative community together for reflection, insight, and inspiration. 

from Adobe 99UAdobe 99U https://adobe.ly/3a8yHML

Love It or Leave It: How to Be Happy at Work

Welcome to 99U’s monthly Book Club, where we take a look at recent releases that challenge us to think deeper, explore new perspectives, and spark a better understanding of the nuances of a creative career from leadership and community-building to productivity and everything in between.

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Being happy at work is something that has become the gold standard in a way that wasn’t necessarily true for our parents and grandparents. Given how much time we spend working in our always-on society, we’re looking for something meaningful and fulfilling. In current uncertain times, many are reevaluating their priorities and work/life balance. 

We want to make sure what we do professionally aligns with our values and gives us a sense of purpose, but what exactly does that mean? Should I stay at my current job? Leave it for a new one? Start a business of my own? Depending on where you are in life, the answer to any of these questions may be yes. You may even love your job, just not the toxic nature of the workplace. These are all real scenarios in the modern era, and not necessarily anything school prepared us for.

London-based happiness consultant Samantha Clarke has been exploring these dilemmas with clients for years, and now is sharing them with the world in her new book, Love It or Leave It: How to Be Happy at Work. And no, happiness is not all fluff. Clarke’s training includes Gross National Happiness Facilitator qualification where she studied Bhutanese philosophies and practices that promote happiness and well-being.

Don’t assume Clarke had her life all figured out to end up as a happiness consultant. She shares her own struggles and career pivots from advertising to dreaming of being a shoe designer to her work making career happiness a priority, all while learning to manage living with sickle cell anemia, which can throw her off course at any moment. Throughout the book she uses her story to showcase how all our past experiences can fit together to get us on the work journey we’re meant to be on.

Photography courtesy of Samantha Clarke.

Love It or Leave It is full of questions and exercises to get you thinking critically about your relationship with work, which can be particularly useful during downtime at home. Here are some key lessons to help open your eyes to the fact you really do have what it takes to be happy and fulfilled at work. Whether you’re working a full-time job for a company or are your own boss, here are takeaways everyone can use to thrive at work.

Reframe how you think about work

Mindset is everything from how you react to situations to your openness to learning. It’s easy to get stuck in the mindset that you are your job title, but that’s not the case. We’re past the days of putting job titles on pedestals.

Instead, think about creating a “work umbrella” to describe what you do, mixing skills and experience to frame a wider view of what you bring to your job. Clarke uses the umbrella of “happiness consultant—helping individuals and companies make work happiness a priority” to describe the work she does. This includes writing, coaching, public speaking, hosting a podcast, consulting with companies, and so much more.

Know your strengths

Clarke warns that when asked to list your strengths most people go blank or freeze. It’s so much easier to think about our weaknesses. (Congratulations, you’re not alone!). Three things to consider when thinking about your strengths:

• What makes you feel like the day flies by?
• Where do you have more confidence and less stress?
• What makes you feel more engaged, creative, and satisfied with your work?

Knowing your strengths can help you better negotiate and apply them at work, or determine how to apply those skills to a new endeavor.

Close the skills gap

It can be easy to let thoughts like, “I could never apply for X role because I don’t have Y background,” creep into your head. Just because you don’t have a traditional background doesn’t mean your previous experience (work and otherwise) doesn’t count and you should write it off. You have an entire toolkit built of strengths, skills, passions, and values. You may just need to make a bit of extra effort to help others realize what you bring to the table.

If you take the time to break down your skills and strengths in your current role and past experience, you’ll likely uncover the very qualities that are needed for the work you want to be doing. In the process you may also discover the gaps. You can then work to build new skills and bridge the gaps. Having a “growth mindset” means you’re open to learning and trying new things. Keep building your skills as needed.

Build and nurture relationships

Whether you’re staying put professionally or moving on, the relationships you have will be essential to your future success and growth. In the process, build your own personal board of advisors you trust and can turn to for support and expertise.

When it comes to networking, it’s not a matter of only taking and receiving. Get to know others in the process and consider what you can do to help their growth as well. We all have the power to be influencers, connectors, and advocates for others.

Don’t stop there. As you blossom on your own journey, be sure to communicate and share your achievements with your connections. According to Clarke, “it’s like a ripple effect in that they may open up new opportunities for you to shine and take on new responsibilities for you and those around you.”

Make a plan before jumping ship

The “love it or leave it” approach doesn’t mean making rash decisions. It’s about thoughtful reflection and intentional planning. Clarke never recommends diving into something new without taking steps towards what’s next. This also includes making sure you have the financial stability to go along with it. (There are resources to help with that in the book!).

Your plan should also involve knowing what success and workplace happiness look like for you. When you jump too far without a plan, you risk being back where you started before too long. Clarke sees having a workplace happiness plan as choosing the right course, evaluating your toolkit, taking action, and keeping momentum.

Create a ‘portfolio pie’ mix

Maybe a full-time job isn’t for you after all. A “portfolio career” is when multiple strands of work become a cohesive career and individual projects add up to the equivalent or more than traditional a full-time job. This may consist of part-time, freelance, or self-employment.

In addition to diversified income with money coming from different places, it can also mean experimentation with working hours and the kinds of work you take on. While it can sound like the dream, Clarke created a “pie” framework to ensure clients consider where their revenue is actually coming from:

• Star work: High budget work that is delivered in a shorter amount of time, such as public speaking.
• Bread and butter: This work allows for a continuous flow of money and regular, predictable income. It may be a regular external client, or a predictable offer you run.
• Learning opportunity: A situation where you can test out new products or ideas on a new audience. These opportunities allow you to build your skills while gaining audience insights.
• Semi/passive revenue: This involves up front work (and time) that will later generate income without day-to-day investment. (Think: online training or products.)
• Freebies: Freebies are a way to teach others about your services and offerings to help spread the word about what you do. This could be a newsletter, podcast, downloadable, or discovery call.

Embrace the delicate art of being comfortable with being uncomfortable

Clarke suggests “making friends with change” and poses two questions:

1. When was the last time you challenged yourself to try something new?
2. When was the last time you took a bold step and pushed yourself?

Whether it’s having a difficult conversation, trying something new, or learning/mastering a new skill, there’s nothing easy about it. It’s all a process. The speed at which you move may be different for you than for someone else. However, it’s through doing things that may make us uncomfortable that we reap the biggest rewards.

First you have to try in order for any change to take place. It’s also not until you try that you’ll know if that thing you want is really what you want. Testing ideas and small experiments are essential to determining whether you love your job or should leave it. Better yet, give yourself a timeframe to try things out. This will provide you with insights in order to better make decisions.

Think of discomfort as a way to work out what you really want. Clarke is the first to point out that any transition can feel like four steps forward and two back, but it’s still progress.

 

The UK edition is out now in print, Kindle, and audiobook, and is slated for release this fall in the USA.

 

from Adobe 99UAdobe 99U https://adobe.ly/2QqAPHW

Creatives on Their Most Valued Habits

Morning pages, writing prompts, and keeping an ideas diary: these practices are all too familiar to creative types. We rounded up some more unexpected rituals that you can incorporate into your days to make your creative life richer.

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Be bored 

Kyle T. Webster is not afraid of being bored. In fact, he makes a point of creating opportunities for unstructured time that can give rise to some brilliant ideas. In his 99U talk, he pointed out how scarce that blank time is becoming in our lives. “It’s a beautiful, blank, unexplored space that we will probably lose altogether if we’re not careful,” said Webster. “We need to seek it out and bask in it.”

By reframing it as a blessing and an opportunity, we have the chance to embrace boredom as the time when our subconscious gets to work on ideas and makes them better. As Webster says, “This is where a new idea could be lying in wait for those who are open to discovering it.” Allow for the space between.

Imagine away 

Ashley C. Ford brought down the house with her inspiring talk at the 2019 99U Conference. At the heart of her message was the idea that your imagination is the greatest transformational tool we have. “If you can be brave enough to imagine past your understanding, you can change everything,” she said. Make it a regular practice to push yourself past the comfort zone of your assumptions, and see where it takes you. 

Make lists

Stephanie Pereira, Director of NEW INC at the New Museum says, “I try and start a new list every morning, but sometimes that slips to once per week. I currently have one of those very thin Muji notebooks, but really any paper will do—the less fancy, the better. I’ve found it to be incredibly soothing just to simply write a list.” The ritual of list-making and seeing your ideas and tasks on paper can illuminate patterns, inspire you, and track all the seeds of ideas that can eventually bloom into significant projects. 

Get to know your brain

Dr. Sahar Yousef is a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in strategic consulting for businesses looking to improve productivity and structure in always-on workplaces. She coaches her clients to think of the brain as a muscle, a malleable tool that you can work on strengthening, especially when it comes to improving focus and building up your attention span. “You are the designer, you know your brain and your own conscious experience,” Yousef says. The key is taking the time to get to know yourself without passing judgment. You have a natural rhythm, and times when your productivity peaks and wanes. Keep track of when you are most productive, note your daily “slump times,” and set a few strict ground rules for those time-suck habits like checking your inbox or Slack notifications. 

Be mindful

Grace Bonney would be the first to credit the internet and early social media for the success of Design*Sponge, her design site that folded in early 2019 after 15 years. But the time-wasting potential of Instagram and other apps is the big obstacle to a healthy relationship with social media. Bonney has found the key to be mindfulness about her habits. She starts by asking a crucial question before clicking, “’Why am I going there?’ If I go to Instagram to be inspired, I don’t have any guilt about how much time I spend. But if I am going on there to read things that will make me feel good about myself or feel connected to people, I need to understand why am I going there and not to real people in my real life.”

from Adobe 99UAdobe 99U https://adobe.ly/33hNYIv

How to Deal With Time Pressure at Work

Time pressure comes in different forms: you might have a constant feeling that there are simply too few hours in the day, or perhaps it’s more that you are working on a single important project with a tight deadline looming. Whichever you’re experiencing, research has shown what you may have discovered for yourself—time pressure can either be your friend or your foe. 

In some cases, the relentless tick of the clock might leave you feeling paralyzed and stressed out, which obviously won’t do you or your work any good. But that’s not the whole story; in other cases, the pressure of one or more deadlines can fuel your motivation and actually improve your creativity. 

“Time pressure is activating, so you feel like you have more energy. This can translate into higher levels of creativity, you feel more aroused, and you can come up with more novel and better-quality ideas,” says Professor Sandra Ohly, a work psychologist at The University of Kassel in Germany. It’s not just your creativity that can benefit from time pressure. Other research has linked it with more proactive job behavior, which is when you go beyond your formal remit at work and take on additional responsibilities.  

So what can you do to ensure that time pressure works in your favor rather than against the good of the work? 

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1. Cultivate a challenge mindset

Part of it is simply a question of degree: taken to the extreme, too little time will, obviously, be a problem if you simply cannot get the job done. However, in moderation, pressure can work in your favor. Research has now shown that this upside depends on your attitude, especially whether you perceive the pressure as a motivating challenge, rather than as an inescapable hindrance. 

Consider a study that Ohly conducted involving 150 R&D engineers at a German automotive company. The engineers completed several psychology tests, multiple times a day over several days, including measures of time pressure and creativity. What Ohly found is that time pressure was often a boon to creativity, especially when the engineers saw pressure as a challenge.  

What does it mean to see time pressure this way? It means that you recognize “the more effort you put in, the likelihood is you will be able to cope with that pressure,” Ohly explains, “so it’s stressful because the situation requires a lot of effort but at the same time it’s manageable.” The converse to seeing time pressure as a challenge is to see it as what psychologists call a “hindrance stressor,” which is when it feels unavoidable and unmanageable. 

Further, consider a study by researchers in France and the Netherlands. They surveyed hundreds of managers of French R&D research teams and found that greater time pressure was associated with benefits to their team members’ creativity so long as the time pressure was not too intense, and especially when the team had a “learning orientation,” that is, a desire to learn new things, and to develop skills and knowledge. For teams with a learning attitude, time pressure was a motivating force. 

Findings like these suggest that, at least in moderation, time pressure isn’t in itself either a good or bad thing, it’s more about how you view it and respond to it. Of course, this begs the question of what you can do to cultivate a mindset that sees the pressure as a motivating challenge, rather than as an inescapable source of stress.

2. Boost your confidence and focus on small steps

The French R&D manager study, above, highlights the importance of seeing time pressure as an opportunity rather than a threat, as a chance to improve and develop your professional skills. Ohly adds that it helps if you believe in your ability to cope, so it helps to remind you of past successes. Another tip is to break down your task or project into manageable chunks: “it helps to remind yourself that the small steps taken together help you reach the whole goal,” she says. 

It’s easier said than done, but you should also try to meet the challenge of time pressure as much as possible by working more efficiently (by prioritizing and being creative), rather than by simply working faster and longer, both of which are likely to undermine the benefits of time pressure by increasing your risk of exhaustion, according to a study led by Johannes Gutenberg-University published last year. 

3. Find out the reason for the pressure

Managers also have an important role to play, by explaining the need for the time pressure and the importance of the work. Research by Harvard business psychologist Teresa Amabile suggests time pressure is more likely to be beneficial when people see it as necessary for the project (for instance, to compete effectively with competitors) rather than as unnecessary and avoidable. By providing a vision and empowering your team with resources, meaning anything from software to decision-making autonomy, managers can also motivate staff rise to the challenge created by time pressure. As a general rule, you’re more likely to respond to time pressure with a “challenge mindset” if you believe in the value of the work you’re doing and find it inherently rewarding. 

4. If you have a neurotic personality, time pressure can be your friend

Bear in mind that time pressure might be more beneficial to some people than others. A recent finding suggests, perhaps surprisingly, that it is particularly advantageous to people who have more neurotic personalities: that is, who are more prone to mood swings, anxiety, and self-doubt. 

Kai Bormann, a professor of management at Bielefeld University in Germany made this discovery after asking hundreds of professionals to rate their levels of neuroticism and to keep a diary for five working days about their experience of time pressure and their daily creativity. Time pressure helped the more neurotic participants match the creativity of their non-neurotic colleagues. Bormann thinks this is because the pressure helps keep their minds on task, preventing them from getting distracted by worries.

Critically, this benefit was only true for chronic, predictable time pressure—the kind that is consistent and you know is coming. Unexpected time pressure is only likely to fuel the neurotic person’s anxiety. Bormann says that neurotic people can use his findings to their advantage by “rafting a personal working environment that provides comparable doses of time pressure over time.”

Whatever your personality type, time pressure can feel stressful and uncomfortable, but it’s worth considering the opposite scenario: having too little to do or not feeling challenged by your work can also be unpleasant. The next time you’re up against the clock, remember there are practical steps and mental strategies you can use to turn the situation to your advantage. Ask your manager why time is of such essence and remind yourself why the project matters to you. Above all, try to see that extra pressure as an exciting challenge rather than a suffocating threat. 

from Adobe 99UAdobe 99U https://adobe.ly/39TTnZ3