Khal Weir

REWORK is the new book from 37Signals, a former web consultancy that now make a a suite of popular productivity web apps. The book’s authors are Jason Fried (co founder and president) and David Heinemeier Hansson (partner  and the creator of Ruby on Rails). I’ve been using 37Signal’s project management tool, Basecamp for a few years now. While it isn’t the most feature complete tool, it gets the important stuff right; in fact thats one of 37Signal’s mantras ‘build half a product - not a half assed product’. Even before using any of their products, I’ve enjoyed reading the company’s blog Signal vs Noise and have always admired their openess about the way they work and been inspired by their success. I’ve never read, or had any interest in reading a business book before (I’m allergic to buzzwords and marketing speak), but knowing that this would be a different kind of business book I pre-ordered a copy and have read through it in only three sessions. REWORK is playbook for starting or running any sized company, based on 37Signal’s principles with a proven success. The book is very easy and fast to read, each section is to the point and at most a couple of pages long. The statements are bold, contradicting what you have likely experienced at work, however they make sense and are backed by real world examples, not only from 37Signals but Amazon, Zappos, Dunkin’ Donuts and others. I would recommend this book to anyone that works or hopes to someday work for themselves; even if you don’t there is a lot of great advice on productivity and that’ll increase your employability.