Holly and I really enjoyed this session from 37 signals founder Jason Fried, I will give you the highlights here.

1. Optimize for now + don’t get paralyzed by fears and the great unknown

2. Who knows and who cares about “what if” questions

3. The decisions you make today do not have to last forever

4. Change if you need to

5. Be successful and make money by helping other people be successful and make money

6. Spot chain reactions and be the catalyst

7. Target non-consumers + non-consumption so you can be a disruptor

8. To compete with the biggies, just fly under the radar and grab customers that they don’t have

9. Question your work regularly
- why are we doing this?
- what problem are we solving?
- is this actually useful?
- will this change behavior?
- is there and easier way to do this?
- what can’t we do?
- is it really worth it?

10. Read your product (bad copywriting is big problem now)

11. Focus more on words and less on pixels (words are cheapest and easiest to fix)

12. Err on the side of simple

13. Go easy way first (try to complete 3 things in 1 week, not 1 thing in 3 weeks; morale is important for team)

14. Resist the urge to try to do more the next time around

15. Invest in what doesn’t change (ten years from now people will still want speed + accuracy from Google and fast shipping from Amazon)

16. Follow the chefs (they build by sharing and give recipes away to promote themselves)

17. Interruption is the enemy of productivity (Passive communication reduces interruption, have a “no talking Wed”)

18. Business Planning/RoadMaps send you in the WRONG direction (its all made up and meaningless)
- They lock you in the past
- its ok to think about the future, just don’t write it down
- do the right thing at the right time

19. Be Clear in Crisis (be open, honest, public and responsive)

20. Make TINY decisions = No big mistakes
- break it down to atomic level
- keep knocking one little thing at a time
- celebrate little launches - morale feeds off of progress

21. Everything you do should matter! Make it matter or don’t do it!
- every pixel, every blog post, every design, every word

and finally..

Watch out for these Red flag words: beware when some says “i need x and it can’t be too difficult, its only this one time, its easy, and I need it fast”
- need
- can’t
- easy
- only
- fast

tagged: 37signals, sxsw