About Jason Fried

Jason co-founded Basecamp back in 1999. He also co-authored REWORK, the New York Times bestselling book on running a "right-sized" business. Co-founded, co-authored... Can he do anything on his own?

Clever design. A clock with AA batteries as the hands. (via Gizmodo)

Jason Fried on Jun 22 2010 18 comments

Launchpad browser stats

Jason Fried wrote this on Jun 17 2010 17 comments

Here’s the browser breakdown of visitors to the 37signals Launchpad, our global sign-in screen for our web apps. This also includes product-specific sign-in screens like this Basecamp sign-in screen or this Highrise sign-in screen. These stats were pulled from Google Analytics and they represent the past 30 days.

Impressive showing by Chrome.

Submitted.

Jason Fried on Jun 15 2010 31 comments

Airbus Skylink.

Jason Fried on Jun 15 2010 16 comments

Priceline is the only mass-market public site I’ve seen that requires your initials instead of a checkbox to confirm you agree with the terms, conditions, and privacy policy.

Jason Fried on Jun 15 2010 14 comments

Clever cable holders. Via curled and feathered.

Jason Fried on Jun 11 2010 22 comments

Chicago the Beautiful. 10-minute videos from 1948.

Jason Fried on Jun 11 2010 5 comments

The pleasure of an open schedule

Jason Fried wrote this on Jun 10 2010 18 comments

For the past few months I’ve been traveling every week or every other week. The travel has been primarily for public speaking events – conferences, workshops, book signings, etc. It’s been fun, but it comes at a very high cost: A chaotic schedule.

We’ve written (and spoken) at length about the pitfalls of interruption at work. Every interruption cuts your work day into a series of work moments. 45 minutes here, then a meeting. A hour there, then a conference call. 20 minutes until someone taps you on the shoulder or calls your name across the office. These events kill productivity.

Most of these interruptions are experienced at a micro level. They’re experienced during a day. But I’ve found the same thing holds true on a macro level. If you stretch your time scale out to weeks or months, a day trip here or a couple days away there has the same effect: It kills productivity. A couple days away a week is like a few meetings a day — it makes it hard to get anything meaningful done. An interruption is an interruption.

This past Monday I gave my last talk (UIE Web App Masters in Philly) until mid September when I’m at the Business Innovation Factory 6 conference. I have a few more after that for the year, but then I’m done. I’m going to retire from travel-required conference speaking for a while. It feels great.

It’s only been three days since my last talk, but knowing I have a clear schedule for many months has shifted me into a pleasantly productive mindset. I’ve gotten a ton done so far this week. There have been some projects I’ve been meaning to start for a while, but with future travel hanging over my head I couldn’t get into a groove. I’m back in a groove.

It’s a good reminder of the power of an open schedule. Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time. Time to put it to good use.