Productivity
Working Remotely Means "Your" Schedule, Not “No” Schedule
If you think that working remotely means lying in bed [https://open.buffer.com/work-bed/] in sweatpants, you also probably think that it means starting late and quitting early. For colocated employees, a work from home (WFH) day is like a vacation. Everyone at the office knows that you'
You Lit Your Own Hair on Fire
Startups love to run around with their hair on fire. They love urgent urgent urgent emergencies and, of course, hustle. The problem is that this is not a healthy or productive way to work. You may get a lot of stuff done, but you'll never have time to
Incomplete Information
> Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. -Jeff Bezos [http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-explains-the-perfect-way-to-make-risky-business-decisions-2017-4] I love that line. As an entrepreneur, I'm always making decisions without certainty. Making a decision and moving forward can be valuable. If
The Fred User Manual
> Inspired by this confusingly-titled LinkedIn post [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-you-revolutionize-way-your-team-works-together-all-david-politis] , I wrote the personal User Manual below for our team. The User Manual is meant to instruct people on "how to work with me." Read the original post for more context. > The User Manual
Money Isn't Leisure
In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that his grandchildren would work fifteen-hour weeks. While that's almost 4x Tim Ferriss's four-hour weeks [https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307465357/?tag=fredperrott05-20] , it's still less than half of the average US worker's week
A Place to Do Epic Work
A Hacker Noon post on high performance employees [https://hackernoon.com/know-the-soul-of-the-high-performance-employee-then-we-can-build-the-10-000-things-ad753ffd9b7f#.9oyofuh00] got me thinking about what we do at Tortuga [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com] to create a place to do great work. The author, William Belk, defines high performance employees (HPEs) as: > Rather than being tasked with
Tortuga's Communication Flowchart
In the Bay Area, three garbage cans is the norm. One each for composting, recycling, and landfill. I always think of them in that order. Can this go into the compost? If yes, put it there. If not, can it go in recycling? And so on down the line. Landfill
The Remote Work Tech Stack
Startups love to share their tech stacks: the technologies on which their software is built. I'm more interested in the tools that companies use to run their businesses. I'm always happy to see a company I admire using a tool that we use at Tortuga [http:
Hard Work Doesn't Matter
We've heard a lot in election post-mortems about the value of hard work, especially in the Rust Belt. In an industrial model, efficiency is key. Up to a point, working harder yields more or better results. I hear this every time I visit by hometown in Western Pennsylvania.