Blog
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
Tailwinds
Reading this Atlantic article on the Retail Meltdown of 2017 [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/retail-meltdown-of-2017/522384/] reminded me of the importance of riding tailwinds in a business. The winners take advantage of societal and market trends. The losers resist the change that is obvious to everyone
Output Over Hours
> It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege. -Henry Ford, 1926 Time is the wrong unit of measurement for knowledge work. Only results matter. And results are not a function of time spent. Working on
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:
Two Heuristics for Determining if Your Remote Culture Will Succeed or Fail
Zach Holman's Remote-First vs. Remote-Friendly [https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/] was the first post I read that adequately captured how important it is for companies to commit to being remote. > I think there’s a split between being remote-friendly — hiring some workers in a different city — and
Remote is Only the First Step
> This post is an extension of the On Your Terms Manifesto [https://www.fredperrotta.com/on-your-terms-manifesto/]. Being remote is necessary but not sufficient for building more human companies. I write a lot about the remote work here [https://www.fredperrotta.com/tag/remote-work/], and we cover the topic extensively
China Sprints
Flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong costs me a day that I only get back on the return trip. My 14-hour flight left at noon on Saturday and landed at 7pm on Sunday. When Patrick's flight arrived an hour later, we booked our Sky Limo across the
Between Autocracy and Holacracy
How much freedom is too much? The problem with giving your team freedom isn't that they'll abuse it or slack off. A good hiring process will prevent that. The problem is when freedom is really an excuse for a lack of vision, leadership, and guidance. Without