Inspiration Is Perishable – Thanks 37Signals

Just finished reading the book ReWork by Jason Fried and David Hansson, founders of 37Signals (makers of awesome small business software such as BaseCampHQ)

Awesome guys.. pure awesome.  I’m a raving fan.

What I really like is the short sections that touch on the most important aspects of the chapter they are contained within.

For instance, in the Productivity chapter, there is a section called Interruption is the enemy of productivity.  This is so, so true.

I seriously couldn’t agree more.. it’s awesome because we (when I say “we”, I mean me and my team at WebMechanix) already practiced some of what you guys preach.

When we worked on this career college in Toronto, Canada – we would shut everything off, including phones (cell phones are the WORST) – and THEN we did our work.

AND we did the work in the morning, because you’re fresh in the morning — I’m telling you, 8-10am is 400x more productive than 3-5pm (you agree?)..

Another awesome example from ReWork is the section called Hire great writers in the section Hiring.

EVERYONE writes.. emails, training documentation, blog posts.. AND like you said, good writers are good communicators — and EVERYONE communicates (at least you hope they do :).

The absolute best part of the book was the very last chapter… Inspiration is perishable

This is 200% true (if that’s such a thing).. I can’t tell you how many times someone has told me about an idea, and it sounds pretty good – and they sound passionate and inspired, but then they never do anything about it.

There are a couple quotes (if you don’t mind me posting them here) that I loved:

Ideas are immortal. They last forever. What doesn’t last forever is inspiration.  Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date.

And another one:

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator.

All in all, great book guys, thanks a lot for putting your thoughts down on paper and being the best teachers 🙂