A good friend recommended this book he’s sort of new to the working world so I guess he is reading a lot of stuff of this nature. The book is by the guys at 37signals; they are a web design firm who is well known for creating Basecamp, Backpack and campfire and most famously ruby on rails.  I wasn’t actually expecting a lot from this book, I am not into “design” and I have a deep deep hatred for ruby but I have been known to read a business or 2.

REWORK is marketed  as a sort of ‘everything you know is wrong’ Business book with the back cover reading “Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you’re looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.” and  “What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You’ll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counter intuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.”

The book starts off with a narrative about starting your own business and introducing the authors own experiences. Their point of view is clear; anyone can start a business , it doesn’t take a lot of time or money thanks to modern technology. The authors go on to use their own experience to support their claims in a compelling manner , if you’re not familiar with signals they are a small company with under 20 employees who mostly work from home but do a lot of great work. The company has made millions of dollars  the authors use example from this experience to make the argument that you don’t have to have a giant company with lots of funding, or a huge number of employees or fancy offices to have a business,  you just need to get started and make things people want to use. For the most part this argument is well supported and I think it provides useful perspective in a time where many people are trying to raise money for their next startup and go public.

The book also covers topics that are useful even if you don’t wish to start a business and  think this is where the book really shines.Topics include workaholisum , meetings, marketing and staying late. REWORK makes an effort to deconstruct the uselessness of all of them in a both informative and entertaining fashion.

There are a few examples that stand out. The first that comes to mind is the topic of staying late anyone who has worked at a startup knows about the “virtues of working late”, the idea being the more hours you spend working and the less you sleep the more you you are obviously getting done and as such The standard working Hours for a startup are from 9am – 7 pm or later. Now I know in the US we all love work . But the book points out that most of the long hrs we do are spent  not working at all , just hanging out in the office, talking to coworkers and if you work in silicon valley playing a couple of games of table tennis. The reality is a lot of work can be done in 8 hrs if you use your time wisely and REWORK does a great job illustrating this. Another topic The book dives into is “marketing” now I expected the authors to throw out the concept of marketing entirely, but surprisingly the authors go on to explain that marketing is not about add buys or “ campaigns” but rather everything a company does from the quality of its products to its most basic interactions with is customers is a form of marketing and should be treated that way. They also offer other lower budget marketing ideas like blogs and providing tutorials for customers that might help to provider a deeper connection with customers that I certainly had not considered before.

I could go on and on about the various topics but honestly REWORK is not that long and I think almost everyone should read it. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in doing great things and sharing them with the world. I think the marketing pitch is wrong, REWORK should really be marketed as more of a personal development or career development book,  It’s a short and easy read so  you shouldn’t have many excuses not to read it.