Personal Paradigm Shift

Rework is a contrarian business book written by the creators of 37signals.com.

If you’re a small business and you’re not familiar with 37signals.com they have a fantastic, simple and affordable set of web applications for small organizations.

We use Basecamp at CPA Site Solutions every day to manage projects for accountants, so when we heard 37signals created a book we had to check it out.

When you finish a book that inspires you the next step is to pull away a few gems to apply in your organization or daily routine.

Here are 5 actions I’ll be applying in the next week.

1. The tools don’t matter, what you do matters. Don’t get hung  up on what version of software you’re using or caught up in a flashy new tool you wont use in two weeks.

2. Inspiration is perishable. If you have a great idea, start working now before it rots. Basecamp is perfect for this. Set a milestone and make action steps that you can accomplish in the next two weeks.

3. Scratch your own itch. Make  products or software that you would use. Keep it simple.

4. Out-teach your competition. Create tutorials for your products and services. Share the tools you’re using with clients. Competitors can copy your feature list and tool offerings but they can’t emulate education. That takes genuine thought and effort.

5. Meetings are Toxic. I spend a large chunk of my week in meetings. This section made me uncomfortable, and when you’re uncomfortable it usually means there’s room for improvement.

• The cost of a meeting is the time taken away from each person in the meeting. If 10 people attend a 1 hour meeting, that’s 10 hours of productivity taken away. Only invite those who need to be there and contribute.
• Always email an agenda to your team before the meeting.
• Stick to the agenda.
• If someone goes too far off-topic bring them back to an agenda topic.
• Create action steps for any solution to a problem that pops up and make it due in the next two weeks. If it’s not done, or can’t be done in two weeks then it probably wont get done.
• Set a timer. When the timer goes off the meeting is over, no exceptions.

Overall, a fantastic read. You can get through it in about 2 hours, it’s worth the time spent.

You can pick up a copy here: http://37signals.com/rework/