REWORK Review: 500 Words to Improve Your Work Life

Ignore this book at your own peril.
- Seth Godin

Needless to say, when a man of Seth Godin’s stature recommends a book, I was not about to avoid it.

REWORK (written by Jason Fried and David Hansson) is all about re-structuring your work day, how you hire, how to structure your business, and how to do the complete opposite of what has been recommended in the past. A lot of this applies to other work other than a business, as well. For example, here are some phrases on the back:

  • ASAP is poison
  • Meetings are toxic
  • Fire the workaholics
  • Inspiration is perishable

Some of those phrases will apply to what you are doing.

This book is as a blog on paper. The sections are short and aim for high impact. This was not written with a certain length in mind or is trying to fill it up with fluff in order to appear smart. They even have an entire section about it: Build half a product, not a half-assed product.

The next-to-last draft of the book was around 57,000 words long.

They chopped it down to 27,000 words.

When was the last time you wrote something of ten pages in length and cut it down to four? Probably never. It is not how we learned to write.

This is changing though. This is Writing 2.0 (more like 955.0 but 2.0 sounds better).

REWORK is about working better, smarter, doing things in a way that has not been done before. The short sections are like nails being driven into your head with a hammer. You finish one section, turn the page, and then POW! Another great idea that you can immediately understand is suddenly in your head.

It is impossible to drag this book out over a week or longer. There is no delay in picking it up and finishing it. You will finish it in a few sittings.

But this is not to say that it isn’t full of valuable content. The only other book I have read to this point that is brief and to the point is Linchpin, by Seth Godin. No surprise that he is one of their major influencers they list at the end of the book.

There are two sections I will further highlight that I found of interest:

1. “How should you keep track of what customers want? Don’t. Listen, but then forget what people said. Seriously. The requests that really matter are the ones you’ll hear over and over. After a while, you won’t be able to forget them. Your customers will be your memory.”

2. “You don’t create a culture. It happens. This is why new companies don’t have a culture. Culture is the by-product of consistent behaviour.”

REWORK is (or will become) one of the most influential business books for the 21st century. I could write more, but why would I? REWORK is a monumental grain of sand for a book. It is that important.

Check out the excerpt on Amazon. Read the 37Signals blog. Buy the book.

By James McCullough

James McCullough A young father, working as a hotel consultant, following a paleo diet thanks to books such as The Primal Blueprint and The 4 Hour Body. I use Byword for writing, and do my work using this iPad keyboard. Connect with me at Google+ or Twitter

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