I have been thinking a lot about “less is more” approach for last couple of months but only lately I have realized that I am not alone who think this way. Actually there are some very interesting people who apply ths theory to their lives and businesses. Let me just mention few. Leo Babauta, Tim Ferris, guys from 37 signals.
The last mentioned took this approach to the extreme and applied this theory to their whole business and web applications they produce. There are the producers of the most popular applications on the web such are Basecamp or Campfire, which I am sure most of you already know.
What you might not know that 37 signals have published very interesting book called Getting Real. The book is currently available on their site for free. What is also very interesting that the book has made profit about half million dollars before they put it online for free.
The book is amazing. It is written in the same very simple way. No talking around and straight to the point. It talks about the way the guys in 37 signals works on the day to day basis. So how do they do the business? You could say that they do exact opposite what other companies do or even better, they do not do most of the stuff other companies do and they still manage to make several millions of profits.
They manage to remove most of the time which is not actually spent producing. For example. They got rid of the company meetings or at least they shrink it to minimum. They also minimize the code as well as the features of they web applications. They only work 4 days a week and so on and so on.
I really think that this is the fresh air which was needed for so long in the modern business. It is such a difference when people are passionate about the work they do, they feel trusted and when they feel that the company actually cares about them. They become even more productive which brings the value back to the company. I am sure that guys in 37 signals are not less productive then other developers even they work only 4 days. As a matter of fact, looking at they results they are far more productive.
They look at the problems from different angles and that makes them special. Thank you guys for your inspiration! I hope this model will be used by more and more companies. It will bring more values on both sides. I highly recommend to read the book, it only takes few hours.