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Highlights first synced by [[readwise]] [[September 2nd, 2020]]

• Say you spend thirty minutes driving in rush hour every morning and another fifteen getting to your car and into the office. That’s 1.5 hours a day, 7.5 hours per week, or somewhere between 300 and 400 hours per year, give or take holidays and vacation. (Location 172)
• The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration. (Location 190)
• not all work can be done entirely free of schedule restrictions. At 37signals, we offer customer support to people on American business hours, so it’s important our customer support team is available during that time. But even within those constraints, relaxed schedules are still a possibility so long as the group as a whole is covering the full spectrum. (Location 203)
• it’s the work—not the clock—that matters. (Location 207)
• Letting people work remotely is about promoting quality of life, about getting access to the best people wherever they are, (Location 261)
• Legal, accounting, payroll, advertising—all essential business activities. Without outside people to perform these key functions you might not even be in business. All these activities are carried out outside your company’s walls, away from your company’s network, and outside of your management’s direct control—and yet there’s no doubt it’s all being done efficiently. (Location 324)
• “If we’re struggling with trust issues, it means we made a poor hiring decision. If a team member isn’t producing good results or can’t manage their own schedule and workload, we aren’t going to continue to work with that person. It’s as simple as that. We employ team members who are skilled professionals, capable of managing their own schedules and making a valuable contribution to the organization. We have no desire to be babysitters during the day.” (Location 369)
• Sometimes, distractions can actually serve a purpose. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, they warn us—when we feel ourselves regularly succumbing to them—that our work is not well defined, or our tasks are menial, or the whole project we’re engaged in is fundamentally pointless. Instead of reaching for the video game controller or turning on soap operas, is it perhaps time to raise your voice and state the obvious? (Location 391) [[distractibility]]
• if you’re sitting in a dedicated room intended for work with the door closed, you stand a far better chance of staying on task. (Location 397)
• its primary function is to provide social cohesion. (Location 641)
• To instill a sense of company cohesion and to share forward motion, everyone needs to feel that they’re in the loop. (Location 656)
• It’s also a lot harder to bullshit your peers than your boss. (Location 663)
• the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone’s performance. (Location 667)
• “what did this person actually do today?” (Location 671)
• When it’s all about the work, it’s clear who in the company is pulling their weight and who isn’t. (Location 675)
• The company also encourages everyone to stay home during the peak of flu season or during scares like H1N1. (Location 701)
• We believe that these staples of work life—meetings and managers—are actually the greatest causes of work not getting done at the office. (Location 712)
• human interaction does not have to come from either coworkers or others in your industry. (Location 743)
• (The gain was so significant that an open position was closed since it was no longer needed.) (Location 820)
• That’s also why it’s as important to continuously monitor the work atmosphere as to hire for it. It’s never a good idea to let poisonous people stick around to spoil it for everyone else, but in a remote-work setup it’s deadly. (Location 939)
• a manager of remote workers needs to make an example of even the small stuff—things like snippy comments or passive-aggressive responses. While this responsibility naturally falls to those in charge, it works even better if policed by everyone in the company. (Location 944)
• The old adage still applies: No assholes allowed. But for remote work, you need to extend it to no asshole-y behavior allowed, no drama allowed, no bad vibes allowed. (Location 949)
• Watson. The job of a manager is not to herd cats, but to lead and verify the work. (Location 1130)
• it requires knowledge of the work itself. (Location 1131)
• the only reliable way to muster motivation is by encouraging people to work on the stuff they like and care about, with people they like and care about. There are no shortcuts. (Location 1356)
• If a worker’s motivation is slumping, it’s probably because the work is weakly defined or appears pointless, or because others on the team are acting like tools. (Location 1361)
• If you’re working remotely and find yourself taking a week to do a day’s work, that’s a flashing red light and it should be heeded. (Location 1362)
• There are two fundamental ways not to be ignored at work. One is to make noise. The other is to make progress, to do exceptional work. (Location 1441)