YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Fried

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132
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2018-07-23
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2018-07-23
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  1. “Yes. You know me well. So I was, I don't know when the entrepreneurial bug bit me, but it bit me early. And I loved knives and like throwing stars and like switchblades, although I couldn't get those because those are illegal. I just love that kind of stuff.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Oh my god, I got into so much trouble when I was younger. The first time, though. I remember the first time I cried so hard that I almost couldn't breathe. You know that crying where you like. I'm trying to remember why that happened, but I'm sure I did something really bad. And I think my parents reminded me how bad it was or something and I got really scared. I think I don't remember how old I was. But I remember that moment. But I gotten a lot of trouble when I was younger. I probably should have gotten in more trouble. I probably got away with too many things as well. But I got into a lot of trouble. My parents would have to pick me up at the police station when I was younger. When I was younger, like I'm talking like.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “A while, and then it's over, the worrying is over, and I think that's the key insight for me in it, which is it gives me a moment to say, yeah, okay, I'm going to worry about this. I'm going to worry about it as bad as it could possibly be and think about how exactly horrible it could be. And then I can, then I'm done with that. And that's the difference compared to consistent low grade, always on worry where you'd never have that moment where you can really confront it until it happens when it usually doesn't.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Yeah, that could happen. And you can't stop it. I can't prevent kids go to school and they get sick. And like you might get sick. And like, okay, but if you think about how bad it can be, you start to really ruminate on it versus like, yeah, that could happen. And if that happens, it happens. You just deal with it and live with it. But I remember before I got into this negative visualization, I would actually worry a lot. And what's cool about negative visualization, I think, is it clears the worry out of the room in a sense. Like you give it a worry. Like you worry about it.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Yeah, you know, I feel like that's similar. I feel like I worried a lot, and I still do. I still battle with this. And I do kind of feel like it is a battle, actually, in a sense, with worrying. And I don't, I've stopped worrying about myself, but I have a three and a half year old now, so I worry about him. And I find myself realizing that kids are actually really quite resilient and I shouldn't be worrying so much that things are going to be just fine. And it's actually a really good practice for me to use negative visualization when I'm worrying about things like, oh, he's going to go to school and get sick. And then he's going to have the flu. And then I'm going to get the flu.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Could still do it just not in that capacity. And you know what? A 20 year run isn't so bad. Like, if we only made it 20 years in business, that wouldn't be so bad either. So just thinking about what would be the worst thing that could possibly happen. And then recognizing that probably will not happen. It just helps you, I think, calm down about that. And it sort of avoid this constant set of worries. In some ways, you sort of get all the worrying out at once. And then you go about your day and go, well, if that happens, then it happens. At least I know what that's going to feel like or what I think that might feel like. It's not that it would eliminate all of the feelings. There certainly would be other negative feelings I may have missed, but for the most part, I thought it through, and I feel like I can probably cope with it now if that actually happens versus having something surprise you in the moment and having it be real, that can be a really traumatic and really difficult to handle. So that's my general understanding of that at least.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Yeah, as far as I understand it, at least it's basically figuring out what the worst case scenario might be in any given situation and coming to terms with that and sort of realizing that probably in many cases it won't be as bad as you think it could be. Get used to the worst thing. And David and I talk about this occasionally, right? So DHH and I talk about this in the business. Like, what if we made some grave, grave, horrible errors? So the business has been in business for 18 years. And what if, like, or what if the competition destroys us or whatever? Like, what if we actually go out of business in two years? Like, what if that actually happens? We don't want that to happen. What if it did? What's the worst thing that would happen? Well, it would be terrible because a lot of people would lose their jobs and that would suck. But we think a lot of people work for us would have no problem finding other jobs. So that wouldn't maybe be so bad. I would have no income and they wouldn't have no income. That would suck, but we've done pretty well for ourselves so we could live fine without that. We couldn't do what we loved doing every day. Well, that would kind of suck, but maybe.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “So there's that also just negative visualization, I think, is a really wonderful tool, and I'm paying a lot of attention to that in my life.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Yeah, it just resonates with me. A few basic things, by the way. I don't need to go that deep into it again. It's not like I need to go super deep into the whole world of it. But basically things like you pretty much only have control over your reactions to things. And I think that that in itself is enough. I could stop there. I go further, but I could stop there and say that is extremely poignant, especially today. I see people getting so wound up about what other people say and what other people do. And, you know, when you begin to see that, what they're actually being wound up about is their own reaction to that thing, not the thing itself. The thing itself, you know, yeah, maybe it's terrible, maybe it's great, whatever it is, but it's how you sort of respond to it and how you allow it to affect you. That's deep and really important. And I think one of the best lessons I've learned in the past few years.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “That's it. That's it. I think you're right. I think that's it. So I read that recently or last year. I really love that. I've been getting into that. I know that's the kind of stuff I'm into these days.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Forget even just business people. If you want to read clear writing, if you want to understand what it's like to communicate something at a high level, you've got to read what he writes. So that's the kind of stuff I love. I love to read. I like Bezos' shareholder letters as well for similar reasons. That's the kind of stuff I'm really interested in. I don't read fiction at all. And maybe I'm missing out there, but I just, my argument is always that I feel like the world is so interesting on its own that there's more than enough I can read about real stuff. I know some people are going to just hate me for this. And I always get hate on it. But I just would rather read biographies or I'd rather read about nature. I'd rather read about that stuff because the world is fascinating as it is. So those are the kinds of things.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Wisdom. And I've always been attracted to that because I think complexity has also become a sport where it's like the more complicated something is, the better you think you are at it. Like if you make it more complicated, you're better at it or something. I just think it's kind of the opposite. So I love those guys. And that book to me sort of highlighted a lot of that kind of thinking. And so anything that Munger's written, I love reading like Warren Buffett's letter to his shareholders, which I think is a must read for anybody.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “I love Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. What I love about those two guys, and of course this book is not written by them, but it's sort of the spirit of it, which is this very clear, direct, no bullshit way of writing, this very sort of simple folksiness that, you know what? Life really necessarily, I mean, I know this is a broad generalization, but in most cases, it's not that complicated. We tend to make things very complicated and we tend to make things very hard on ourselves, but really there's some basic fundamentals of many things that if you kind of understand those, you're in pretty good shape and you don't need to go much further than that. And I love that kind of wisdom. I love old people in general. Lauren Buff and Charlie Munger, I think Munger's in his 90s now and Buffett's in his 80s, but they've always had this kind of wisdom, which is this old school, almost farmer's almanac style.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “So it's been a while since I've read that. So a book review would be really embarrassing. But what I'll tell you is this.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Yeah, I mean, that's in our new book Which is like it just great. I don't need to know all this stuff all the time. And yeah, again, like, look, if there's a, like, I'm in LA right now, if there's a mudslide, like coming to my house, like I should know about that, right? Obviously, but that's something that might happen every, you know, hopefully never and maybe once a decade and to say that I need to be informed real time about anything that could possibly happen anytime because that one thing might happen once. That's just a recipe for anxiety, and I try to avoid that at all costs.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Does matter, but for the most part, it doesn't matter at all. And in fact, it's worse because you become, there's the fear of missing out. I think of it as Jomo, like the joy of missing out. I'm happy to miss out. I'll watch this out on most things.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And if you hid the logos, you wouldn't tell the difference, really. And so news coverage has turned into sports coverage and vice versa. And I just would rather say like once a day is enough of a general interval for me to be relatively well informed about what's really going on in the world. Also at the resolution that matters. I think the other problem, and by the way, I look at Twitter and I click on links here and there and I read some stuff that I like. But for the most part, I'm not trying to find out what happened an hour ago. And that, to me, is actually the real advantage to something like the newspaper where you simply cannot find out what happened an hour ago. Because what happened an hour ago in most cases doesn't matter. Now you could say, what if there's a national disaster or major tragedy or school shooting in your kids at the school? Like there's all sorts of moments, of course, where real-time truly...”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Again, pretty good chance that you didn't miss anything, actually, by paying attention to things all the time. Very few things happen during the middle of the day that you really absolutely need to know that you can't wait for the next morning to know. And so I've realized that the newspaper is actually a better way to get the news because it's better, the pace is better. It prevents you from searching and seeking out news that you don't need to know about necessarily. It prevents you from playing the sport, I call it like the sport of information, like trying to know more than everybody else and be faster to the latest story than everybody else. That's turning into a sport. And in fact, the news is presented, if you watch any news channel now, it's presented as a sport. I mean, you've got these Chiron's going across the bottom, these graphics scrolling across. You've got talking heads that are sort of debating. You can turn on ESPN or you can turn on CNN.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Reading, what do I read? Well, you know, I started reading the paper mark, which is like the newspaper, not online news sources, but actually the newspaper. And this happened because I was at a hotel. This was a few years ago. I was at a hotel. And, you know, you go to a hotel and they ask you, check in, they say, you know, would you like a newspaper? And I used to always go, no, newspaper. Who reads newspapers anymore? Because I get all my news on the internet, which is instant all the time. And the thing is, most of that's not actually news. It's entertainment. I think the news, like once a day is actually a perfectly good pace for the news. So if you get the news in the morning, you're basically getting all of yesterday's stuff that happened in the world that someone, you know, some editors decided was important. And they just put that in the news. They print it. And then the next morning you get it. And then if you wait another full day to get the news.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Yeah, let me get to that in one second, but I had a thought about the previous question, sort of the genesis of this for me is I used to do a lot of jogging. I still do a little bit, but I kind of had some knee surgery a while ago, and so I've sort of not been doing it as much. But I remember trying to hit certain times. Like I want to run a six and a half minute mile or whatever it was at the time. And I go out and I'd run a six minute mile and 42 seconds. And I remember being disappointed by that. I remember feeling like why should I be disappointed in that? I'm not running a race. I'm not competing against anybody. I'm sort of competing against myself, but I set that up for myself. That's not something I had to do. Like I created that moment to be upset. What if I just went out and ran because I enjoy running and just kind of?”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “People's worldview, and maybe even yours. I know you're big into measuring things, especially health wise and whatnot. So again, I think it comes down to also most importantly knowing who you are and what matters to you and not trying to be like somebody else. There's a lot of people trying to be like other people. And I don't want anyone to try and be like me. You should be like yourself. And if there's 5% of what I'm saying makes sense to you, then maybe you can pull that in and make that part of you too. But I don't think you should be out there trying to be someone else because that's a bit of an artificial situation.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “Isn't crashing and people aren't running aimlessly around not wondering what to do that actually in fact people will if you if you explain why you're doing it because you want to make this better because simply you want to make it better and you think it could be better or whatever and you lay that out that people will be motivated enough by that that that that the numbers and the figures don't necessarily they're not the things that are pulling you forward what's pulling you forward hopefully is your intrinsic motivation and your and your desire to do a better job at what you're doing and the sort of appreciation of the craft and the respect of the work that you're doing and who you're doing it for and that that's kind of enough and that everything else is sort of a side effect of that so anyway i'd say pick one little thing throw it away don't worry about it and see what happens you'll probably find out that everything's just okay and then maybe you'll have the courage to try it with another little thing that you are measuring that you don't really care so much about and i know i'm well aware that this flies in the face of a lot of people”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “This is sort of what we did last year, and because of that, we want to do a little bit better this year, but all this stuff is still just man-made. None of these things are inherent in existence. They're all man-made things, these numbers, these goals, these figures. So if you can begin to strip that back and sort of recognize that that's the case and say, like, what if I tried to function without setting any of these, but I just did the best work I can anyway, because isn't that what I should be doing anyway, no matter what? So my suggestion would be as with anything I'm not a big fan of trying to massively change anything at once. So I think my suggestion would be like, whatever the next project you have that you're working on, if you would normally set out some goal posts or set out some figures to hit or whatever, or measure this, just try not measuring one of those things. Just pick one little tiny thing that you can throw away and not worry about and see what happens. And you'll probably find that the sky isn't falling and the business isn't correct.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “That's the one, right? So if you're like that and you think that things are great for you and things are working well for you, please do not even consider changing like keep doing that. I think though if you're doing all those things and you feel a sense of sort of a lack of fulfillment or you're maybe consistently disappointed or you're reaching for things that you can't seem to grab, I would suggest trying a little bit trying some of the things I'm suggesting, which is pull back your expectations a bit, just sort of try to set out to do the best you can versus try to measure up with a number that you've made up. And that's the other thing that I think is important here is that any projection that you set out to hit is a guess. Like you personally are making someone at your organization or whatever is making a guess and they're picking a number and they're saying this is where we think we should be because”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Well, first off, I do want to make it really clear that this is simply what works for me in our organization. So I am not suggesting this is the only way, the best way, whatever. This works for us. So if what works for you works for you and you're very goal-oriented and KPI driven and you think you need to, the things you measure or whatever it is, figure out how that saying goes, what you measure is what you move or whatever. I don't know.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “When you set out these numbers and these goal posts and these goals and these expectations and you don't hit them, then you're just then you're upset. And once you've actually either hit them or not hit them, then you come up with another set and you just keep moving these moments of possible joy, but most likely disappointment in a lot of cases. And I just don't feel like setting those up for myself. So I just ignore the whole thing.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Look like writing. Sometimes it requires me to debate things internally with people to lay out some reasons for why we're doing things. But my week is not pointed in any one direction other than what we're really doing right now. So it is very much a day-to-day sort of existence, which is why it's sort of an incompatible existence with goals, with long-term goals, with figures and numbers and stuff. I don't want to be upset about expectations. So another thing I don't have are really any expectations. I would hate to, for example, let's say the company was, we were expected to grow 22% next year. I'm making up numbers here, right? And we grew 21. Like that would be a reason at a lot of companies to be upset. That is a ridiculous reason to be upset. How would everyone be upset with that?”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “Don't have that. We don't have revenue growth number targets. We don't want to. So, okay, so we don't have goals, we don't have targets. We don't have KPIs. We don't have those kinds of reasons for doing what we do every day. The reason we do what we do every day is because we enjoy doing it and we want to make what we're working on better. And the thing that we're making for others, we're also making for ourselves. So we technically want to make our own tooling better because it helps us do better job with what we do. So it really is this day-to-day or week-to-week or every six weeks sort of rolling thing where you set out some stuff you want to do. You do it the best you can. At the end of those six weeks, we take a week or two off from scheduled work and we do other things at work. We roam around, have new ideas, play with some stuff. And then we pick another set of projects to do over the next six weeks. And we just kind of go as we go and course correct as we go. And we just don't have any of these big, big picture things. So my weeks look like feedback. My weeks look like thinking.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “Yeah, I didn't even know what that meant, by the way, until recently because I heard everyone talking about them. I'm like, do we have those? And I go, oh, no, we don't have those.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “This feature will be successful if. Or if it brings in this amount of money, it'll be worth it or anything like that. Our goal, if you do want to use the word, is just to do the best job we can. So last week I met with a couple teams who were doing some projects and kind of reviewed them with them and tried to help them through some problems work through some ideas. We're just finalizing some stuff on our book. So I'm working on the book that we're finishing now. Our manuscripts do in a couple weeks. So I did some of that. But really, it's all about what we're actually doing at the moment versus sort of the big picture as to why we're doing it other than we just want to do a good job. We have an idea. We've set out some work we're going to do over the next six weeks and just helping people get there and do the best we can and also make decisions and cut things and say we can't do all these things we want to do. What's the important part of this? So I love trying to get to what's the most important part of some.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “So at Basecamp, we work in what we call six-week cycles. So we don't work in anything, okay, I'm generalizing, but for the most part, we don't work on anything that takes longer than six weeks to do. So our goals technically are to deliver something great within six weeks, whatever we're building as an organization. That's sort of where our goals are. But I don't have personal goals. Like, I don't have a goal. Like if we don't set personal goals, we don't set company-wide goals in terms of like...”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “Yeah, this week is a little tricky because I had some personal stuff I had to deal with in the beginning of the week. So we'll take like the week before or something like that. Perfect.”

    2018-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #329: Jason Fried — How to Live Life on Your Own Terms · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT