Interview with Jason Fried.

Mixergy interviews Jason Fried, 37Signals founder and author of the books Getting Real and the 2010 release, Rework.

Dig.

Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart!

The Pitfalls of Doing Something

For the last several years, my work has been about helping people support their businesses or personal endeavors. And by support I mean a website. A supporting website. That supports. Supports what? The inside of a web browser? Keeping the scroll bar from falling over?

Let's be honest.

A website alone never saved anyone's business or made a dream come true. Many websites have made my dream of being an independent come true, but after a year of boasting across tables that I've been living on my skills and knowhow for the last x number of years, I begin to feel empty.

Let's be honest.

The only times that my skills really ever helped a client were the times when the client had a damn good idea of what they wanted and what a website's place was in their overall plan. I merely offered my limited expertise and delivered when and what I said I would.

I am by default restless. And my desire for some semblance of real accomplishment has breached my fear of actually doing something. The idea of a longterm project chasing a documentary about a subject that seems much too large and serious for this silly boy...this idea is driving me.

I am looking at words like war, freedom, genocide, and anesthetic-free surgery. I am going to sit across from a man who saw and did these things. And I am going to ask him about it. How do I face that after years of just bullying pixels and gentrifying html elements?

I don't know, but that's how it goes.

The Terrors and Truths of Approaching 40.

Some of us are lucky enough to have had elders who didn't suck.

Most of us weren't so lucky though. When we consider what awaits us based on who proceeded us, the alternative to getting old becomes attractive. We devalue our lives and slip into a measured suicide. We eat too much, sleep too little, starve our intellects and shutter our awareness.

I don't know if I am one of the lucky ones, but as I approach 40, I feel like my life keeps getting better...harder, but better. What used to be the harsh lights of failure are now the even lighting of clarity. I was never going to make it as a singer/songwriter. A friend's (Blaine Long) forthcoming album makes that so utterly clear to me. But now, that clarity is comforting. Comforting because I chose to leave musicianship behind when I began to see the truth of it. And now, years later, I am validated in my choice and can enjoy my friend's music without always thinking, "Man, I wish I'd thought of that."

But really, what I am digging so much about nearing forty, aside from the killer gray points in my hair, is my increasing willingness to take on larger and larger projects. I am currently working on a documentary that could take years of hard work and one to many hundred thousand dollars to do. And somehow, I am OK with that span of time and those numbers.

And so, I am hoping to not suck as I age.

iPhone App Development.

Recently, I have finally found the time to dive into the world of app development for the iPhone platform. So far it is proving to be an environment as fine-tuned as it is inspiring, i.e. the haiku of program and design.

The screen space is a fun limitation. It demands design, but because the screen size is always going to be 320x480 (or 480x320), you never have to worry about resizing...or browser neutrality for that reason.

And in terms of resources, the manual memory management is an added coding task but actually always makes it explicit when something is retained or released. A good thing to monitor leaks.

And with all the free APIs out there, particularly around mapping, I'm stoked up to make some more apps!

Wootzorz.

Gestalt Theory.

The relation of things.

Orochon and No Art

Fellow designer, Erik Larabie, and I meet up in LA and avoid art.
Orochon Ramen

It's true that I often lean back from programming or designing and float off momentarily into thoughts of pure art, off into a place where I imagine what it must be like to have a studio and lots of time and someone else's money and just have to produce something that is just honest. Yeah...it's a nice place.

So when I get a chance to come into LA on the (slightly urban feeling) train and dig some art and other cool-tshirt-wearing people, I dig. And I usually get to try a new restaurant and come back with the dug-art-in-LA badge.

But today, Erik and I kept stalling the visit to The Geffen or to Upper Playground or whatever. In the end, we just walked around discussing the balance of believing in science but living day to day with data-less realities and experiences. We ended up on the roof of The Walt Disney Concert Hall tripping out on all the gnarly back structures and steep drops that are hidden behind the structure's graceful outer.

And that's when I felt the coolness of being part of all the gnarliness that goes behind making websites and motion graphics work well, of bringing DESIGN to navigation and to messaging. And it's now that I dig our reluctance to concentrate on someone's art. We spend our days in concentration over the right solutions and picking the 'rightest' solution...and in most cases, having to repeatedly justify our efforts. Sometimes it's just good to slurp noodles and have folk intellectual converstions with a fellow designer.

Thanks for calling me up, Erik. I had a good day.

The New Satellite Office

Sometimes it's good to get out and laptop it at a local coffee house even if you're just researching new CSS techniques.