The first time I came across Jason Fried, the writer and co-founder of Basecamp, was in the Hurry Slowly podcast with Jocelyn K. Glei entitled ‘Whose Schedule Are You On?‘ which I thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve since written to him on a handful of times, firstly to recommend a place I thought he’d like, secondly about a project I started and lastly to say how much I liked his interview on Hodinkee Radio. This post includes several excerpts from that conversation.
11 mins. 30 secs. – I will confess to saying I do like things that are japanese in general. So there is some extra appeal to the fact that the japanese do things their own way. Almost always improve on what exists in the world and that is, I would say, a fairly substantial portion of the reason why I’m starting to get into Grand Seiko.
I love everything about Japan too: their people, culture, cuisine, etc. My wife and I visited the country in April 2018 and it was such a memorable trip on so many levels.
13:45 – People talk about attention to detail all the time. You can pay attention to the wrong details and a lot of people do I think. I find that Grand Seiko pays attention to the right details and that’s really appealing to me.
16:00 – One of my favourite quotes is the Warren Buffett quote: “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” I think when you buy a number of Swiss watches you don’t necessarily feel like you’re getting great value. When you buy a Grand Seiko I think you feel like you’re getting a great value.
My first good watch was a Nomos Ludwig. I can’t help but think that it falls into the latter group, I feel I’ve gotten great value.
When asked if there are similarities about how to approach or appreciate watches in the same way as furniture and architecture, he says:
23:15 – I think for me I typically tend to look at authenticity of materials and how things age. The reason why I like a lot of old things is because they were built well. And they were built well because they were built with real, honest materials.
6. Good design is honest. 7. Good design is long-lasting. So true.
27:10 – There’s difference between showroom room good and at home good. A lot of things are showroom good or store good. They look great in the package, they look great in the catalogue, you get them home, you actually use the thing and it’s not so good. So I try to look for things that are at home good.
28:10 – The more features it has the more in store good it is. The fewer features it has the better at home good it is.
28:55 – What am I actually going to be using this for? […] In product development there’s a limited amount of time and a limited amount of resources. If you spread yourself so thin over 29 features or 45 features in a product, you can be pretty sure that most of them are going to be pretty mediocre. […] Versus a product that does a couple of things well. They spend all their time on a couple of things. And these are the couple of things I want this thing to do. So whenever I’m looking at something and it does a lot my red flag goes up pretty quickly […]. So I guess that’s my technique, find the products that do the fewest number of things and go with those.
I was especially captivated by this. The notion that the more features a product has the more ‘in-store-good’ it is and the fewer features it has the better ‘at-home-good’. So simple and yet so true, much like ‘less, but better.’
Om Malik has also written about this here and here and I completely shared his feelings and concerns. I have two Sonos One’s at home which I bought years ago and I love. I was planning on buying a Beam last Christmas to add to my TV-viewing experience and decided not to because they come with in-built Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Like he says, it’s nigh on impossible to find a new device which doesn’t have some sort of embedded technology from the big tech companies. I was however encouraged when I read the last line about Sonos’ chief executive saying he’s aware of our desires. There’s hope.
Then Jason goes on to talk about his new book ‘It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work‘ focusing on the current obsession with growth, which he describes as America’s worst export, and fairness in the workplace.
49:10 – Why is it that an 8-hour flight feels long and you can’t wait for it to be over, yet an 8-hour work day feels like you’ve got nothing done? […] The problem is that at most offices and most workplaces, the environment is not fair to those 8 hours. So it sucks those hours away from you and chunks them up into ways that they can’t really be used efficiently. Unlike when you’re sitting in a plane and there’s not much to do so you can either watch a movie, read a book, you can do some work… but you’re not being interrupted. And that’s the value of eliminating interruptions, you realise how much time you actually have.
I’m always surprised at how productive I am on flights and how many ideas I have. I’ve thought of trying to replicate that environment to get the most out of my time.
My wife told me recently that when she gets into work she’s started leaving her phone to charge in the kitchen, away from her desk, and she doesn’t pick it up until the end of the day. She’s been amazed at how efficiently she’s using her time and how much she’s getting done now that she doesn’t have as many distractions.
I also thought it was very interesting that when he’s asked if he had to do something else for a living, what he thought it would be he replies “I’d probably be a gardener.” He doesn’t explain why but I think I understand his reasoning. I have never really done any gardening but as the years go by my interest in that field grows (no pun intended).
The last thing they ask in the early Hodinkee Radio episodes is a cultural recommendation and Jason’s reply is my favourite of all:
52:20 – I’m going to twist this one a bit if that’s OK. I think it’s really easy to go ‘you gotta do this, you gotta see this, you gotta hear that, you gotta check this out’. I wanted to say you don’t gotta do any of those things. […] In fact I think it’s kinda better sometimes just not to have anything that you have to do. I would say go take a walk and look up. Look up at buildings, look up at the sky. We’re all so focused on looking down at things these days that I think it’s just kinda of good to get outside and look up for a while.
What a perfect way to end. I’m sometimes surprised when I notice something in London which I haven’t paid attention to before even though I’ve passed by many times. I’ll try to remember this and look up more often rather than down at my phone.
My Excerpts 