SEASON 2 - EPISODE 135 - DECEMBER 11, 2024

The End of Year Junk Drawer

As the year winds down, 37signals’ co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson join host Kimberly Rhodes to talk about the company’s end-of-year routine. They explain their process for the last few weeks of the year that aren’t part of a formal six-week cycle, and they share what they gain from this transitional period of “wandering.”

Watch the full video episode on YouTube

Key Takeaways

00:43 - The informal end of year process
05:24 - Self-directed work, bug fixes, and tying up loose ends
08:22 - Using the downtime for forward thinking and planning
12:43 - Viewing the year end as a shift to the next chapter rather than a fresh start

Links & Resources

Transcript

Kimberly (00:00): Welcome to Rework, a podcast by 37signals about the better way to work and run your business. I’m your host, Kimberly Rhodes, joined as always by the co-founders of 37 Signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. You probably have heard us talk about our work in six-week cycles. Here at 37signals we typically follow six week cycle followed by a two week cool down and have six cycles a year. If you do the math on that, that’s not a full 52 weeks. So this time I thought we would talk a little bit about that extra time in the year. We’re here in December, rolling things out for the rest of the year. What does that time look like when we’re not in a specific cycle? So Jason, kind of tell me what that looks like when we’re in this limbo of the last few weeks of the year.

Jason (00:43): It’s kind of like an unplanned, coordinated mess, which is sort of nice. You have just spare time. We consider it like a drunk drawer, basically. There’s just stuff that piles up that it could be a little pet project or could be some stuff you saw during the year that you want to fix, but never had time. Historically, we’ve done kinda a bug smash, just all the programmers pile on and sort of knock down the list of bugs that have been bugging people. Or support might make a top three list or something and we work through some things like that. So it’s just sort of unstructured time to just clean up a little bit, prune the trees and just sort of tighten everything up and so we can hit the first of the year running basically the first quarter of the year is kind of our busiest year. Our products tend to do the best early in the year because a lot of our stuff is aspirational. People are like, okay, I’m going to get my shit together this year with Basecamp. January is the time to do that, and so we just want to make sure we’re starting the next cycle clean in January. So the end of the year is just sort of a time to deal with all the loose ends basically. Time up.

Kimberly (01:40): David, is that the same on the ops side as well?

David (01:43): I think what’s nice about this year is we also have the opportunity to actually live that because last year we were in a very different situation. We were wrapping up the new HEY calendar and we were wrapping up the ONCE Campfire product and both of those things were essentially wrapping with the intention that we were going to launch ‘em right at the beginning of the year, as Jason said. We wanted the calendar to be out when everyone had their New Year’s resolutions and wanted to really get their shit together. And that required essentially all of the work to be done by, I think we picked December 22nd because we did not want people to have to worry about all this work between holidays and therefore it was a bit of a crunch. It wasn’t like it had been in previous years where it was more of a relaxed time, more of a junk drawer, more of you just figured out, at least for the teams that were working on those two things.

(02:38): And that was most of them. The HEY calendar had pulled in most of folks working on the product and then we had another team working on ONCE Campfire. So this year I think is a little bit more true to form yet also at the same time, we do have a couple of new products in the pipeline but they’re not at the stage where they’re just about to launch. So it’s a little easier to find that relaxed rhythm. And I also think there’s some seasonality to this. December feels like that kind of month because you just know first of all, the last week plus of the month is already out. That’s the holidays. There’s a natural slowdown. There’s a reason why people who sell enterprise software for example, never try to close any deals in December or try to close them in November because they know December is a bad time for folks to make decisions because they’re kind of sort of already, I don’t know if checked out is the right word, but in a different pace.

(03:33): And one of the things I’ve always liked about our summer hours where we work four day weeks instead of five day weeks is that sense that the whole year is not just the same cadence. It’s not just the same rhythm for 52 weeks in and out. It’s nice to break it up a little. It’s nice to get the sense that at least in the northern hemisphere, alright, December is a little colder, it’s a little darker, the days are a little shorter and work also feels a little different just as it is with the summertime. So I think that alone is reason to keep it as is. It also just doesn’t work really any other way. I think the year is the natural structuring mega cycle. So if you had a cycle that kind of bled halfway into a new year, that was just going to be a mess.

(04:21): You don’t want to start the new year with a bunch of stuff left over and I think this is, if anything, the primary argument for keeping the end of the year like this, let’s start fresh. January, we start fresh, you cleaned off your plate, all the stuff you’ve just been lingering on there, get it off, get it off. Let’s start clean on January 1st, so preparation for the new year. I think, there’s a little bit of ceremony in it and I think, do you know what, an earlier me would’ve said like that’s silly, that’s inefficient, that could be optimized. And then maybe you get a lull and you just realize, do you know what, it’s fine. And not only is it fine, it’s better. It’s better to have just that little bit of give. I think this relates to the conversation we had a couple of podcasts ago about how much leanness we have, how much body fat we have, and I think, do you know what December, good month to add a little body fat, indulge a little bit in a little bit more lax, not everything followed up this week. What’s going on? What’s shipping, what’s out?

Kimberly (05:24): Okay, so as far as the bug fixes, things that are in the junk drawer that we’re going to catch up on in December, who’s deciding that? Is it designers, programmers picking their own projects? Jason, are you making a list of things that you want to see tightened up? Where do those ideas or projects come from?

Jason (05:41): I might mention a few things to a few people that I’ve seen along the way and just like, hey, we should tighten this up, or I don’t like how this looks or whatever. But mostly it’s self directed unless there’s some obvious thing that a few people need to swarm on together perhaps that might be, something that would be lined up a little bit higher up. There’s also just a weekly designer meeting and we kind hang and there’s some talk sometimes, you know we should kind of touch on these things. We’ve got a few weeks here, anyone want to take on that and take on this and that sort of thing. That’s kind of how it happens mostly on the design / product side for the most part. Also, we’re launching a new website for Basecamp soon here, and so there’s probably just some fallout from that that we’re going to want to have someone around to kind of play with some stuff and tweak some things as we go.

(06:25): We’re going to realize, oh, we forgot that or this wasn’t as clear as we thought or there’s some questions about this. So I kind of have a sense that that kind of work’s going to happen too, but that can’t be planned ahead of time. That’s just when you hit reality, that just shows up. So I think the key is not to have a lot of planning and not to have a lot of dedicated, specific things lined up because then you’re kind of back to what’s normal work, which is like things are lined up to do. This is more about just space and free time essentially. It’s not free time, but it is in a sense. I guess internal freelancing maybe is a better way to think about it. But yeah, it’s more organic I would say.

David (07:00): Informal is another word I’d use for this versus our normal cycle process. It’s quite formal. We have just the six weeks and then there’s the two weeks of cool down / overtime and then we have a planning process where we pick the next things for the next cycle and they’re kind of lined up for at least six weeks in advance. And December just doesn’t have that quality to it. It has that informal, that loose quality to it that it doesn’t need to be all buttoned up. It doesn’t all need to be tight, it doesn’t need to have very explicit appetites and so forth. Which also does mean that the kind of work we tackle generally is not extremely ambitious. It’s not going to involve a lot of moving parts that need to be coordinated and lined up when you do need things to be rather tight. You do need some proper tolerances when you’re trying to get three gears to mesh cleanly together. But when you have people just freewheeling it, free spinning, you know what, it’s fine. It doesn’t need the coordination for it. And that is part of the contrast, which I really think more than anything what this is about and what the benefit is to provide some degree of contrast to a regular highly planned scheduled cycle system that delivers the productivity we want for most of the year. And you know what, just a little bit of a mañana amigo.

Kimberly (08:22): I think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask you guys anyway. Tell me about the two of you, the end of the year planning. Are you sitting down and wrapping up the year and reflecting and planning for January? Is that what December looks like for you or is it something completely different?

Jason (08:40): Well, we usually spend all year on the beach doing nothing. So the end of the year is when we really get serious.

Kimberly (08:44): Delightful.

Jason (08:45): No, I mean not everyone’s around. There’s vacations. It’s equally light I would say. But for me, I tend to get a little bit more focused this time of the year because there’s not as much going on that’s structured. So for example, David, and I’ve been talking about digging into a book for a while, a new book, and I have a feeling I’m going to be writing some more in December. There’s some other ideas I’ve been kind of toying with that I want to explore a little bit more. And so I think that there’s just that space, which is just good. It’s a good reminder that actually having some space is a good thing to sort of find the things that draw you in and that pull you in and let your interests kinda run a little bit. But I would say it’s also equally informal and then just being available for whatever comes up and sort of how my time works.

David (09:31): I think it’s very similar for me. It’s a time of wandering where I’m sort of just hopping around trying to figure out what do I want to dig my teeth in next? As Jason says, the book, the next book. That’s one of those ideas. In fact, just today I was jotting down the little paragraphs here, just trying out some language, shooting some tracer bullets as we like to say, with the product development. I’ve been doing that with some AI inquiries, just wanting to get up to speed, what is the latest in this? How might AI be used in our products in a way that doesn’t feel gimmicky or bullshitty yet still recognize that this is a major shift and you don’t want to sleep on it forever. So I’ve been exploring that, trying to just learn, get up to speed, and it’s kind of been the same pattern I’ve had for a couple of years.

(10:20): I think it was last year or the year before that I dug into Docker, the containerization technology that ended up being used for our cloud exit. Creating Kamal. That started as sort of a Christmasy December project. Several years ago I did the design for Stimulus, the JavaScript framework that we did. I did that actually over Christmas. Again, just trying to, I’m wandering around, sometimes I’ll open up one of the code bases and I won’t have a specific mission in mind. I’ll just go sniffing around. What kind of doesn’t feel right? Where is there something that I might get some ideas for, something bigger that we can then tackle in the beginning of the next year? And I think it’s sometimes hard to find the space, the mindset, actually courage to just do nothing while you’re doing something. It’s a weird duality where on the one hand I’m sitting down and I actually had this at both the beginning of last week and this week I’m sitting down, what are you going to work on this week?

(11:27): We have this question on Monday of every week. And I was thinking, do you know what? I have some loose tracer ideas of what I want to, I can’t write it down. It’s not tight. It doesn’t present well as a paragraph to this question, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. And when I think back of so many of the big moves, especially on the tech side that we’ve done, so many of them have come out of this wandering where it did not set out, I want to get over here. I was just like, no, lemme just walk through the forest of technology. What I often do is I’ll actually go to a couple of publishers, write books, and I’ll just browse. It’s actually sort of picking out a gift. It’s not necessarily that I have like, oh, it’s got to be this gift. It’s going to the store. And then just looking around. What’s inspiring, what’s something to pick up? And I love that with technology because there’s always something, like AI is an obvious thing and we have a ton of other ideas we want to go to. But sometimes finding exactly how can we use in which way requires some of that wandering, requires some of that lack of direction and just being in that mode for not just like a day or two days, but for two weeks or three weeks or the month of December.

Kimberly (12:43): Okay, last question for you guys. Are you the type of folks I know that I am, who is a fresh year, like start fresh, clean the slates, new goals, fresh start, rip the bandaid off? Is that how you’re looking at December of closing out the year before getting pumped up for a new one?

Jason (13:02): I’m not that way. I just see time as it just rolls. The fact that the calendar changes, it’s a technicality in a sense, but I feel like we are going to change some things. So for example, we’ve been exploring some new products. We’ve been in R&D mode with those products. We’re basically going to flip into production mode, like starting next cycle, which is going to begin early January. So there’s a mental expectation and preparation of like we’re going to change into a different mode, which is a little bit more hands-on and making the things and moving on and applying some pressure and some push into things in a way that we haven’t over the past few months because it’s been more exploratory. So I’m aware that that’s coming, but I’m not like a new year’s resolution or fresh start kind of person. Every time I’ve done that, I’ve not lived up to my own expectations, so I just don’t do it anymore.

Kimberly (13:55): I love a fresh start.

Jason (13:57): Every day is a fresh start.

Kimberly (13:59): Exactly every Monday!

David (14:02): Well, not every Monday of mine, I’ll tell you that a lot of Mondays of mine are filled or start with a plate that have half eaten ideas and half finished projects on it. And what I do find actually is that mode of wandering I was just talking about, I can’t do that if there’s still stuff on the plate. And what I find, once I started being more intentional about the wandering, was there was a great driver for cleaning up. The way I clean up usually is, or the way I make a mess is actually in HEY. I’ll use my Set Aside and I’ll let the Set Aside accumulate. And all of a sudden there’s freaking 40 emails in there. Then I’ll let my Reply Later accumulate. Sometimes there’s 150 emails in there and while that stuff is sitting there along with whatever other half-finished projects, things I haven’t shipped yet, I can’t wander. I can’t leave the mess behind and forget about it and start thinking clean, new, expansive thoughts.

(15:05): That stuff has to get off the plate. So that’s one of the reasons why I try hard when I go into December and I have been trying hard actually for the past few weeks to just get it all off. Close it all out. And the impetus for that is so interesting. My Set Aside is almost like a decomposing box for perhaps halfway guilt about owing someone a more extravagant or complicated or substantial answer when sometimes I let it marinate. Like that email, I wanted to give a really substantial answer three weeks ago. If I let it marinate for three weeks, I’m ready to give a two line answer. And that’s how I actually end up clearing out the Set Aside that it has to marinate for a bit such that I don’t feel bad about not writing a novel back to someone who might have put a lot of thought into what they wrote me.

(15:55): And I’m very grateful for that. And I read it and it’s percolating so forth, but I can’t write a novel back to 42 people plus 150 in the Reply Later. So getting all that stuff off is my preparation for the wandering, just cleaning it off and getting things off your plate I think is a good pattern to go into. It’s not that it all has to happen instantly. Before HEY, when I was using Gmail, I was an addicted inbox zero person. I thought that the way to keep things clean was to instantly deal with everything the second it came in. And I feel very proud, oh, I received so many emails yet I still have inbox zero. Isn’t that amazing? No, it’s stupid. It’s absolutely stupid. I’m letting my day get punctured, perforated by all these individual emails that I write someone back to immediately and then I end up writing too much because I don’t let it marinate. And then I think I need to do this long answer when in fact, if I just let it sit for three weeks, I would’ve been content with two lines. And I think that part of HEY is probably my favorite thing. That’s probably the thing that’s changed the most about how I use email after we have HEY. And it really works very well with this time of year that like, all right, the marination is over. December is about to begin. Write some one sentence replies, please.

Jason (17:15): I find myself doing the same thing. One of the things I’m glad we don’t have in HEY, we don’t have counts anywhere, which is actually an intentional design decision. We only have counts on threads where you can see how many emails are in a particular thread because something sort of useful about, oh, this is a long thread. There’s a lot here. But in my Reply Later I have, let’s just say quite a few emails and it makes me want to add a new feature, which is like, basically a button to delete anything that’s older than two weeks. If I haven’t gotten back to it, someone in two weeks, I’m probably not going to. This is where feature ideas come. But yeah, I have quite a few too many emails in my Reply Later. I definitely need to get back to some people. So I’ll do that as well.

Kimberly (17:50): You should Power Through New before the end of the year.

Jason (17:52): Well, this is in my Reply Later stack, so I have to power through that one, which is actually kind of already in that mode. So that’s kind of nice.

Kimberly (18:00): Okay. Well thanks for sticking with us for all these episodes in 2024. We’ll be back next week with one more new episode, then wrapping up the year with a couple of throwback episodes from the Rework Archives. Until then, REWORK is a production of 37signals. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website at 37 signals.com/podcast. Full video episodes are on YouTube, and if you have a question for Jason or David about a better way to work and run your business, leave us a voicemail at 7 0 8 6 2 8 7 8 5 0. You can text that number or email us at rework@37signals.com.