Hey there—
I’m having a tough time writing this newsletter. No particular reason, but an opening isn’t coming to me as easily as it usually does. I’ve written and deleted 5 paragraphs in the last hour. I was starting to get frustrated, ready to set this whole task aside until tomorrow.
But sometimes writing through the frustration is a valuable exercise. Getting words down on paper, in the hopes that a direction will reveal itself. I write newsletters to share information with you, but also to share process. Offer a glimpse behind the scenes of our small company and how we make software. And sometimes process is messy and malleable. My writing process, to be sure! But even our own product development process at 37signals. We run into problems that need a fix in the course of building & maintaining our apps, and we consider different paths before landing on the one that leads us to the just-right solution.
At 37signals, we talk often internally about applying ‘judo’ in our process. Judo is the art of problem restatement. When our programmers and designers run into a bug or a feature that needs retooling, there are usually multiple ways to address the issue. One could involve hours and hours of potentially deeply repercussive work. Another might take only a few hours, using the tools and structure we already have in place. We much prefer the simpler approach. The end result tends to be as good an experience as if we took the more complex route.
The practice is efficient, but it’s also clever and fun. Like when it’s 7:00pm, you forgot to stop at the grocery store, and your kids are waiting for dinner. You judo the situation, raid your fridge, and get creative! The meal might end up being quite simple, using what you have on hand, but it’s just as nourishing as an elaborate dinner, and you didn’t spend an outsized amount of time or effort on the problem. Judo isn’t a last resort shortcut, but a skill that we celebrate at 37signals and encourage our employees to hone.
This newsletter edition is my attempt at judoing writer’s block! Are there problems that come up in your work where you can you step back, simplify what needs to be done, and take a fresh approach?
Some recent updates and news
New in HEY: Bubble Up Now
You’ve always been able to use the Bubble Up feature to schedule messages to float to the top of your Imbox. Now you can bubble up emails immediately so they sit at the top of your screen until you dismiss them. I use Bubble Up Now like a to-do list. Emails come in that I need to respond to, so I make sure they stay bubbled up to the top where I can see them & reply when I have time throughout my day.
Hotwire Native, Solid Queue, and Kamal 2.0 releases
At 37signals we make customer facing products, like Basecamp, HEY, and our ONCE line. But we also spend considerable time building open-source tools that improve how our own team develops & runs our apps. We recently celebrated 3 launches that not only help us, but also other developers in our industry. Hotwire Native, a web-first framework for building native mobile apps; Solid Queue 1.0, a DB-based queuing backend for Active Job; and Kamal 2.0, a deployment tool for running web apps directly on VMs or bare metal servers.
Basecamp Office Hours
Join Kimberly and Ashley of 37signals for a LIVE webinar on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at 11:00AM CT. They’ll be sharing best practices for adding and working with clients in Basecamp. Bring your questions and get them answered by a Basecamp expert in real time. Register here!
Talk to you next time!
Andrea, People Ops at 37signals