Daily Inspiration 2-18-12

"We're just as proud of what our products don't do

as we are of what they do. We design them to be

simple because we believe most software is too

complex: too many features, too many buttons,

too much confusion. So we build software

that is the opposite of that."

-- Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Let this be a commercial and a statement. I love these guys at 37 Signals.com. They are brilliant and they like to keep things simple. That's why I'm a raving fan and customer of their services.

I remember the very first computers to arrive at the business I worked at back in the late 1970's. So I've been around for the whole evolution of computers and software to make use of them. And, it seemed that every year the software programs got more and more features, became slower and slower to load and I ended up only using a small fraction of the available features. They seemed to think that bigger and more complicated was better, but I found it to be frustrating and counterproductive.

One example is a customer relation database I've been around for a long time called ACT. Every year there is they upgrade that is costly and makes it run slower and has more features that I will never use. I dumped it long ago for the reason that you had to take a college course just to make good use of it--or at least, that's the way I felt.

Then a few years ago we stumbled across 37 Signals.com and have now been happy customers for many years. They have a monthly service at a low cost instead of buying the software and it is all "in the cloud."

As good as this all is for me, I love the book they published even more and have given away several copies of it. It is called REWORK. It flows with their same philosophy of keeping things simple and they relate that to growing and running a business. Each chapter is barely 1-2 pages long, but concise and full of wisdom. I highly recommend it for any business owner at any level, any manager at any level and it has something for pretty much anyone.

Hooray for a bright spot in this ever more complicated world. Keeping it simple is right up my alley!

Keep It Simple So It Gets Used!

Spread Some Joy Today--the simplicity of a thank you note is ever powerful.