In Rework, each chapter is broken up into several one- to two-page sections. That makes for an incredibly easy and fast read, but made it pretty difficult to summarize concisely because they cover SO much material (hence you get a pretty comprehensive summary of the book in this post)! You never get too much of the same topic, but it can sometimes leave you wanting substance or real-life examples for context. The bite-size pieces can feel repetitive or contradictory at times. While every business professional will find value in some of the themes of the book (e.g. ask questions, get started now, etc.), entrepreneurs, business owners, or high-level management are going to have takeaways from every chapter.

Intro

“You’ll learn how to begin, why you need less than you think, when to launch, how to get the word out, who and when to hire, and how to keep it all under control.”

Chapter: Takedowns

• Ignore the real-world: We constantly hear phrases like, “That would never work in the real-world.” If that’s the case, “the real-world sounds like an awfully depressing place to live… The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying.”
• Learning from mistakes is overrated: “Other people’s failures are just that: other people’s failures.” Even learning from our own mistakes is overrated. “You might learn what not to do again, but how valuable is that?” There are infinite ways to do something wrong. “When something succeeds, you know what worked -- and you can do it again.”
• Planning is guessing: “You have to be able to improvise.” Plans need to be able to change. What we planned for years ago, months ago, or even weeks ago might no longer make sense.
• Why grow?: While small businesses dream of being bigger, big businesses wish they could be more agile and flexible. Growing takes all of that flexibility and agility away.
• Workaholism: “Workaholics make the people who don’t stay late feel inadequate for MERELY working reasonable hours…but the real hero is already home because they figured out a faster way to get things done.”

Chapter: Go

• Make a dent in the universe: “You want your customers to say, ‘This makes my life better.’ If you’re going to do something, do something that matters.”
• Scratch your own itch: When you’re solving your own problem, you get to fall in love with your product and it keeps you close to why your product exists.
• Start making something: Just start - ideas are everywhere. The original idea is such a small part of the product. It all comes down to how you execute it.
• No time is no excuse: “The perfect time never arrives.” You can make the time for something if you want it bad enough. Just get started and you’ll be able to learn if your excitement is real and if it’s something you really want to invest your time in.
• Draw a line in the sand: “We’re as proud of what our products don’t do as we are of what they do.”
• You need less than you think: Start small. You might find, “eventually you’ll need to go the bigger, more expensive route, but not right now.”
• Building to flip is building to flop: Don’t start something with an exit plan. That puts you in a box and will prevent you from investing your time into building something that’s actually worthwhile.
• Less mass: Stay small and you can be quick to change. Big businesses dream for that kind of agility and flexibility, and the more mass you have (employees, contracts, meetings, policies, etc.) the harder it is to pivot, even on the simplest things.

Chapter: Progress

• Embrace constraints: “Constraints are advantages in disguise.” If you’re creative, you’ll be amazed at how you can solve problems with just a little focus. You likely won’t need to invest a ton.
• Build half a product, not a half-assed product: “You can turn a bunch of great ideas into a crappy product real fast by trying to do them all at once…. It’s hard enough to do one thing right. You can always add more later.”
• Start at the epicenter: “There’s the stuff you could do, the stuff you want to do, and the stuff you have to do. The stuff you have to do is where you should begin.” Once you find that, make it the best it can be. Everything you do is built on that foundation.
• Ignore the details early on: You can’t usually tell which details matter most until after you start, so stop sweating those small details. You’ll waste time on making decisions that you’ll end up changing anyway.
• Making the call is making progress: Decisions that need to be made pile up and “piles end up ignored… Long projects zap morale… Make the call, make progress, and get something out now… Whenever you can, swap a ‘let’s think about it’ for ‘let’s decide on it.’” No matter what you decide, you don’t have to live with it forever.
• Be a curator: Whenever possible, take work out. “What makes a museum great is the stuff that’s not on the walls… Be a curator… make conscious decisions about what should stay and what should go.”
• Focus on what won’t change: Focus on “timeless desires” – reliability, affordability, practicality, speed, simplicity, ease of use, etc. These are attributes that customers will always want. “Fashion fades away” and makes you chase a moving target - permanent features never go out of style.
• Tone is in your fingers: An analogy from guitar playing is that you can buy the same equipment as the pro’s, but you’ll never sound like Eddie Van Halen. “It’s temping for people to obsess over tools instead of what they’re going to do with those tools.” People like to use equipment as a shortcut. You definitely don’t need the best equipment to get started, it’s the content that matters. “You can spend tons on fancy equipment, but if you’ve got nothing to say, you’ve got nothing to say.”
• Launch now: Your product could probably be launched a lot sooner than you think. Instead of trying to perfect it, “once your product does what it needs to do, get it out there…You still want to make something great…but the best way to get there is through iterations.”

Chapter: Productivity

• Illusions of agreement: Reports, diagrams, charts, specs… “These things take forever to make but only seconds to forget… Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction.” They create the perception that people are aligned, but people can interpret the same chart or the same words a hundred different ways.
• Reasons to quit: “It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you think needs done. It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why… Why are you doing this? What problem are you solving? Is this actually useful? Are you adding value? Is there an easier way? What can’t you do because you’re doing this?” * Realize your sunk costs and stop throwing good time after bad.
• Interruption is the enemy of productivity: Think about when you get the most work done. It’s usually in the early morning or late afternoon, when other people are still ramping up or ramping down and leaving you alone.. That’s not a coincidence. Find a way to get in the “alone zone,” long stretches of time where you can truly focus and be productive. Without it, your day is full of a bunch of tiny 15-minute work moments, where you get nothing actually done.
• Meetings are toxic: Meetings are the ultimate interruption and are hugely expensive. There are few things worth the amount of time that meetings take up due their sheer human hours consumed. If you must have a meeting, “set a timer, invite as few people as possible, have a clear agenda, begin with a specific problem and meet at the site of that problem so that you can point to real things and suggest real changes, and end with a solution that someone is assigned responsibility to.” Keep in mind that you definitely don’t need a full 30 or 60 minutes.
• Good enough is fine: Make your solution as simple as possible, a solution that “delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort.” That can be tough, because it can be addictive to show off your intellectual problem-solving prowess. However, the simple solution is typically going to be the quickest. “You can usually turn good enough into great later” if it’s necessary, and you probably won’t KNOW that it’s necessary until later.
• Quick wins: “Momentum fuels motivation…To keep your momentum and motivation up, get in the habit of accomplishing small victories along the way… Small victories let you celebrate and release good news.”
• Don’t be a hero: Don’t be afraid to bring in other people to help. “Sometimes an obvious solution is staring you right in the face, but you can’t even see it.” That’s why we need others.
• Go to sleep: The cost of not getting enough sleep is increased stubbornness, lack of creativity, diminished morale, irritability, etc. Don’t wear sleep deprivation as a badge of honor and don’t be impressed by those people that do.
• Your estimates suck: “We’re all terrible estimators…We really have no idea. We see everything going according to a best-case scenario…Reality never sticks to best-case scenarios.” Estimates are especially bad when they are long-term. We need to break them down into bite-sized chunks whenever possible. “If we can’t be accurate when estimating a few hours, how can we expect to accurately predict the length of a six-month project?”
• Long lists don’t get done: “Don’t prioritize with numbers or labels.” If you do, you’ll end up with a bunch of high-priority items. Instead, put your most important items at the top of the list and work your way down.

Chapter: Competitors

• Don’t copy: “If you’re a copycat, you can never keep up… You have to understand why something works or why something is the way it is.”
• Decommoditize your product: Put YOU into your product. Nobody can copy you.
• Pick a fight: Choose a side. “Taking a stand always stands out”
• Underdo your competition: “Don’t shy away from the fact that your product or service does less. Highlight it.” Most of your customers want your product to do less; just make sure that what they do, they do incredibly well.
• Who cares what they’re doing?: The competitive landscape is a moving target. It’s impossible to innovate if you’re focused on what your competition is doing. “If you’re just going to be like everyone else, why are you even doing this?”

Chapter: Evolution

• Say no by default: If you fail to say no, you’ll end up dragging things out, making them overly complicated, and working on the wrong things. “Making a few vocal customers happy isn’t worth it if it ruins the product for everyone else… Your goal is to make sure your product stays right for you.”
• Let your customers outgrow you: Customers change. Situations change. “You can’t be everything to everyone.” If you try to grow your product alongside the growth of your customers, you’ll end up scaring off new ones. “Your product or service becomes so tailored to your current customers that it stops appealing to fresh blood… We’d rather our customers grow out of our products eventually than never be able to grow into them in the first place. Adding power-user features to satisfy some can intimidate those who aren’t on board yet.”
• Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priority: “Coming up with a great idea gives you a rush.” Before you dive into it, let the enthusiasm wear off for a bit. “Write them down and park them for a few days. Then, evaluate their actual priority with a calm mind.”
• Be at-home good: Sometimes things look a lot better in the store than when you bring them home. They just don’t meet our expectations. We’d rather be great at a few things than be mediocre at many and have flashy packaging without any real substance.

Chapter: Promotion

• Welcome obscurity: “Being obscure is a great position to be in.” Use the time before anyone knows who you are to make mistakes without the world noticing. “These early days of obscurity are something you’ll miss later on, when you’re really under the microscope.”
• Build an audience: “Share information that’s valuable and you’ll slowly but surely build a loyal audience.” It can be teaching, training, or simply being interesting. Then, “when you need to get the word out, the right people will already be listening.”
• Go behind the scenes: “Letting people behind the curtain changes your relationship with them.” It helps them to see you as a human being that’s not perfect. “They’ll develop a deeper level of understanding and appreciation for what you do.”
• Press releases are spam: The best type of coverage is created by being great - standing out, being remarkable, and doing something meaningful.
• Marketing is not a department: Every customer transaction, interaction, and perception is marketing. “It’s the sum total of everything you do.” Win over your customer with every action you take.

Chapter: Hiring

• Do it yourself first: “Never hire anyone to do a job until you’ve tried to do it yourself first.” It’ll help you be intimate with all aspects of your business. You’ll know how to fulfill the position and you’ll be able to recognize good work.
• Hire when it hurts: “Don’t hire for pleasure; hire to kill pain.” Ask yourself, “what if we just don’t do it?” If someone leaves, “see how long you can get by without that person and that position.”
• Pass on great people: Don’t hire someone just because they’re supposedly great - hire them because you have work.
• Strangers at a cocktail party: Be slow to hire - it’s the only way to build relationships where people aren’t afraid to challenge each other. “You need to be able to tell people when they’re full of crap. If that doesn’t happen, you start churning out something that doesn’t offend anyone but also that doesn’t make anyone fall in love.”
• Resumes are ridiculous: They don’t really tell you anything about how a person works. Pay more attention to the cover letter. You see how the person writes, how they can fit into your company, and if they are truly interested in you.
• Years of irrelevance: “There’s surprisingly little difference between a candidate with six months of experience and one with six years. The real difference comes from the individual’s dedication, personality, and intelligence.”
• Hire managers of one: Hire people that do what managers do. They “set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc.” Those people free up the rest of your team to do more work and they will “surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done.”
• Hire great writers: “Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate.”

Chapter: Damage Control

• Own your bad news: If something goes wrong, you know the story will be told. You’re better off controlling the narrative yourself. “Apologize the way a real person would and explain what happened in detail.” If you’re genuine, your customers will pick up on it and respond with understanding.
• Speed changes everything: “Getting back to people quickly is probably the most important thing you can do when it comes to customer service.” If you act with urgency, your customers will notice and appreciate you for it.
• How to say you’re sorry: Own it and DO NOT include a conditional “if” or “any inconvenience” qualifier into it.
• Put everyone on the front lines: Have everyone interact directly with your customers. It’ll allow you to put yourself in your teammates’ shoes and understand the day-to-day struggles each role has.
• Take a breath: Don’t be too fast to reverse a change. “People often respond before they give change a fair chance… Negative reactions are almost always louder and more passionate than positive ones.”

Chapter: Culture

• You don’t create culture: It just happens. “Culture is the by-product of consistent behavior… Culture is action, not words.”
• Decisions are temporary: “Don’t make up problems you don’t have yet… Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway.” Don’t fall victim to the idea that what you decide now needs to work for years. “Getting a product or service off the ground is hard enough without inventing even more obstacles. Optimize for now and worry about the future later.”
• They’re not thirteen: Don’t treat your employees like they’re children. Trust them. “When everything constantly needs approval, you create a culture of nonthinkers.
• Send people home at 5: “You don’t need more hours; you need better hours.”
• Don’t’ scar on the first cut: Don’t create a policy just because something happened once. Don’t put that weight on every person just because someone made a mistake that one time.
• Four-letter words: Avoid using words like need, can’t, easy, and fast - they undermine the work being requested. If it’s so easy, do it yourself. “Notice how rarely people describe their own tasks as easy.”

Conclusion:

Inspiration is perishable: “If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now… Later you won’t be pumped about it anymore… Inspiration is a productivity multiplier… If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.”