I came across this episode of The Knowledge Project the other day, and I instantly downloaded this episode with Jason Fried.

The more I read and listen to interviews with Jason and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, the more I want to model JMG after them.

Some takeaways from this episode:

• The businesses Jason admires are not big name ones that everyone has heard of (except for Stripe). He admires businesses who have been around for 5+ years, such as his local grocer.
• The expectation of himself is to do the right thing day after day. That’s an admirable goal, and one that makes more sense to me than straight up making billions of dollars.
• He said he tries to understand what “enough” is. That really is what owning a business should be about, right? If we have enough, then anything beyond that is greed, no?
• He spoke about how, at one point, Basecamp set numbers and metrics and then aimed to hit them. Ultimately, that led them to doing things that “weren’t them”, such as giving money to Facebook for ads. If your company is profitable and making you and your customers happy (again, returning to the “enough” point made above), why do we set pointless goals for ourselves? Can’t we find satisfaction in something more tangible (like how something feels) as opposed to hitting a made up number?

I would love JMG to be as “successful” of a company as Basecamp in every sense of the word. As our company grows and continues to find success, I am proud of our ability to stay true to our roots and build a business that does things the right way.

Jason Fried is always a fascinating and insightful person to listen to, and this interview is no exception. He has a lot to say about how awful work can be (but doesn't have to). I'm definitely going to read his new book as a result of listening to this podcast.

However, what really got me thinking after hearing this podcast was the way that Jason uses his strong, personal convictions to run his software company, willfully eschewing the conventional wisdom that comes out of Silicon Valley.

I've long held the opinion that raising large amounts of money confuses me. I've always thought it was because I didn't truly understand how investing and finance works, or maybe it was because I bootstrapped all of my businesses and wasn't aware of a different way.

But after listening to the way Jason justifies the decisions he makes with his company (not having a bunch of benefits that keep people at work, paying for people to go on vacation, etc.), it made me smile and think about some of the decisions we've made at the JMG, and how the vision of the company I want to run does not need to fit the mold of the typical software company.

When running a company, it's crucial that you listen to your own gut and to skate to where you think the puck will be.

After all, isn't that what entrepreneurship is all about?

A lot of the articles and videos I've come across lately are about being productive at work and how to really get work done.

I read an article by Michael "Rands" Lopp about setting aside one hour a day to just sit in silence and create something.

It meshed up very well with this video by Jason Fried, who hypothesizes that work operates in cycles, much like sleep.

In order to achieve "a good night's sleep," you have to go through several stages of sleep. If you're interrupted, you have to start back at the beginning.

So it is with work.

God knows I'm guilty of spending 12 minutes on a project, only to hop over to Facebook and see that, once again, nothing has changed.

I'm going to issue myself a personal challenge. I want to see if, for the next week, I can spend 30 minutes a day with my cell phone turned off, my email client closed, and my social media sites logged out.

For 30 minutes, I will do nothing but edit or program. I will ignore all others (sorry Shannon) and fully immerse myself in a given task.

I'm sure there's no such thing as a "paleo diet" for working, but I bet this is a good first step in that direction.