7 ms·

A month is fifteen weekends

35 points by DanielRibeiro 16y ago

wccrawford 16y ago
I'm still a little shaky on the '15 weekends' thing... I guess they're saying you could try this process every other day and rest every other day and really pump out some interesting stuff? I think you'd burn out awful fast. At any rate, it's a good lesson about how fast things -can- be done when you're dedicated to getting it down, versus the usual slow process that people take for granted.
- Stuk 16y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. Sure you can work incredibly hard for 2/3 days, but at the end of it all you are going to be very tired. I don't think it would be physically possible to do this for a whole month. I really would love to try something like this though.
- eries 16y ago
  My belief is that the reason teams were so productive was not that they worked insane hours (although some did), it was that they were laser-focused on doing work that really matters.
- dwc 16y ago
  I agree with you. There's only so long that you can operate at that level. However, the main point of how much can be done when truly focused is not lost. What if you did two days each week like this? I think that's sustainable, and you could get '4 weekends' in each month.
- samd 16y ago
  I recently did a Startup Weekend and coded basically non-stop for a couple days. Afterwards I felt great, like my skills were being used to their fullest; and I had created something significant. It wasn't until days later that burn-out set it; but I wasn't burned-out from working all weekend, I was burned-out from my day job. How little real, valuable work I did at my day job compared to what I did during the weekend made me feel worthless and insignificant. Paul Graham has talked about how heavy a work-load starting a startup is, and how much founders enjoy it compared to life at a big company in spite of it. I was skeptical at first, and thought that you had to be some super-human workaholic to handle it, but it turns out creating value is really enjoyable and fulfilling. It's a different kind of work, a kind that invigorates you rather than drains you.
  - thesz 16y ago
    I once read in Russian LJ that the main block for productivity is an alienation of work. The more work is alienated, the little there is incentive to do it, the bigger is productivity drain. Because Marx primarily thought about work efficiency, the ultimate society is communism. Communism is where no work gets alienated. Every work result is owned by producer (or creator), but he is willing to share it to the world as it is norm there, in communist utopia. So the productivity is as high as it could get. For me, startup culture is about reducing that alienation. I am not an expert, it's just a thought I want to share. ;)
- Periodic 16y ago
  I don't think the lesson has anything to do with how hard you work. I think the lesson is that you can build and validate an idea in 2-3 days. We often have ideas for products and think to ourselves that we'll just add a few more features or fix a few more bugs, then maybe put it on the market and see what happens and all of this takes weeks or months. In large corporations this can take years. The idea here is to state an assumption about your product, figure a way to test your assumption and do that in 2-3 days. There are 15 of these "weekends" in a month. You could be pivoting 15 times in one month, and if you have to pivot that often, at least you're only investing a few days instead of a few weeks into the setup. It's all about building a lean startup and the mentality you need to have. This article is not actually working 30 days a month as if you were on a 48-hour hackathon clock.
hongquan 16y ago
I think this could be a revolutionary way to think about how 'work' is done in a startup. Short sprints of 2 days with time in between to recharge could work well for some. The time constraint forces you to focus and changes your mindset about what is possible. Maybe not 15 weekends, but a month could be composed of 10-12 solid 'weekend' sessions. To me it would be more about energy-management than time-management.
- Periodic 16y ago
  I agree that it's definitely not about doing 2-day coding binges 30 days per month. February would be tough, for one. In my mind it's about mindset management. It's about not letting that the validation of your idea be pushed off until you've added "just one more feature," and instead about learning to rapidly iterate on the hypothesize, test, validate cycle.
ironchef 16y ago
Sure...and how many people want to actually use minimally viable products most of the time? It would seem to be that some of the reasons the startups can be so nimble in a weekend: 1) lack of technical debt 2) lack of integration to the rest of the process (big builds, QA, communications to the support staff, etc.) That's why it's interesting when bigger companies give people a couple days to tinker and scratch their itches. Once can see the potential of things they built and can then take the time to integrate them properly, etc.
zipdog 16y ago
The big advantage I see from a weekend of coding is that (using the Funnel idea of work processes) you really move down the funnel very quickly to focus on a clear result (and then if it doesn't work, move back up the funnel until you see a better focus, or start a new funnel). It would be a lot harder to pull that off fifteen times in a row (but the results would be great if you could)
MrFlibble 16y ago
In the film industry we would often say, "Cheaper, Faster, Better... Pick Two." Using a rifle shot vs. shotgun approach can be a great thing provided of course that the rifle is aimed at a viable target.

35 points by DanielRibeiro 16y ago

I'm still a little shaky on the '15 weekends' thing... I guess they're saying you could try this process every other day and rest every other day and really pump out some interesting stuff? I think you'd burn out awful fast. At any rate, it's a good lesson about how fast things -can- be done when you're dedicated to getting it down, versus the usual slow process that people take for granted.

Stuk 16y ago
Exactly what I was thinking. Sure you can work incredibly hard for 2/3 days, but at the end of it all you are going to be very tired. I don't think it would be physically possible to do this for a whole month. I really would love to try something like this though.
eries 16y ago
My belief is that the reason teams were so productive was not that they worked insane hours (although some did), it was that they were laser-focused on doing work that really matters.
dwc 16y ago
I agree with you. There's only so long that you can operate at that level. However, the main point of how much can be done when truly focused is not lost. What if you did two days each week like this? I think that's sustainable, and you could get '4 weekends' in each month.
samd 16y ago
I recently did a Startup Weekend and coded basically non-stop for a couple days. Afterwards I felt great, like my skills were being used to their fullest; and I had created something significant. It wasn't until days later that burn-out set it; but I wasn't burned-out from working all weekend, I was burned-out from my day job. How little real, valuable work I did at my day job compared to what I did during the weekend made me feel worthless and insignificant. Paul Graham has talked about how heavy a work-load starting a startup is, and how much founders enjoy it compared to life at a big company in spite of it. I was skeptical at first, and thought that you had to be some super-human workaholic to handle it, but it turns out creating value is really enjoyable and fulfilling. It's a different kind of work, a kind that invigorates you rather than drains you.
- thesz 16y ago
  I once read in Russian LJ that the main block for productivity is an alienation of work. The more work is alienated, the little there is incentive to do it, the bigger is productivity drain. Because Marx primarily thought about work efficiency, the ultimate society is communism. Communism is where no work gets alienated. Every work result is owned by producer (or creator), but he is willing to share it to the world as it is norm there, in communist utopia. So the productivity is as high as it could get. For me, startup culture is about reducing that alienation. I am not an expert, it's just a thought I want to share. ;)
Periodic 16y ago
I don't think the lesson has anything to do with how hard you work. I think the lesson is that you can build and validate an idea in 2-3 days. We often have ideas for products and think to ourselves that we'll just add a few more features or fix a few more bugs, then maybe put it on the market and see what happens and all of this takes weeks or months. In large corporations this can take years. The idea here is to state an assumption about your product, figure a way to test your assumption and do that in 2-3 days. There are 15 of these "weekends" in a month. You could be pivoting 15 times in one month, and if you have to pivot that often, at least you're only investing a few days instead of a few weeks into the setup. It's all about building a lean startup and the mentality you need to have. This article is not actually working 30 days a month as if you were on a 48-hour hackathon clock.

hongquan 16y ago

I think this could be a revolutionary way to think about how 'work' is done in a startup. Short sprints of 2 days with time in between to recharge could work well for some. The time constraint forces you to focus and changes your mindset about what is possible. Maybe not 15 weekends, but a month could be composed of 10-12 solid 'weekend' sessions. To me it would be more about energy-management than time-management.

Periodic 16y ago
I agree that it's definitely not about doing 2-day coding binges 30 days per month. February would be tough, for one. In my mind it's about mindset management. It's about not letting that the validation of your idea be pushed off until you've added "just one more feature," and instead about learning to rapidly iterate on the hypothesize, test, validate cycle.

ironchef 16y ago

Sure...and how many people want to actually use minimally viable products most of the time? It would seem to be that some of the reasons the startups can be so nimble in a weekend: 1) lack of technical debt 2) lack of integration to the rest of the process (big builds, QA, communications to the support staff, etc.) That's why it's interesting when bigger companies give people a couple days to tinker and scratch their itches. Once can see the potential of things they built and can then take the time to integrate them properly, etc.

zipdog 16y ago

The big advantage I see from a weekend of coding is that (using the Funnel idea of work processes) you really move down the funnel very quickly to focus on a clear result (and then if it doesn't work, move back up the funnel until you see a better focus, or start a new funnel). It would be a lot harder to pull that off fifteen times in a row (but the results would be great if you could)

MrFlibble 16y ago

In the film industry we would often say, "Cheaper, Faster, Better... Pick Two." Using a rifle shot vs. shotgun approach can be a great thing provided of course that the rifle is aimed at a viable target.