Jason Fried

The COVID pandemic forced the global workforce to become used to working from home, and many of us transitioned there permanently. I grew up with my professor-father often working from home in the evenings and trudged through graduate school studying and writing in a home office. Thus, working from home was not entirely new to me. In 2013, when this book was written, this idea was still a relatively fresh management technique, and this short guide sought to pioneer its concepts to the wider working world.

I read this book in search of understanding early actions that spurred remote work. For almost 30 years, I’ve found having a separate workspace for work helpful, but I’ve also found that this desk does not necessarily need a long commute affixed to it. Many of us feel the same way coming out of a global pandemic. This book sought to popularize that attitude seven years before it was forced upon us all.

The book itself is short. About 30-50% of the pages are filled with illustrations, so the actual text is extremely concise. It provides more inspiration and persuasion than it does tips and tools. It does directly address common objections to remote work – like the mistaken idea that no collaboration gets done. One chapter even deals about hiring remote workers, but legal nuances are left to the lawyers, unaddressed here.

In 2024, this book is more of a historical artifact than a relevant work. Many of the counterarguments to remote work remain the same, but most of the world working in business desks are well-aware of how remote work functions. Better guides to practicalities exist in today’s bookstores. We might continue to have generational disagreements about remote work’s value, but I suspect that those arguments will fade with time. For me, commuting ten hours per week is not worth the hassle. Driving to a central office occasionally makes sense, but I can do the daily grind with excellence without city traffic. This book shone the way over a decade ago, and I’m reaping some benefits from it.… (mais)