You can always do less

"For every 1 day estimates of a task, there’s a simpler version of that you can do in 3 hours, and an even simpler still you can do in 30 minutes. Back yourself into a corner and these versions will vividly appear before your eye. You can always do less."<p>I wonder if this was the reasoning behind 37s' storing passwords in plaintext instead of taking an extra 10 minutes to write the code to encrypt them?

The problem is that this looks good when written but bad when you have to follow it. If you look at 37 Signals products over the years they relentlessly add more and more and more while preaching less and less and less.<p>See disconnect? The truth is that you must always add more otherwise product goes stale. They know it but "do less" as a story sells better...

This was the best part of the referenced page:<p>"Don’t be such a suck up Dan."<p>As if Carl here was just so damn annoyed that Dan beat him to "first DHH! First! Pick me for kickball!" I just picture Jan Brady as Carl: "Marsha Marsha Marsha!"<p>Ok enough semi entertainment by poking fun at the followers of David (since when did he start going by one name like Prince or Madonna or Quasimoto?)

&#62; What stops most people from doing less is the fear of failure.<p>I think most people do more because they figure (right or wrong) that it's a good way to compete. Not everyone wrote Rails and has a huge 'following', so they need other barriers to entry for their products.

Old truth, but it never hurts to remind ourselves.

They're great at taking the same thing, changing a few minor things, then turning around and selling it.