
A month is fifteen weekends - DanielRibeiro
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2011/02/month-is-fifteen-weekends.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29&utm_content=Twitter
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wccrawford
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.

~~~
samd
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
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. ;)

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ironchef
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.

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hongquan
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
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.

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MrFlibble
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.

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zipdog
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)

