When the good people at Make Work Meaningful and Rypple wanted to know what the OneMethod philosophy was all about, we knew we were doing something right. And so, OneMethod’s CEO Amin broke it down for them in a brief outline of just where OneMethod came from and what it stands for. This article was originally published in April, 2010 over on the Make Work Beautiful website.

Do a little math with me:

- There are 24 hours in a day…
– On average, or at best, we spend 8 of those in bed…
– The next 10 hours or so is dedicated to work…
– And after all that, if all the stars and pixels line up just right, we get the next 6 hours “to ourselves,” where we can relax and unwind.

My point, which I’m sure you figured out long before reading this, is that Loverboy’s “working for the weekend” (I had to Google that one) is a far too accurate description of our culture.

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my past: Toronto Star paper boy, Fuji Film assembly line worker, McDonald’s cook/janitor, Smiles n’ Chuckles candy salesman, Toronto Zoo face painter, Rogers marketing specialist, and CEO at OneMethod (to name a few). Throughout my varied career, I’ve come to realize that I’m a big fan of enjoying the moment and not regretting one iota of time spent or decision made. I know this is an almost impossible feat to achieve, but I’m game for trying to get as close to that ideal as possible. So, when I finally jumped into the start-up world, I vowed that I would never allow myself to hate my job or the time I spent there.

Start Early

So how do I do this? What if you were actually able to enjoy every waking minute of your conscious life? To do this, you’d either have to be extremely rich to completely remove the ‘work’ element from the equation, or you could find the perfect work environment that made you feel like you’re hanging with your friends or family.

When OneMethod started on its first growth spurt way back when, it grew out of the condo I was living in at the time. Desks started taking over my living room and my once-den was rebranded as the company’s walk-in closet. Not entirely by choice, my home simply transformed into the OneMethod headquarters. I had a realization at that point: when done right, work feeling like home was a beautiful thing.

At some point in the morning, my friends used to show up to start the work day and we’d share some coffee or tea for breakfast. After punishing our keyboards and notepads for a few hours, we’d take a break to stretch our legs and either cook a meal or hit the nearby food court. As the day progressed, we might take a break here and there to play a quick game of NBA Live on the PlayStation, but other than that, we were all business. The cool thing about it though, was that it really didn’t feel like work. Now we have an awesome office that reflects our culture — check out some shots of our workspace and basketball court in this post.

The OneMethod Philosophy

And that is how and where the philosophy of OneMethod was born; a philosophy based on creating great work with people you like in a place that feels like home. I can’t say it was on purpose, because that den really did fill up on its own. But then again, I can’t say it was entirely by accident, because I chose to start a company that I was actually in to and I chose to bring on people I both knew and liked.

Truthfully, here is the part of the article where I would love to bring it back to that “everybody’s working for the weekend” song in a really profound and insightful way. But all I can really say is that I hate everything about that song and I guess I’ve been trying to disprove it since the day I heard it.