Tim Did It

Without diving into too many existential questions, I enjoy designing websites, scribbling down the occasional word or two, traveling across the high seas and assisting old folks across busy intersections.

[timdidit]

2016 Recap

A new year begins tomorrow. It’s time to round up the year’s accomplishments and set some goals for 2017.

In no particular order, here’s a recap of some of finer highlights in 2016:

Redesigned IAFC.org

Sold out two As Was Written live events, in April and November

Wrote and performed two new short stories

Shifted to Mac for personal laptop

Paid off all credit debt

Moved into a new apartment

Bought a new car (after 17 years)

Migrated 80+ users to Office 365

Applied lessons learned from dozens of podcasts -- The Tim Ferriss Show (favorite), Freakonomics Radio, any Kevin Kelly interviews -- to life and work with positive results

Spoke at ASAE Technology Conference for the 2nd consecutive year

Completed 2nd year on ASAE Technology Section Council

Surely a few aren’t being highlighted here, but these were major milestones in my personal and professional work and life.

Now, for a few main 2017 goals:

Publish short story collection

More time sending gifts and notes to family, friends

Read less, make/write/do more

Best of luck to you, closing out 2016 and making 2017 something memorable.

[timdidit]

Refreshing Success, Bar Rescue Style

I’m trying to understand my fascination with SPIKE TV’s Bar Rescue. In the show, Jon Taffer, the “Gordon Ramsay of the bar and nightclub business,” drops in on one struggling bar after another, berating ownership and staff for days, just before he leads a complete retrain, rebuild and rebrand of the place. Then, voila! The business thrives, money’s made and everyone goes home happy.

While I rarely watch reality TV because it tends to be filled with unnecessary drama and emotional rollercoasters I tend to avoid in my own life, there are things about Bar Rescue I’ve grown to understand and even respect.

If you can get past the theatrics of Taffer yelling most of the show, there’s plenty of knowledge to be gained, most of which can be easily translated to your own business:

Give a care, or give up. Unless you’re in an incredibly niche business -- like boxer face tattoo artistry or internet cat choreography -- there are lots of people willing to do your job. If you aren’t willing to pour your passion, energy and self into it, choose a new career. Some of the most popular shows I’ve seen begin with an owner who’s given up or don’t seem to want to be in the bar and restaurant business in the first place. Those are the ones Taffer yells at the most. Most of the time, it sparks excitement, energy and a love for business that ultimately pays off. Other times, the owners go right back to their old tricks and you can foresee failure taking over the place before Taffer’s famous goodbye hugs. The interest and passion for success needs to be there, from leadership on down, for any goals to be achieved. Let it start with you, the leader.

Use smart data to make improvements. One of the show’s sponsors, ESRI, helps provide local business and demographics data to understand the market to make informed business decisions in each rescue. It doesn’t come cheap. While we can’t all be lucky enough to have a screaming knight in shining armor bring their paid-for licenses into the rescue, finding out what data is available to you about your services and customer base is critical to success. If you’re rebuilding a website, dig into the analytics of your site to understand where your customers are coming from, what they spend the most time on, where your referral points are and what they’re searching for the most. If you can find room in your budget for ESRI or another software that helps you better understand customers, invest. It’ll pay off in the end, making smarter improvements and not just throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping it sticks.

Get back to the basics. Is your team properly trained? Do any of them have bad habits that slow down productivity or quality? Is your process focused on providing a high quality, positive customer experience? Answers to each of these could make the difference between success and failure. It always seems like the way to success is too far out of reach because of budget or staffing constraints, but in reality it can often be reached by starting back from square one with the basics. Training, process evaluations and improvements to communication methods could be a simple place to start the upward trend of your productivity and success. Go out of your way to avoid overlooking this.

Presentation is everything. How you present your work is almost as important as the job you do. Taking the time to show your work, and detail the intricacies that went into it, pays off. For instance, anyone can build a website nowadays. Squarespace, Wordpress and Wix make it easy for the average business owner to throw up a site in a single day. But a well-oiled web team takes the time make calculated design choices, sharp development decisions and carefully crafted content strategy to build a site that delivers specific results. Presenting this to clients reinforces why they didn’t just get their son-in-law’s-friend’s-college-roomie to throw together a site overnight they can’t rely on. Taking the time to explain why every choice is made in a way your team and customers understand can take a project on a positive trajectory, and pay off in the end.

You don’t have to scream at your team to make any these improvements. In fact, please don’t do that. Sometimes all you need is a little extra care in what you do, a focus on the right things to focus on, and the grit to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Go forth, and rescue your work.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on April 18, 2016

[timdidit]

Listen to These Podcasts

For several years, I’ve abandoned reading fiction for more business-related content. This had me reading books and articles on digital strategy, business, the Walter Isaacson book on Steve Jobs, endless amounts of blogs on content strategy, web design, social media marketing, and more. Recenly, I read Jon Taffer’s Bar Rescue book and wrote a few words on some of my takeaways. My latest obsession is listening to podcasts on similar topics, especially surrounding process improvements and business strategy.

Two favorites so far:

The Tim Ferriss Show. In it, Ferriss breaks down the methods of great performers and shares insight into their processes and decision-making. He's very honest in his approach, having a two-way conversation that's relaxed and extracts candid answers from his guests. Top ones so far are: Seth Godin, Marc Andreeson and 25 Things Learned from Top Podcast Guests.

The Freakonomics podcast with Steven Dubner. In it, Dubner talks about interesting topics and with smart people about all sorts of stuff. He's such a nerd about understanding the nuances of people's approaches and how people come to their conclusions and decisions. Top ones so far: Malcolm Gladwell, How to Be Great At Just About Anything, and How To Be Tim Ferriss.

Give them a listen sometime and let me know what you think. Also send me any you enjoy

[timdidit]

Another Great Night

Mark down April 9, 2016 as yet wonderful night with friends, family and pleasant strangers at As Was Written, the event my buddy John-Mark and I founded back in 2008.

David Jonas read a letter to his son -- who’ll be born any day now -- introducing himself and his mother in a touching, hilarious fashion.

Natalie McGill took the stage and poked fun at the metro, roommates who need phonetic lessons and nightmare-inducing 3D pictures, sometimes known as sonograms. She’s hilarious, you should check her out.

Ben Sollee dropped in from Louisville, Kentucky with his cello and pipes to show us how good music sounds. After his performance, he sold just about every CD he brought with him. You should get it, too. He’s crazy talented.

Joseph LMS Green brought his booming voice and piercing words to the stage to celebrate the five year anniversary of one of his strongest poems, Break. Then he shared two newer pieces confronting two powerful social issues, the Black Lives Matter movement and teaching consent to kids, specifically young men. He’s been doing workshops for youth, and starting creative writing programs at schools all around the area. Look him up.

Remy took to the stage to sing about metro troubles, arranged marriages, and upper middle class social movements on campuses. He’s hilarious, and crazy talented. You may already know him, as his YouTube videos have been seen by over 100 million people. Check him out.

I read a story for the first time in two years. It was a piece I put together exploring the darker side of technology and our dependence on it. It was largely inspired by the BBC show Black Mirror, and Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, The Euphio Question. Look those up, they’re great.

People tend to call our event a poetry show. It’s not a poetry show. We generally feature at least one poet or spoken word artist on our stage, and they’re some of the best in the world, ones who’ve performed on Def Poetry, at the Kennedy Center and the White House. But our show expands beyond poetry.

As Was Written is a celebration and showcase of quality writers. Every show we assemble a lineup of writers who perform music, short stories, stand-up comedy and poetry. We handpick the best we can find, and our audiences have continued to enjoy it, year after year. We’ve sold out nearly every show. It’s always a great feeling putting on these shows.

I’m lingering in the post-show joy, taking my sweet time to enjoy every bit of it. Can't wait for the next one.

Big shout out to the night's photographer, Matt Leedham, for the wonderful shots.

[timdidit]

A Disappointing Trend, Studied

Some of my work in the first responder world has landed me on a project building an application in the unfortunately ever-growing field of active shooter/threat research, due to the increasing number of events in the last 15 years.

A few articles recently have been interesting reads, so I figured they'd be worth a share:

The Myth of the ‘Autistic Shooter’

Thresholds of Violence - How school shootings catch on" by Malcolm Gladwell

Inside the Race to Stop the Next Mass Shooter

If you're in for a longer read, the FBI put together a more comprehensive study of active shooters between 2000 and 2013.

Hopefully all these studies and attention will help us find a path toward reducing and eventually eliminating these terrible incidents.

[timdidit]

Value Your Customer's Time

It's hard to maintain the attention of busy people. At the IAFC, we are asking the current and future leaders of fire and emergency services to take time out of their busy, hectic and often traumatic days to engage in order to make their jobs easier. It sounds as hard as it seems.

We can't expect for each one to drop everything on their plate and take advantage of the resources we offer (webinars, white papers, SOPs, SOGs, best practices and thought leadership articles, to name a few). There are other ways to go about it.

The Daily Egg put together a resource we all can use to help with our busy audiences.

Automated emails work best for staff hour efficiency, but more importantly, for getting through to our audience, writing helpful, no fluff emails, texts and the like go a long way. Offer the things they can use immediately to improve their job. Forget the exclamation point laden emails(!!!) that are oh-so-familiar to every inbox. Treat every customer you encounter as if you're speaking with a friend you want to help, but know their day as if they're as hectic as a Nikki Minaj concert-goer on the front row.

Overall, treating people like you'd want to be treated is how best to handle any scenario, but especially yo this fighting every day to make the world a better place. We do it -- and continue to improve daily -- and you should too.

[timdidit]

Improve Your Social Media Game

A few years back, I put together a social media strategy template to share with folks. Putting the strategy in action, I managed to triple my organization’s Facebook Likes during the past three years. I share the document with fire and emergency service departments and grant-funded projects at my organization looking to be more active in social media.

One of the best resources I found recently was put together by Buffer, a web app that is “working to make people’s lives easier on social media.” Throughout a single month, they shared a social media tip each day, and put them together into one big list at the end. It’s fantastic, and I can’t recommend it enough. Some of them seem obvious, but others provide web tools to help you do everything from creating animated GIFs from video to creating branded images with quotes on the fly, and learning more about your social media followers.

Take these resources and you'll able to hit the ground running on the social media app of your choosing. Happy Tweeting/Facebooking/Pinning/Whatevs-ing!

[timdidit]

Things I Read - March 29, 2015

President Obama sits down to talk The Wire with show creator David Simon

Mailchimp's Kate Kiefer Lee provides a simple tip on positively using 20 minutes, every day

A Google Chrome Extension that provides a little motivation and calm to your "New Tab" click

Joining in on The 100 Day Project to challenge myself to make something every day for 100 days, starting Monday April 6 and ending Tuesday, July 14

When designing interfaces, sometimes the best icon is a text label

How and why CIOs should rethink the business value of information technology

[timdidit]

Contributing Because I Must

Credit the friendliness of the wonderful people I’ve grown to know in both the association and web nerdery worlds, I’ve applied to contribute as an active volunteer for ASAE. Though it’s my second try, I continue to feel compelled to contribute to a group where I’ve long since wished could be influenced more heavily by my other world.

Here’s my entry:

Working in the association world for ten years I've grown from a pup at the front desk to director of technology and I've learned several valuable lessons I see as my duty to share with others who find themselves in any of the positions I've held, and beyond.

What I've learned:

Taking on scary tasks isn't mandatory but it is necessary in expanding your viewpoint beyond your role and focus on that of your association's in the world.

Thinking about current issues is necessary to address current issues your customers face. Spending time to learn new skills, technologies and approaches gives your customers knowledge they'll be thankful for even more.

Working for associations provides a feeling that cannot be completely duplicated in the typical for-profit world. Taking your knowledge from the for-profit world and applying a touch of empathy and foresight increases your impact exponentially.

I'd be honored to contribute to an association that takes the time to place an emphasis on collaboration, foresight, empathy and providing answers to questions most of us haven't even realized we should be searching for yet.

I’ve reached a point in my professional life not of contentment, but more of resolution to contribute more actively. Recently, I took on a leadership role at IAFC, pushing the impact the association has, using technology as one tool toward increasing collaboration, knowledge, access and results our customers are after. I enjoy what I do, and those I do it with. When you’re in that position, it does the world much good if you take the time to contribute what you know with those who could use that knowledge to positively impact others.

Even if I don’t land this volunteer position, I’ll continue to contribute, as I must. Because it’s what feels right.

[timdidit]

Content Strategy Notes

"We’ve all got champagne tastes and definitely beer budgets."

Better late than never.

This post was meant to be posted after I attended the ASAE Technology Conference in December. It got stalled and I didn’t think about it until lately, when I started revisiting content strategy for an upcoming website redesign I’m leading. What follows are notes I took during the “Content Pathway” portion of the conference where Kristina Halvorson and Karen McGrane spoke on “Future Content: Associations in Action.”

Here’s the first session description, with Kristina Halvorson:

Dealing with digital content is hard. It’s complicated, expensive, time-consuming, and often overwhelming. There’s new content -- legacy content; user-generated content. Print to web. Text to video. Static to dynamic. The list goes on and on.

But there’s good news: the practice of content strategy gives us tools and processes that can help bring order out of your content chaos. Content strategy guides planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. It doesn’t just affect the content we produce; it informs our organizational structures, processes, and priorities. If you’re serious about evolving alongside your audiences’ content needs and expectations, content strategy should be at the top of your list. Karen and Kristina will explain why, and how.

Our content is a lot like the Wall-E movie. Heaps of junk and we have pathways. But people want to find share and use content. Determine what’s junk. On creating content strategy, ask not just what but why and how.

Strategy is a series of active choices to take you from where you are now to where you want to be. Karen rearranges soup cans. Says she has a God complex. It’s her way of bringing order from chaos. Ask how good content is and what you are going to do with it. What do users want and need? Use customer service team to get pulse. This is the meat of the matter.

Kristina shared a comic that pictured a kid listening to a parent share a bedtime story. Caption reads: “Instead of a story, can you read me some branded content?”

TV Guide was in the content business. They told writers to write three versions of every type. Short, medium, long. They did it without knowing why. It’s a great example of thinking beyond the here and now. It needed to be structured for the future.

Audit. Rework IA. Make metadata. Rewrite copy. (Substance + Structure) How are we organized and who’s in charge of the stuff? (Workflow + Governance)

Problems are not always technology problems; they’re problems working with each other.

The RACI model: Who’s responsible? Who’s accountable for success? Who has to be consulted? Who needs to be informed?

List persons involved and assign their role in the RACI model.

Read article by Rachel Lovinger - Tinker, Tailor, Content Strategist Governance asks: Ask who’s in charge? What comes next? (This breaks sites) Provides collaborative models of who’s in power.

People are given guru or expert labels but no matter what, are always catching up. “We are perpetually catching up.” Don’t forgo research and analysis. It helps guide your path forward. Ask: Is our content easy to find, share and and on?

Here's the session description of "The Mobile Content Mandate" with Karen McGrane"

You don’t get to decide which device people will use to access your content: they do. Learn how to get started on your mobile content strategy, define what you want to publish, examine the relationship between your mobile and desktop site, and determine how your editorial workflow and content management tools need to evolve.

“There is no reason anyone will need to do that on mobile.” Don’t be that org. Famous quote: “There is no reason anyone will need to have a computer in his home.” -Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment Corp. Psp8 was worlds first mobile computer. Tractor guy brought the Psp8 with him to track planting. (Farmin’ gone mobile!)

Disruptive innovation - theory is that disruption comes from the low end. Creates new market of something better than others. Furniture vs. transistor radio (Sony first) 80% of fortune 500’companies only advertise jobs online. Impoverished folks don’t all have internet access at home. 91% have mobile phones in USA - ‘12. Up from 85% in ‘09. Mobile phone is staple of human life. Not luxury. 31-63% jump in mobile internet use Of 63%, 34% only or mostly use internet on phone. Add 11% who uses internet half the time.

Know your workflow (map out how content gets created) “It’s not a strategy if you can’t maintain it.” Mobile focuses helps you write better. There’s no such thing as how to write for mobile. There’s just good writing. American Cancer Society desktop site brought everything over to mobile. No changes. Lovely.

“Good content transcends platform.” “Use mobile as a catalyst to make your content better for everyone.” Ask questions. Should we keep or toss content. Look at Amazon: What content should we include or exclude? Should long pages be broken into shorter ones? Will it work to reuse headers as links? Will it work to truncate body copy for teasers? What fallbacks can we provide if our desktop content just won’t work?

“Responsive design won’t fix your content problem.” Create more content sizes and structures to make it easier to package for different screens.

NPR is typically a good example in general. They use truncated headlines. Don’t do that! Guardian has tumblr dedicated to it. What to try: 60-100-200 chars SEO optimized, colloquial Don’t create content for a specific context. Make something that can be flexible, future-friendly. “You don’t get to decide what device people use to go on the internet. They do.”

“Disruptive technologies eventually get good. Or they redefine what good means.”

“Do mobile right. Right from the start.”

[timdidit]

Back on Stage

On October 25, As Was Written returns to the historic Lyceum with a fresh lineup and the same creative spirit that has kept it going for five years. Tickets are on sale now.

We’ve hand-picked a lineup of diverse, skilled wordsmiths.

Actor and writer Greg Sestero, best known as co-star of the cult hit film The Room, is new to our stage. He's the author of The Disaster Artist, a phenomenally funny book that's currently being adapted into a feature film directed by James Franco.

We have Elizabeth Acevedo, a spoken word poet from the #1 ranked poetry team in the country.

Ryan Schutt is a talented stand up comedian that’ll bring the laughs.

Plus, As Was Written vets John-Mark Davidson (my fellow co-founder) and Stuart Smith will return to the stage.

More names to come shortly.

On a personal note, I've taken a break from writing short stories for now. Somewhere in between pushing what I do professionally, I haven’t given the appropriate amount of time to honing my stories like I used to. I've written, sure, and even had a piece cued up for our last show, but didn't have enough confidence in it to put it in front of the crowd I have such a tremendous amount of respect for.

Sometimes these funks take time to work out. I’m on a streak of writing for all of three days in a row. That’s a start, right? But I'm confident I'll be back at it next year. It's too much fun to do, and I’ve been writing since I can remember and continue to love it dearly. I owe a few people a ridiculous story about being nice to strangers, as I promised I’d deliver not too long ago.

Anyway, I hope to see you at the show October 25. Doors at 8 p.m. Show starts promptly at 8:30 p.m.

It’ll be a grand ole time.

[timdidit]

Things I Read - July 27, 2014

Ira Glass, This American Life host and producer, shares how he works, and ends with a direct, inspirational quote at the end: “Go looking for an idea and it'll show up. Begin now. Be a f*cking soldier about it and be tough.”

A look at how labeling yourself designer or developer may be a big part of succoming to imposters syndrome, and how you can look at it in a positive way to feel better about what you do for a living.

This website ain’t perfect, but it’s more than not having one at all. This short piece states that it’s a disservice to your industry not to share what you’re doing, and that you shouldn't wait for perfection.

A look at what it would look like if famous brand logos were responsive

The Customer is Mostly Wrong - a look into the Steve Jobs mindset that customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them, and more.

[timdidit]

Things I Read - April 14, 2014

Interesting stuff happens on the web occasionally. Also, some useless stuff. Since I read some of the most random things on the interwebs throughout the week, I figure it best to share.

Tails is the sneaky operating system used by Snowden to anonymously handle his nefarious dealings. It’s very fascinating idea - anonymous OS in simple thumb drive. (From Wired)

Kristina Halvorson shares a lovely post on The Pastry Box telling everyone who shares ideas on the web to do so fearlessly, even there’s a chance you’ll be wrong or have to change your mind later. It’s okay to be wrong, she says. Why? “Because the Internet”

I made an animated GIF of a guy dancing that made me laugh a bunch after I watched this excellent video of the A-Zs of Dance.

Are you surrounded by people who say they’re too busy all the time? Are you one of those people, totally overwhelmed with work to the point you’re constantly frustrated? There’s a chance you’re not as busy as you think you are, according to a Slate.com article.

Feel free to send me interesting stuff if you feel so inclined. Either way, keep being curious out there on the web.

[timdidit]

February 1

As Was Written is back once again, on February 1, at the historic Lyceum in Alexandria, Virginia, for what's going to be a grand ol' time.

The lineup is set:

Eef Barzelay, from the band Clem Snide

Adele Hampton

Elahe Izadi

Jason Pittman

David Tveite

John-Mark

Me

After sitting out the last show, John-Mark and I are back on stage, reading short stories along with an amazing lineup of writers and performers. Believe you me, it's very exciting to be back in on the fun.

Thanks to the early support (we sold 80 tickets in the first 48 hours), we'll be sold out well before the show. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. JMD and I couldn't be more grateful.

Doors open at 8pm. Show starts at 8:30pm. Can't freakin' wait.

[timdidit]

Sometimes Laptops Take Dives

My laptop took a dive early last year. That HP Pavillion was the most durable machine I’d owned in recent memory. But as it turns out, the term “durable” has its limits.

The laptop contained the complete works -- all my files, including web projects, short stories, music and ebooks. Losing those things was a major pain in the behind. I could’ve easily lost my mind and sworn off recreating newer, better versions of those things. But I didn’t. I took advantage of the trusty interwebs for some files and set out for a year in backups galore. Particularly in cloud-based places I could access from my main three devices: laptop, tablet and smartphone.

I summoned a few services I highly recommend:

Evernote

I took to Evernote for taking and sharing notes. I can do it all from any of my devices. Styling is basic and different Notebooks can be set up for full-time work, side projects, and even a separate area for journaling. I do short lists for shopping as well as set-up to-do lists for long-term projects. It’s available from browsers, as well as in native device app stores. Device agnostic services like these play a key part in forward-thinking organization. Also, there's an easy way to back it all up.

Google Drive

I purchased an Acer laptop with Windows 8 a few months ago. It came with a trial of Microsoft Office, but I decided to forego paid programs to stick with the versatile free ones as long as I could. Google Drive (with its Docs options) fulfilled this role. Instead of MS Word or Excel, I could use Google Document or Spreadsheet. And it saves to Google Drive. And for that trusty backup? Options are readily available and pretty easy to pull off.

Dropbox

Lastly, photos taken from the phone and typically stored on the PC are sent off to Dropbox, along with other documents, so as to keep another backup to the backups. Dropbox is available from most devices, so you can access everything from anywhere if you have an internet connection and your password. Sure, I could stick with just Google Drive for this same storage but the photo backup automation really makes this essential for me, right now. Perhaps in the future I’ll try it differently if I find a better way. And, for the finale, you can sync your files with an external drive.

The Rest

I have a 500GB external drive I use to backup all the web stuff, in case the internet breaks one day and I need to disappear like a thief in the night but maintain my livelihood and sanity. I’m using Spotify for music and playlists on the go right now. Until I switch back into buying albums on my own again (I go support a few artists if I’m a big fan, but mostly it’s all Spotify), the service takes care of most of my needs there.

That's All, For Now

These are just the methods I’ve used to live in the cloud and keep backups of all my things. If you have tips on improving what I’m doing, please share.

Sometimes laptops take dives, folks. And it’s good to have a backup plan in place. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

[timdidit]

I Used To Eat Books

I didn't always know how to read. When I was a one-year-old, I just wanted to eat books and magazines. But now, the slightly older version of me can't get enough of reading them. Perhaps in my older years (40s?) I'll go back to eating them. I'll keep you updated on that.

In the meantime, here are a few articles I've read and enjoyed lately. Feel free to read or eat them as you may.

Seth Godin explains how you can use fear as fuel for getting things accomplished.

A very smart, funny and impactful fellow by the name of Baratunde Thurston, is interviewed by The Great Discontent and hilarity and throughtfulness ensue.

Lifehacker takes quotes from Jay-Z and turns them into productivity lessons.

An INC.com interview where Michael Bloomberg shares how fiercely loyal (and cold) he can be, and how he may take the "hit by a truck" theory a bit too serious.

Kurt Vonnegut's daily routine, in which he shares something I can especially relate to in my older years: "...sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me."

You're going to hear a lot of buzz around the new Spike Jonze film, "Her," so here's a great article profiling the indie director, and how this particular idea came about.

More link roundups to come. I enjoy reading what others are reading so I'm paying it forward.

[timdidit]

Make Smart Choices

Guinness wins the award for best commercial in 2013. It's heartfelt and uplifting. We need more like it.

"The choices we make reveal our true character."

It's true. Looking toward the new year, let's all make smarter choices. And perhaps buy a few extra pours of these tasty dark brews to reward Guinness for making something special.

Smart choices to make in 2014:

Surround yourself with people who lift you up. Allow them to challenge you to be a better person. Do the same for them.

Be nice to strangers. And when time allows it, listen to their stories.

Read books that will make you better at your job. And if you're already doing that, read more books to take your mind away from your job. Both work together quite well.

Back up all of your digital files. Put them in the cloud or Mars or an external drive or handwrite copies on recycled 2013 calendars. Whatever, just do it.

Take one of the great ideas you have stored away in that huge brain of yours. Write down the steps it'll take to make it happen. Cut off Netflix/Bravo/ESPN/Facebook/Twitter. Make the idea become a reality.

Write more.

Smile approximately two times as much as you did last year.

Don't give people sh*t for making resolutions. Even the ones who'll crowd the gym in January. Applaud, encourage the effort to improve.

Make this year better than all the rest. You deserve it.