1. Need to do

2. Have to do

3. Want to do

Someone starts a vision with a vision, a dream, and a passion.

They want to provide quality healthcare to individuals. They want to put financial advice in the hands of young people moving into adulthood. They want to deliver news and opinions to the curious and entrepreneurial reader.

At what point do companies like these stop caring about users? How do these visionaries live with phone systems as daunting and frustrating as navigating across the Atlantic? How do these dreamers accept customer service policies that leave customers shouldering the burden and scrambling?

At some point, the people at the top of companies stop making innovations and start making excuses.

"We provide better service than some of our competitors."

"We're working as quickly as possible to upgrade our network."

"It's because potential customers are ignorant of our value."

Bull. It's because you've lost your way. You used to be passionate and focused on your dream. Now you're focused on your bottom-line, and you've lost your desire for meaning and perfection.

A simple charge

Make it easy for people to use your product or service. Shoulder every possible burden for your consumer. Let them talk to humans instead of machines. Make their interactions with you a pleasure instead of a burden.

Eventually, you just might end up with $40 billion on hand.

What, you want 10 ways? All right.

• Send them email updates instead of making them log in
• Have a human answer your phone line in less than four rings, guaranteed.
• Whenever someone complains, give them something free, and send a hand-written apology letter.
• Pay someone to be in charge of your user experience online. Someone good.
• Let people login to your site with their email address.
• Have your executives answer phone calls and emails personally, for two hours each week.
• Apologize, early and often. Your customers are right, and you're wrong.
• Actively engage in social media. Don't bother with an account if it's not personal or interactive.
• Let users choose a charity to donate 5% of their sale to.
• Give random customers something free. Every 500th customer gets a gift card. Something like that. Don't publicize it, just do it.

These are the things that make your dream a pleasure to use. And when you don't do them, eventually, people find something else that is a pleasure.

In the vein of disappointment, I have another question: Where are you setting your expectations? I think for most of us, the answer to that question is, "too low."

When you're investing in something, or more particular, someone, set your expectations high. You're investing in them because you see potential. And they're allowing you to invest in them because they believe you can cultivate that potential.

When you let them off the hook with half-ass work, you're doing them a disservice. It's easy for us to say, "That's all right, everyone fails sometimes." And there is certainly a time for it to be said. But more often, we should be saying, "Go back and do it better." If you prefer, you can preface it with "Good work."

It might come off as insensitive, but in the end, higher expectations mean better results. Whether you're in the business of creating products, delivering services, or developing individuals, that's a win-win situation.

When it comes to people, expect work, products, and character just a little bit better than you have ever seen from them before.

One of the uses of Twitter I admire most is a delivery vehicle of succinct, well-thought, original content. That being said, I use the the "star" feature pretty often, and I'm convinced I'm in the minority here. (See Twitter's official documentation on the feature.) Whether I'm marking a link to read later, saving a piece of wisdom, or bookmarking a great quip, I'm hitting the star all the time.

That being said, I thought I'd curate my list of curated Twitter updates to post my 13 favorite updates of all-time. Where all-time is equal to the amount of time I have been using Twitter and actively hitting the star. Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are the best of the best:

@scarequotes: Use "login" for the noun, "log in" for the action, and "Loggins" when you're footloose in the danger zone.

—@FakeAPStylebook, Oct 28th, 2009

Can't wait to see 'Where The Wild Things Are.' Not to brag, but I've read the book.

—@badbanana, Sep 20th, 2009

The more things I buy with cash, the more I am punished with useless silver discs filling my pockets.

—@dcurtis, Sep 1st, 2009

Given the public option America chose Taylor Hicks.

—@brianbolter, Aug 18th, 2009

Heading to the Yankees/Red Sox game. The last time I was this excited to go somewhere I was screaming and there was a placenta involved.

—@AinsleyofAttack, Aug 9th, 2009

AP: Florida investigators say a man accused of downloading child porn is blaming his cat. He says the cat jumped on his keyboard.

—@BreakingNews, Aug 7th, 2009

A man is defined not by his thoughts, but by his deeds. Although, in a pinch, the presence of a penis is usually a pretty big tell.

—@bearskinrug, Apr 18th, 2009

If you crave the accessibility of Flash and the raw power of Dreamweaver, Adobe Air's just over here eating paint chips and watching Barney.

—@hotdogsladies, Apr 17th, 2009

In a moment of clarity, I realize that emptying the lint trap is in essence throwing out my clothes very slowly.

—@nevenmrgan, Feb 16th, 2009

Now that's a different story. Clearly, Michael Jackson's doctor is now King of Pop until somebody murders him.

—@badbanana, Aug 24th, 2009

you can tell a person's character simply by the amount of grace they extend to others.

—@hardlynormal, Apr 26th, 2009

Sometimes, out of a sense of almost curious contempt, I'll point my space heater at my refrigerator.

—@rainnwilson, Apr 26th, 2009

Hippos are one of Africa's most deadly mammals. If one shows up at your door, keep a cool head and give it every marble you own.

—@bearskinrug, May 20th, 2009

If this thing sounds like something you're interested in, you should also check out Tweeteorites. Essentially, it's a service that lets you know who's starring the things you say as well as what your friends are starring. Kind of a neat little way to let your friends effortlessly curate Twitter for you.

Disappointment is a byproduct of unmet expectations.

Always. So when you're feeling disappointed, ask yourself two questions:

• What expectations were communicated that went unmet?
• What expectations were assumed, although never communicated?

And when you're feeling angry, sad, or irritated? Ask yourself if what you actually are is disappointed.

Recently, I feel like I've been witness to a few too many ideas passing me by. Not passing me by for a lack of merit or an innate implausibility, but passing me by because my passion wanes.

I'm still wrestling with whether this is simply the nature of ideas or I rested on my laurels for too long. And I don't think it's an answer that will come easily.

But the point remains. In language that Steven Pressfield would approve of: when you've put yourself in the right position, and the muse is ready to touch you, you'd better be ready to throw everything else aside and chase her. She won't last long.

Jason Fried of 37 Signals said the same thing much more eloquently in 2009 (excuse the huge quote wall, but it's that good):

Inspiration is perishable. We all have ideas, and once you have the idea, the idea is sort of immortal. It lives on forever; it goes on forever. The idea exists, even if it's just in your head or you write it down, it's happened. But what isn't going to last forever is your inspiration for that idea. Inspirations are like fresh fruit, like milk—they have an expiration date, and they don't last very long.

If you happen to be lucky enough and fortunate enough to be inspired to do something, you've got to do it right now because every day you go, it gets browner and browner and deader and starts to rot and goes away. Inspiration is perishable, you can not hang on to it. So if you find something you want to do, you've just got to go out and do it.

If you're in the business of creating, you'd better be ready to move quick. Nothing gold can stay.

The New York Times reported today that The New York Times will begin charging users for online access after viewing a yet-to-be-determined number of free articles.

A quick Twitter search for "new york times" yields 15 first-page results—8 of which are negative reactions to this idea. (How's that for a scientific way of determining the pulse of the nation? Move over Anderson Cooper, I'm an iReporter.)

From the article about the plan:

But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand.

Let's talk a little bit more about that.

First, the good

The idea of a fluctuating amount is great. I think this conveys trust in your brand and encourages constant interaction. It invites users to continually check your price and lets them know that you're being sensitive to their needs and current events. Kind of important for a paper.

And the idea of charging is good. You can't run your business at a loss. The internet is growing up, the dot-com bubble has bursted, re-inflated, and re-bursted. Let's find ways to monetize this thing or go back to working at the mill.

But then, the bad

I don't buy the idea that the problem is the payment. My parents' generation has been paying for newspapers since they were delivered by wooly mammoths. And the type of people who are interested in what the NYT has to say are the type of people who are willing to pay for it. Just because Facebook and Twitter are free doesn't mean everyone in the 18-25 demographic will never pay for anything again¹.

I'd posit that their "fundamental questions" are wrong. If I land on an NYT page asking me to pay for the content, do you know what's easier? Going back to Google and looking for the same thing on the Atlanta Journal Constitution or the Wall Street Journal. And do you know what's easier than logging in to read news? Not logging in to read news.

How they are going to solve this problem is the real question.

Glad you asked

For news, the initial shock of a login system and the inconvenience of it are simply too much. And I see two options for success.

One. If the New York Times can succeed in this new world, it might require they develop a renewed voice and a stronger tribe.

The readers who define the NYT and the Wall Street Journal are getting old. They're going in to that last two-thirds of their life that we call "retirement."

These monolithic newspaper companies are now competing with fast, nimble organizations that aren't in the newspaper printing business. They're not even necessarily in the news business. Think Fast Company, 37 Signals, and The Huffington Post. Then think of the thousands of speciality-sites killing it in their own industry. For free².

You can try and compete with each of these in your traditional newspaper sections—technology, world, local, etc. Or you can try and compete with Alltop as an idea-aggregator. But either way, kick the notion that you're competing with the other local or national papers.

Wherever you decide to go, if you're going to charge, and if people are going to pay, you can't go on as you are.

Two. Eliminate the interface barriers.

• Develop the best damn news-delivery interface the world has ever seen. (Perhaps along the lines of the Times Skimmer?)
• Somehow beat Twitter for speed and the aforementioned "new competitors" for quality.
• Find a way to make login painless, or better, unnecessary. Err on the side of accidentally giving someone free access instead of accidentally making someone login.
• Convince your audience that your site is the single best place for them to get news, and never disappoint them when they come to you looking for something.

I frankly don't know if solution two is possible. And in the end, surviving as a company might mean narrowing your focus, developing your voice, and accepting smaller revenues. People will pay, but ad revenue will shrink, and circulation will narrow. This is less-than-ideal for a business whose job is to increase revenue, but it's markedly better than bankruptcy.

Recently, I wrote of two kinds of value, particularly with regards to the things we consume. But there's something that defines us much more than the things we consume. And that's how we spend our time.

And here, we make the same fundamental error as with the things we buy. We look to pack as may things as possible into our days, no matter the cost. We're looking at creating the densest possible days.

There's nothing I could add to this article, but I'll leave you with a quote on your way to read it.

You could fill any arbitrary number of hours with what feels to be productive work. Between e-mail, and crucial web surfing, and to-do lists that, in the age of David Allen, grow to lengths that rival the bible, there is always something you could be doing. At some point, however, you have to put a stake in the ground and say: I know I have a never-ending stream of work, but this is when I’m going to face it. If you don’t, you’ll let this work push you around like a bully. It will force you into tiring, inefficient schedules, and you’ll end up more stressed and no more accomplished.

Great leaders are generous. Not as a marketing ploy. Not as a bait-and-switch tactic. Not because they're rich and have nothing better to do with their money. A story will better illustrate why. ¹

A generous man

One of the most skilled leaders I know is a man you'll likely never meet or read about in a leadership magazine. He owns a mechanical services company in Fayetteville, Georgia. Each year, he throws a Christmas party for all his employees, current and former, and their families. He lives modestly and gives luxuriously. Particularly, I want to tell you what he did for me one spring afternoon.

I was preparing for a short-term trip to Africa—3 months during the summer of 2006. I was also raising support (no negligible amount) for said trip, and as this man was a neighbor, friend, and former employer, he received a letter asking for financial support.

He contacted me to let me know he had something for me and told me he'd look for a time he was free to get together. Eventually, that time came. He called to ask me if I'd have a few hours in the afternoon. Eagerly, I obliged (and surely canceled any plans I might've had).

He lives about 200 yards from my parents, so I was a bit surprised to see him pull up in his truck that afternoon. He invited me to hop in, and he let me know we were going to run an errand together. Next stop, Lowe's.

As it turns out, a family from their church had a relative who was recently involved in a car accident. She survived, but with a drastically altered life as a quadriplegic. Our errand was to pick up a generator and deliver it to their family so the devices critical to her survival would continue to function in the event of a power outage.

It wasn't simply a give-and-run experience, either. We spent time laughing and talking with their family—hearing stories of the past and dreams for the future. And on the way out, they gave me the full tour of all this man had already done for them. Building a new deck that was wheelchair-friendly and covered. Converting the front door and patio to accomodate wheelchair access. Bringing meals over for their entire family. His generosity was staggering.

On our way home, he gave me a check that covered half of my entire trip.

But why generosity?

When leading others towards a just goal, a leader sets vision and direction, then empowers followers to act freely. Leaders generally don't make their investment in people with goals wildly different from their own, and they usually invest only where they see potential. Their generous investment delivers two things: resources and permission.

It's easy to see that financial generosity gives a recipient the means to move towards a common goal. What's not so obvious is the permission granted by the giving of time or attention. As a leader invests this way in others, she implicitly communicates that the other party deserves her most important resource. In turn, that person is naturally challenged to steward this investment wisely and push harder towards their shared goal.

For me, this investment reminded me that generosity is an essential part of being fully alive and bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. And I learned that generosity isn't an action, but a lifestyle. For his employees, annual Christmas parties are reminders of their value and potential. They actually mean something in his company, and their continued work is appreciated and valued.

Great leaders understand that they are leading people. Whole people. And they will never succeed in achieving goals without the generosity that empowers their co-laborers.

What are you leading others towards? And are you empowering them through your own generosity?²

Sharing often becomes something akin to seeking identity in the act of being heard—as if the things we write and make and share have no worth until someone places worth on them by responding.

Joshua Blankenship, On The Entitlement Baggage of Social Media (and Human Nature)

Before you pursue business opportunities, ask yourself this question:

Do I want to be a serial entrepreneur, investing where I see short-term opportunity, and using the ensuing windfall to fund my passions? Or do I want to build a brand, pursuing my passions directly as a long-term opportunity?

Neither is better than the other (see Richard Branson and Steve Jobs), but deciding early will help you avoid plenty of growing pains.

I think our internal value-meters are a bit dull these days. As we face a host of options and products daily, the simplest heuristic is to spread our time and money as thinly as possible. If we buy the most things at the least cost, then surely we will be met with satisfaction.

This is quantitative value.

On quantitative value

Recently, I've struggled with the ideas of value and density. Marketing trends tell us the two are synonymous. I think the difference is subtle, but its implications are far-reaching.

Just because McDonalds offers more beef per dollar does not make it the better value. Simply because one person can quote a project at a lower number does not make them the better value. In a program, more features for less money does not always equate to a better value.

Too often, we view value as quantity ÷ cost, or density.

A better way

Sure, quantitative value is simple, but it's short-sighted. We should actually be calculating quality ÷ cost. Quality is messy. It's inexact. It's not quantity. So too often we default to quantity.

Quality is how the new car purchase will hold up in ten years. It's about asking yourself what your goals and values are, then determining whether a purchase leads you towards said goals and values.

Quantitive value only involves a cursory understanding of the product. Qualitive value involves a meticulous understand of yourself.

By now, you've surely heard of Clients From Hell. If not, go ahead and read some of the stories, then come back here.

At first glance, it's funny. You might laugh for awhile as you flip through the stories. But at some point, you should likely come to the following question: Why are these designers so arrogant and condescending towards their clients?

I'll tell you why

Clients generally don't understand the web. They don't know well enough to know that giving away a Canon 5D Mark II is a good way to get traffic on Twitter. And they don't know well enough to know that this traffic is cheap and won't get them anywhere in the long run. They just did a complete 360-degree turn without knowing it happened.

The things they're asking for—dogs chasing the cursor on a screen, seventeen different fonts on a page, MySpace sites for kids aged 1-5—aren't indicative of the fact that they're glaring idiots. (Some exceptions naturally apply.) They're indicative of people coming to you, trustingly, to help them in a medium they don't understand. They're looking to command attention in a space where they're not sure how to achieve that goal.

The real problem

So here's a little nugget of information for designers, myself included from time to time: The problem isn't that your clients are complete morons, the problem is that you're a complete asshole.

Treat your clients as humans—humans that you can help. They have dreams and goals and aspirations, and they're asking for you to partner with them, to help them in this world of 0s and 1s and usability and standards and nerds. A world they don't understand, but you do.

The real issue is that, for whatever reasons, designers tend to feel we're part of some select aristocracy, doing the masses a service by relating with them. We're short-tempered, impatient, unhelpful, and condescending. Not all, and not always. But many, and often.

And rather than trying to kindly help those who don't understand, we scuttle off to our cyber-nerd-rooms to make them the punch line of our jokes. Real easy to say when you hide behind your IP address or avatar, isn't it?

The main reason why — to the amazement of many of my colleagues — TV is still such a tremendously popular medium is that no web site beats the speed of the remote control. No screen design can match the high drive of flipping through physical paper. The same can be said for radios. It’s just simpler to switch on the radio and scroll through stations than preparing your iPod. In terms of speed, traditional interfaces are still the benchmark for web designers.

People started using Twitter and Facebook for direct messages instead of E-mail because they require less physical manipulations to send a message. Future web designers will focus less on surface design but on speeding up processes by cutting reducing physical manipulations. The best way to learn about speedy interfaces is to study everyday interfaces as doorknobs, drawers, shampoo bottles. Web designers need to learn more from traditional product designers.

—Information Architects on What's Next in Web Design

As is usually the case from IA, the entire article is a pleasure and a challenge to read if you care about where the web is headed. It's a very compelling argument that the only way to freedom and success is through even more standardization.

100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Number of two-dollar-bills necessary at the height of Zimbabwe's hyperinflation necessary to match the value of one two-dollar-bill in 1978. (via Kottke)

Our generation is high on creativity, but low on perseverance.

—Eugene Cho at The Idea Camp Pacific Northwest

Google Voice is pretty exciting in theory. One number to rule them all, archived and searchable SMS, voicemails stored as text, recording conversations, different rules for different contact groups. You've got to admit, those are some incredible features.

One of it's hilarious downfalls, however, is its inadequate transcription mechanism. I don't know of any better services out there, and it might be a lost cause, but Google Voice gives you some hilariously bad transcripts of voicemails.

Here are my three favorites, and I'd love to hear any bad experiences you have in the comments:

"...was just calling to you to give you some feedback on that because I need. Whatever it was. They, and, half, Jake, I have them. P F T files level of the web."

"Hey Josh, Chris over at springing just checking in with you. See if this is see if y'all had side. Whether you're gonna do the Do, The, The, The, pronounce that you wanted."

"I'm calling you a little trucks that way because I'm actually heading back to Atlanta and I'm analyst you think it's Chris, It's a for a wedding tomorrow right now. I, I. Anyways, and I got you."

• 7: The Blind Side (trailer)
• 6: Up in the Air (trailer)
• 5: Up (trailer)
• 4: Moon (trailer)
• 3: Where the Wild Things Are (trailer)
• 2: The Hurt Locker (trailer)
• 1: The Fantastic Mr. Fox (trailer)

Warning: Here be nerdery and hackery that will be more valuable to future Googlers than most who would occasionally read these thoughts. Also, a Mac and Transmit by Panic are here used.¹

Recently, Jeff Atwood ran into a problem. His site, Coding Horror, suffered a catastrophic and complete data loss. Everything was lost—entries, photos, databases, you name it. For anyone who runs a site, this is a problem. He was able to recover most of his data from loyal readers, Google's cache, and his own, sparse backups.

But most of us don't have the benefit of devout followers making backups of our sites so they can read them offline, print copies to line their mattress with and save us in case of an emergency. So this is what I do, server side²:

• Set up two folders at the root (one level above the document root, which is likely public_html) of my server: one for database backups and the other for entire site backups.
• Create two files at the root of my server: one with a script to back up my site and another with a script to back up my databases.
• Run each of these via cron (so they'll run on their own, once per day, at a specified time) at odd times during off-peak hours—say, the first at 2:37am and the second at 3:06am.

At this point, we've got a compressed file in the format of /backup/daynumber.tar.gz (i.e. /backup/30.tar.gz or /backup/14.tar.gz). So naturally, as we circle around to a new month, files are overwritten to save space. So you've got 30 days of backups for your entire site and for your databases, right there. But they're still on the server, which is vulnerable to spilled soup, mean people and the terrorists. So let's move them local.

• Create two folders on my personal computer: one for database backups and the other for entire site backups. (Sound familiar?)
• Create a Transmit favorite to connect directly to each of the folders on your server, and name them something simple. ("DB Backups" and "Site Backups" for me.)
• Fire up Automator, and in Library > Internet, choose "Synchronize Files" next to the little Transmit icon.
• Choose my Transmit favorite of database backups, set the sync direction to "Download," sync method to "Update," and the appropriate local folder as my "Local path."
• Save the workflow as a file somewhere memorable and repeat the process for entire site backups.
• Create a new iCal event with an alarm sometime after your daily server backup mentioned above.
• For the alarm action, choose "Open file," and select your Automator workflow for database backups. Create a second event and alarm for entire site backups.

Then, in 10 rather convoluted and confusing steps, you'll have an email alert each morning to let you know if you backed up successfully. I also changed the subject of the email it sends me to let me know whether it succeeded or failed, and I have Gmail automatically archive successes so only failures get through to my inbox.

So that's that. I'll open comments on this article as well so anyone can add, subtract or call me an idiot. Oh, also, I'd love to hear anything different you're doing with other setups.

Great leaders are grateful. Some of the men and women in my life (many without any online presence to link to, so this certainly isn't a technological point) who have influenced me the most share a common characteristic: they're incredibly gracious and appreciative. They affirm. They give. They thank.

But why?

Great leaders appreciate the investment of others, which helped them get where they are. They're not hopelessly nostalgic, but they're insightful enough to know they couldn't have gotten here alone. They're grateful for the muses on their journey. Great leaders are also famously prescient. They understand what's coming, and they're grateful for those that will help them get there.

But more than anything, great leaders understand people. Before delivering a new product, moving a non-profit towards viability, or beginning a new venture, they understand humanity—needs, desires, feelings. Understanding those things, they deliver products or services that meet needs or desires, and the most successful leaders deliver experiences with positive feelings. The truly astute know their co-laborers, peers, superiors, and team members have the same needs, desires, and feelings as their consumers. And they know their praise, in whatever form it comes, fuels them towards a common mission.

And when you grasp that, this naturally follows: in the long term, unless you're grateful, you'll never be successful.