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Character Main

Lesser Things

I recently read similar passages from two very different books.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, chapter 5, “The End of Time Management”:

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

Men of Valor by Robert L. Millet, chapter 2, “Have Done with Lesser Things”:

…drawing closer to my Heavenly Father, serving the people about me, and growing in gospel scholarship — along with devoting as much time as I could to my wife, children, and extended family — were the actions that had long-term, even eternal implications. Yet in reality I had spent the bulk of my time the previous week shuffling from one … activity to another.

More than once my friend and mentor, Robert J. Matthews, said to me, “Robert L., be careful not to spend your life laboring in secondary causes.”

…”have done with lesser things.” Lesser things do not satisfy. They do not fill the hunger of the human soul. They do not bring peace and rest. Lesser things do not build the family unit, bring harmony into the home, or fortify relationships that are intended to be everlasting.

Until yesterday, I thought the phrase “have done with lesser things” referred to frugality or resourcefulness, like “make due with less.” But these five words, in a bit of antiquated style, mean “be done with lesser things.”

Categories
Blogging Main WordPress

Market segmentation on your blog

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Seth Godin has suggested that you treat new visitors to your blog differently from returning users. New users should be given context and background about you, and perhaps be invited to become permanent subscribers to your blog. Returning users should have quick access to your new material.

You could also consider turning off ads for your longtime subscribers. On one hand, you’ll forego ad revenue from a large group of people and prevent your advertisers from targeting a known group, but on the other hand, it might deepen the loyalty and increase the satisfaction of your biggest fans. Or you could do the opposite. Personally, I like the first more than the second.

For WordPress users, I wrote a WordPress plugin to do simple market segmentation. It was already the most visited page on my blog but traffic recently jumped with a link from the namesake last week. One blogger even created a graphic for it. Thanks.

Do you do any market segmentation on your blog or website? Where do you make the split, and how is the experience different?

Categories
Main United States

Do you promise allegiance?

This week one of my Brazilian mission companions became a U.S. citizen. I attended his naturalization ceremony in downtown SLC, and though it wasn’t fancy, I found it to be a very patriotic event. Here’s how it went down:

“All rise”. Judge David Sam entered. United States District Court for the District of Utah was now in session. Girl scouts brought out the colors, led us in the Pledge of Allegiance, and then we sang the National Anthem.

Then 189 persons from 54 countries rose and repeated the following oath:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.” (via. see also.)

These 189 foreign-born persons were now American citizens, “just as American,” in Judge Sam’s words, “as any direct descendent of the Founding Fathers.”

Judge Sam let several people in the group stand and offer a few remarks about becoming U.S. citizens. A man from Mexico stood and said how thankful he was for economic opportunities, freedom of religion, and schools. A Muslim woman from Bosnia said she was thankful to be able to practice her religion and wear a veil (hijab). A man from Peru said “we can do anything here” and “we must love this country.” An El Salvadorian said “this is a promised land for everybody.” And a Venezuelan said “I’ve been American at heart for a long time.”

Judge Sam said his own parents were immigrants from Romania, saving and sacrificing to come to America. They changed their last name to Sam (like Uncle Sam) on arrival. Judge Sam then told the new citizens:

I am your servant. It is my duty and responsibility to see that you are treated equally. One of my favorite comments was from a Somalian man a few years ago. He said “If I were to become a German citizen, I’d still never be German. If I were to become a Russian citizen, I’d still never be Russian. But today I am an American.”

Freedom isn’t free. It will slip away if we don’t protect it. It needs to be protected by all who enjoy it. Let freedom ring in your life. Understand the blessings of freedom. Be law-abiding, God-fearing citizens. God bless the U.S. and all of you.

New citizens renounce allegiance to their country of birth and promise to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. If you were born in the United States, you don’t take the formal oath. But do you promise the same?

Categories
Main Security Tips

Choose a good password

You’ve heard over and over the importance of choosing a good password, but we all seem to keep the same bad habits. Roger Grimes analyzed 34,000 real passwords and discovered some interesting trends:

  • As expected, English vowels are by far the most frequent occurring password symbols.
  • [In passwords with numbers,] the number 1 appeared 45 percent of the time, followed by the number 2 (22 percent.)
  • The exclamation point was the most commonly used non-alphanumeric character.
  • Words, colors, years, names, sports, hobbies, and music groups were very popular.
  • Other popular words include: angel, baby, boy, girl, big, monkey, me, and the.
  • Names of sports — golf, football, soccer, and so on — were as popular as professional sports teams and college team nicknames

Drawing on this study and other wisdom, here are some tips for choosing a good, secure password. Read #8 if you don’t read them all:

  1. Don’t write your password on a sticky note attached to your monitor (or “hidden” under your keyboard.)
  2. Don’t choose anything obvious like your birthday, spouse name, etc.
  3. Don’t choose any single word you can find in a dictionary.
  4. Don’t use the same password on a secure site (like your bank) as on an insecure site (like a mailing list.) If someone discovers your password because it was emailed to you from an insecure site, you don’t want your bank account to be vulnerable. Ideally you’d keep a different password for each site.
  5. If a digit is required in your password, don’t simply append a “1” or a “2”. If a symbol is required, don’t simply append an exclamation point.
  6. Learn which channels are secure and which are not. Generally HTTP, FTP, and VNC are not secure, while HTTPS, and SSH are secure. Don’t use secure passwords on insecure channels. (Look for the padlock in your browser.)
  7. Pick a password you can remember, so you won’t have to write it down.
  8. Pick a LONGER password. Think of a phrase or sentence or haiku, not a word. Password length is more important than symbols or numbers. For a security expert like Mr. Grimes, a 6-9 character password with “complexity” (symbols, numbers) is fairly easy to break, while a password with 15+ characters is almost impossible to break.

Eventually, we may be using our fingerprints or some other biometric procedure, but until then, choose a good password.

Categories
Blogging Mac Main

5 ingredients for a do-it-yourself podcast

At work I’m the “producer” of a podcast, and here are the tools we use:

1. Apple Garageband — Found on every Mac, this free app makes it easy to record and combine tracks, add effects and art, and create podcasts.

2. Logitech USB Headset — This isn’t a professional mike, but it works fine for us and it’s comfortable to wear and use.

3. WordPress — The best open source blogging platform. You’ll need web hosting and your own domain to install this.

4. PodPress — A powerful WordPress plugin that turns your blog into a podcasting platform. This plugin takes care of all the nitty gritty (podcast enclosures), offers an embedded Flash player for easy listening, and provides stats.

5. Mime Config — If you plan to publish “enhanced” podcasts for iTunes, chances are your server isn’t configured to recognize the “m4a” format. Install this WordPress plugin and add the mime type “m4a = audio/mpeg”.

What other tools are you using for creating podcasts?