So, 2012 is upon us, hey?

After jotting down my thoughts on 2011, I really wanted to spend some time looking ahead to this new year. In fact, I’ve been downright excited to write this post. So then, it figures that I start having problems with the site that I have to address before I can keep going.

First, the site went down… again. This was a fairly common occurrence this past year, and I don’t want to risk it happening again. So, I switched servers, which took most of last week. I figure there is no reason to slap together a new post and try to drive traffic to it if the site doesn’t work. So I waited.

Then, yesterday, I notice that MailChimp had screwed up my signup forms for The “I Can” Movement. After hassling with customer service, I decided to switch over to Aweber, which I am still in the process of doing.

So, after all of this, I am ready to start some serious writing, and the site and community should be happier for it (and if the signup form on the right side of this page looks bland, just be patient. I’ll get it jazzed up soon).

So, I find a great exercise is to sit down and figure out what you plan on doing this year. After discovering all the cool stuff I was able to accomplish last year, I was even more excited to put this list together. There’s a great mix of travel, professional, and personal stuff (much of it from my bucket list) on here that should make 2012 a rousing success. If you keep up with what I’m doing here or elsewhere, then here’s what you have to look forward to:

I’m going to totally dominate Europe this year.

This is the big one. In October, my wife and I are going to celebrate our two-year anniversary by flying into London and doing a giant figure-8 across the continent. We’ll be visiting my old college roommate in Scotland, as well as hitting up Germany, Ireland, England, Rome, Paris, and Austria. It’s going to be the trip of a lifetime.

After visiting Taiwan a few years ago, I’m doubly excited to hit another continent, as well as immerse myself in the cultures of the world – and the food!

Attend a Packer game while they’re good.

I’m from Wisconsin. That means I’m a Green Bay Packer fan. They only lost one game all season this year, and as of this writing, they are defending Super Bowl champions. In other words, they’re good. I plan on heading up to historic Lambeau Field to enjoy it in person next season.

Make $50,000/year.

This is the next income goal on my bucket list, and I think it’s very doable this year. It’s going to take a lot of effort on my part, but I look forward to the challenge. As I expand my business, this should become more and more of a possibility. I did not come close to this income level in 2011, but I am poised to make a run for it if I play my cards right in 2012.

Get 1,000 Twitter followers.

It’s not the be-all, end-all in terms of influence, but I do feel that having over 1K followers on Twitter will really give me the opportunity to spread the word about what I’m doing, as well as connect with more awesome people. One thousand is a completely arbitrary number, but it’s a big one for me. As of this writing, I’m sitting at just under 800.

Play guitar at a performance level.

I don’t have clear parameters on this yet. I’d like to record myself playing, or even hit up an Open Mic night somewhere. I love playing guitar, but I’m generally pretty bad at it because I don’t practice enough. This is the year I dedicate myself to the craft so that I can be at a level that I can be proud of for a change.

Attend a bloggers’ conference.

There are lots of these available, but I’m headed to Portland, Oregon in July of 2012 to attend the World Domination Summit. It’s much more than a bloggers’ conference, but it will give me the chance to connect with so many more like-minded individuals.

Take a train somewhere.

I’ve never really been on a train (Disney World doesn’t count). We’ll be taking it around Europe, so this should take care of that.

Run a half marathon.

Yep, last year I ran a 5K independently. Twice. Now, I’m taking it up a notch. I planned on working on this sometime later in the summer, but a friend of mine convinced me to sign up for one on May 5th. So I guess this one will be crossed off a lot sooner than I had originally planned!

Write more epic stuff.

One reason I really enjoyed the 2011 review is because I was able to write a much longer post. That’s the goal this year. I find that it will be better for me as a writer, and it will force me to come up with stuff that you guys will enjoy and be able to learn from. In my head, I’ve got this post from Corbett Barr over at Think Traffic stuck in my head.

Implement “No TV Tuesday”.

Last night, my wife and I had our first full-scale “No TV Tuesday”. We have struggled with leaving the TV on and watching “just one more” episode of something, effectively killing our desire and resolve to get stuff done. Instead of leaning on that, we are now actively not watching television on Tuesdays. The result? We got a lot done, and we spent time playing a board game instead, which was actually a lot of fun.

TV isn’t evil. As I’ve written in the past, I love TV. But it can control your life if you’re not careful. When I was hanging out with Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus when they were in town last month, Joshua said that he didn’t own a TV, but only because he knew he would watch it constantly.

It’s not as simple as saying something is “good” or “bad”. It’s about recognizing your own weaknesses and shortcomings, and taking steps to fight them. That’s what “No TV Tuesdays” are about for us.

Migrate from SEO writing into full-time direct mail copywriting.

SEO writing has gotten me out of the office job, and for that I am grateful. However, it’s not a very challenging or fulfilling occupation. With direct mail, I’ll be able to make a lot more money and work less, creating more freedom in my life while we pay down our debts. I’ve  igotten my foot in the door at several companies, but I have to make sure I perform to the highest level so that I can establish myself. Once that happens, I can ditch the SEO work. It’s a switch that I’ve been waiting to make for 6 years.

50 Guest Posts in 2012

According to Caleb Wojcik of Pocket Changed, I’ve got a little competition for this one. The only way I can grow the audience here and at HustleLife Magazine is by getting my name out there, which means I have to make guest posting a priority. That’s what this year is all about. So I’m hoping that I will be able to knock out 50 guest posts on various sites to really start gaining some traction!

Smarter consumption of information.

A lot of people feel that there is an information overload in today’s online world, and I would be inclined to agree. But I don’t think that we necessarily need to cut it all out. In fact, you can limit your information overload by having a better system of managing it. Some people will use different tools, but here is what I have:

• My Kindle + Readability. With my Kindle, I can read books anywhere – quickly and easily. This is great, but the real power of the Kindle comes from combining it with Readability. With the combination, I can find long-form content online and send it to my Kindle with one click for later reading. So instead of managing magazine subscriptions for my long-form content, I just keep my Kindle. One of my favorite places to find great content that I can read is LongForm.org, which allows me to click “Send to Kindle” and be done with it.
• Google Reader. I keep trying other tools, but Reader still can’t be beat for clean and simple feed reading. I manage a lot of feeds from Google Reader, but I don’t read everything within their interface. Sure, I will if I have the time, but if I want to batch my stuff and save it for later, I use…
• ifttt and Evernote. With these two tools, I can save links from Google Reader and Twitter that I want to review later, eliminating my need to constantly consume information. With ifttt, as I’ve written about before, I can star items in Google Reader that will go into my “Links to Review” notebook in Evernote. Then, when I see an interesting tweet or link on Twitter I want to look into, I just “favorite” the tweet and it is sent to the same notebook in Evernote. Then, I can just read them at my leisure on my…
• Netbook. With my new netbook (see the goofy picture above), I now have the laptop I’ve always wanted/needed. I can use it for quick access to links and content that I want to review, and I can use it for portable working (or blogging – which I’m doing on it now).

Having an organized system of digesting content allows me to read on my own time, where and when I am comfortable. Then, I am able to weed out the important stuff and keep my brain learning new interesting and valuable information without becoming overloaded. Oh, and the entire system uses free services, which is awesome.

Okay, what about you?

What do you want to do this year? Let’s chat in the comments section!

The result was an interesting group of experiences, news, apps, and a lot of rambling nonsense. So, in a nutshell, here’s what 2011 looked like for me:

I completed a full year of self-employment, and I’m poised for growth.

After quitting my job in 2010, I was able to make it through all of 2011 with a fairly consistent income, which was fantastic on many levels. I was afforded freedom and flexibility that you just don’t get with an office job, and it’s been wonderful for my marriage. In July, I was able to further my copywriting expertise and I am now cracking into the direct mail market, which is one of the most competitive and lucrative markets available to copywriters. I’m gaining some traction, so 2012 is fixing to be an exciting year professionally!

The Month of Brogan was upon us in the spring.

I kicked around other names: BroganMania, BroganFest 2011, etc. In the end, I almost met Chris Brogan, and because of that, I had a huge surge in traffic in March. Using that experience, I was able to get a guest post up on ProBlogger, which led to a crap-ton more traffic. I learned that Chris is a very giving fellow, and I was (and still am) very thankful that he shared my story with his thousands of readers. Now, I just have to actually meet the guy.

Wisconsin sports in 2011 experienced unprecedented success.

For the first time in almost three decades, the Milwaukee Brewers won the pennant. They made it to the National League Championship Series, and came within a game of making it to the World Series. As big of a bummer as losing was, the truth is that baseball in Milwaukee hasn’t been this fun in a very long time. On the football front, our beloved Green Bay Packers not only won the Super Bowl, but they only lost one game in 2011 (stupid Kansas City Chiefs!). They dominated the game all year, and it was so much fun to be a part of it. Now, we’re pulling for a repeat championship. Being a Wisconsin sports fan was truly a good time all year, after so many decades of pitiful teams.

I wrote some pretty good stuff here.

Here is a listing of ten of my favorite posts of the past year:

• 20 Average Goals from Extraordinary Achievers
• Dust Yourself Off and Keep Fighting
• Go Home and Get Better
• “Get mean and go do it.”
• Use Your Pain to Fuel Your Fire (a tribute to a lost friend)
• “The hard is what makes it great.”
• 34 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me
• 7 Reasons Why On-Demand TV Kicks Cable/Satellite TV Square in the Teeth
• Six Lessons About Hard Work and Persistence from My Six-Year Old Nephew
• Stop Complaining and Make Change

And you enjoyed some of it, too.

Here are the top 5 most-read posts this year, according to Google Analytics:

• 20 Average Goals from Extraordinary Achievers
• 9 Reasons Why Being a Nerd is Awesome
• How Almost Meeting Chris Brogan Led to Personal Growth
• 4 Movies to Fight Your Feeling of Hopelessness
• Why You’re Not Getting That Promotion/Guy/Girl/Life

After a ten-year hiatus, I returned to competitive distance running (and ditched my running shoes).

I signed myself up for a 5K race in May, and completed it in decent time, crossing something off my bucket list (see below). Then, after announcing my retirement, I signed up for another race in September – and ran it barefoot. Now, I’ve added a few more running-related items to my bucket list, and I plan to run a half-marathon in 2012. I’m loving every minute of it.

I started my bucket list, and I crossed things off like a madman.

• Stay at a Disney resort (October 2011)
• Tour the White House (September 2011)
• Take Amanda to Disney World as a couple (October 2011)
• Run a 5K independently. (5/21/2011 – 25 minutes, 10 seconds)
• Get 100 HustleLife subscribers. (October 21, 2011)
• Ride a horse. (October 21, 2011)
• Take a hot air balloon ride. (October 21, 2011)
• Go jet skiing. (August 13th, 2011 – Castle Rock Campground)
• Brew a drinkable beer. (July 2011 – Thank you, Mr. Beer!)
• Run a 5K barefoot (9/10/11 – 27:04)

My gadget crush on the Kindle grew, and I read some awesome books.

Last Christmas, my wife bought me a Kindle (now called the “Kindle Keyboard”). It has rapidly become my favorite gadget. I love reading anyway, and now I don’t have to hold open a big book or read in awkward positions. Instead, I can just focus on the reading, which I love. A few months ago, I discovered the usefulness of my Kindle email address, where I can send documents to read on my Kindle. If I see a cool article on the Web that is really doggone long, I can send it to my Kindle to read in bed later for free. Also, I signed up for a weekly article from SendMeAStory.com (a similar service is Delivereads), and they send me a cool feature article (usually topical) from a publication of the last 25 or so years, formatted for my Kindle. I just flip on my Kindle and it downloads! Add to that the free books to Amazon Prime members at the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and this gadget has become my #1 source for content in the past year. Love. It.

A few of my favorite books this year include:

• Accidental Genius by Mark Levy
• Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• Do The Work by Steven Pressfield
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pautsch
• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

I failed to start a few series of blog posts.

I love blog post series, so I wanted to start some of my own. Given that this site focuses on small goals, I tried to create a list of 237 small goals. Unfortunately, nobody really seemed all that interested in the list, and it died a quiet death at #14. The same is true of the Cool 30, which was a Thanksgiving-related series I started. I didn’t make it a priority, and it died. Both of these are pretty public failures, but hopefully I will learn from them when I put together my next series effort.

Some awesome connections were made, and I met up with quite a few people as well.

This was the year that I finally was able to pound the pavement and meet with some really cool people that I had been following for years. I met Milwaukee restaurant guru Joe Sorge earlier this year on the same day that I shook hands and chatted with author and respected entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. Impossible-doer Joel Runyon moved to Milwaukee for a few months, and I had the privilege of getting to know him while he was here, and he connected me with a ton of other interesting people as well, including Josh and Ryan over at The Minimalists just last night. I was also able to meet up with J. Money of Budgets Are Sexy and Love Drop (see below) when I visited Washington, D.C., which was a load of fun as well. Sean Ogle of Location 180 started a new community called Location Rebel, and I was honored to be interviewed as an expert on building a location independent business, which also gave me the chance to meet Sean (via Skype). Through HustleLife (also see below), I have been able to connect with new people every single month, which has been incredibly rewarding.

I did some pretty awesome traveling.

From touring the White House in Washington, D.C. to strolling down Main Street, USA in Walt Disney World, I got to see some cool sights of the country. Add to that my buddy’s bachelor party in Chicago, and I got around a little bit this year!

HustleLife debuted.

In May of this year, I launched HustleLife Magazine – a free digital magazine dedicated to helping people achieve their dreams by rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. With interviews and other resources, it has become one of my favorite projects to work on. I’ve been very blessed to interview plenty of great people this year, and I’m looking forward to talking with many more. In October, the subscriber count grew to over 100 people, which is really humbling and way awesome.

Some cool apps and online services became essential tools in my life.

Don’t tell me the internet is a waste of time – I’ve discovered plenty of great tools and resources that I use every day:

• XBMC (XBox Media Center) – This is on our home theater PC, where we stream lots of shows and movies to our television in a slick interface.
• Netflix – Yeah, it got some bad press this year, but it is a serious resource for great TV shows, movies, and a ton of brilliant documentaries. And a lot of the content is in HD, which is just a bonus. It’s the best $8 a month that we spend.
• Google Reader – I tried Feedly, I really did. But Google Reader continues to be a clean, simple, and useful resource for my blog reading.
• ifttt – Many of these tools are run through ifttt, which lets you connect different web services with hundreds of uses. It, for example, allows me to automatically save certain items into my Evernote account for later reading with one click. A very powerful and underutilized tool.
• Evernote – Post ideas, magazine plans, ideas for stuff I can do later, future projects, current projects, recipes, blog posts to read, gift ideas, shopping lists, quotes, book excerpts, store hours. You get the idea?
• Amazon Prime – We used the trial to quickly get a wedding present for my buddy and his wife. At the end of the 30 days, we decided to drop the under-$80 for a year’s worth of the service. We’re never looking back. Prime gives us access to the Kindle library (from above), as well as unlimited two-day shipping on anything Amazon keeps in its warehouse. Virtually all of our Christmas shopping was done through Amazon this year, and we are even starting to order grocery items from there to save money. They even have a streaming library of TV shows and movies (still small, though) included in the service.
• Google Music – My new favorite way to store my music. With my Android phone, I can just stream my entire library to my phone through the data connection instead of carrying around another MP3 player or having to sync devices.
• Twitter – Networking made simple. Most of this review would be impossible to achieve without Twitter. Seriously.
• Endomondo – I don’t run without Endomondo anymore. It got me through my race training, and I plan on using it for my half-marathon training next year.
• Google Maps – With the turn-by-turn Navigation feature, I don’t get lost anymore. Heck, I used it to navigate the public transit and walk to destinations in DC. Must have, all the time.

My fellow bloggers knocked it out of the park this year.

• The Art of Nonconformity – Chris Guillebeau just kept doing his thing, inspiring a kerbillion people while he traveled the world. Favorite post this year: Second Chances
• 11 Points – A hilarious series of “Top 11″ lists. Yeah, that’s really all it is, but it’s really funny and cleverly written. Favorite post this year: 11 Worst Movie Posters of the 90s
• Advanced Riskology – Tyler Tervooren takes a really smart approach to risk, and it allows him to do things that others are afraid to do. Favorite post this year: 9 Tricks to Avoid Becoming a Mistrusted Hypocrite
• Blog of Impossible Things – After saying so many nice things about Joel, he’d probably be offended if I didn’t include him. Seriously though, Joel has accomplished so much in the past couple years, and he’s a very cool dude to know. Favorite post this year: Choose Doing
• Lifehacker – Half of my life is based on Lifehacker. Full of insanely useful tips every day, it is my #1 source for information. Favorite post this year: 50 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For
• Location 180 – Sean Ogle, as mentioned before, is killing it with great business advice here. Plus, in his travels, he occasionally has some gems for life advice too. Favorite post this year: Inquiring Minds
• Nerd Fitness – Talking to Steve Kamb was one of the most fun interviews I did all year. His site takes a “nerd” approach to fitness, and he has uncovered some interesting stuff. His posts are always well-researched and thorough, and they are a lot of fun to read too. Favorite post this year: Simplify the **** Out of Everything
• Sensophy – I think Jacob Sokol is awesome. If nothing else, I want his office walls. I’ve chatted with him a couple times this year, and he is truly dedicated to finding his way in the world. Favorite post this year: 3 Things That Optimistic People Do Differently
• The Art of Manliness – A perennial favorite, I love what Brett McKay is doing here. With AoM, he is helping guys understand what it really means to be a man, without the stupid barbarism or the foofiness that comes with today’s guy. Old-fashioned and respectful – that’s what it’s about. Favorite post this year: Lose With Dignity. Celebrate With Grace. (Part II)

Love Drop was one of the most fulfilling moments of my entire life.

I met J. Money in DC as stated above, and he mentioned his business partner, Nate. Nate was from Milwaukee, and they ran a cool thing called Love Drop – where they raise funds for a needy family every month and then do a big “love drop” of gifts to help them right the ship. So I started following Nate on Twitter. The next thing you know, Nate’s looking for a family in Milwaukee to do a drop in December. I connected Nate with my former pastor, who operates a church in a rather needy area of Milwaukee. Diomi and Nallee were selected for Love Drop’s December push, and I was invited to join them when they bestowed the gifts on the family.

Watching Nallee try to comprehend that the piles of gifts were all theirs, or watching Diomi and her children embrace in tears when it’s announced that they are getting two new beds and a washer and dryer (they had been doing laundry in the sink and line drying in their apartment) were hard for me to sit through without losing it myself. Among thousands in gift cards and food, Diomi received tons of new dress clothes and a phone so that she can go to job interviews, and career coaching and counseling for free. Nallee, who had one school uniform and no socks (in winter – in Wisconsin), got plenty of socks, and five new uniforms. To be a part of helping a really needy family get some help is something I’m going to hold with me for the rest of my life.

It was announced that Arrested Development is returning for a new run of episodes and a movie.

The new season will be filmed and released exclusively through Netflix. It was officially the best year ever.

I hope your 2011 was as awesome as mine was. Next week, let’s get together and plan out what we’re going to do in 2012! Happy New Year!

This is part of an ongoing series of posts this month called The Cool 30.

Some think it’s useless. Some think it’s a waste of time. Some think that there’s nothing worthwhile on it.

I respectfully disagree.

In fact, it’s saved me money. It’s helped me launch a digital magazine. It’s even gotten me featured in a business community (affiliate link there). It’s Twitter.

Twitter is known for being a place where celebrities go to say stupid things that get them in trouble. That’s fine. On the other hand, I use it to quickly communicate with friends, follow some very entertaining people, and network like crazy with people that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. For example, I was on my honeymoon reading a book called The Art of Nonconformity (aff. link) by Chris Guillebeau. I found a typo, so I pulled out my phone and sent him a tweet to him, just letting him know that he might want to get it corrected. He responded the same day, letting me know they had already caught that one and fixed it for the next release.

Now, if you’re reading Harry Potter and you see a typo, can you just pick up your phone and get in touch with J.K. Rowling to let her know? Nope. Twitter has given me the power to network all over the place – and it’s even had a noticeable impact on this site. Plus, it’s freaking easy to use, and I love getting in touch with my own fans on there as well (so say “hi!”).

It saves me money, connects me with new people, and is really easy to use – pretty cool! Here’s a guide to getting started.

Keeping things in the cloud is a godsend, pure and simple.

Yeah, there are sometimes a few hiccups here and there, but think about this: ten years ago, when your computer crashed, you might have been out of your email for a week or more, depending on your resources/finances. Today, when your computer crashes, you can still grab your email on your phone, or you can hop on another computer and access it through a web browser.

The opposition to cloud-based services is what if the server crashes? In other words, if I keep all of my information on Google’s computers, what happens when their computer goes down?

Well, Google spends a sizable amount of money on their computers, and they keep backups of everything. I’d much rather rely on Google’s state-of-the-art computers, which cost thousands of dollars, rather than on my four-and-a-half year old Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought for $500 or so when it came out.

The cloud is changing everything that we do, and we don’t even realize it. My favorite? Publishing. This blog is completely run by the cloud. I have backups emailed to me every week, but that’s about it. It is 100% run in the cloud. I’m even writing this in a web browser. Thanks to the cloud, I am publishing the 7th issue of my own digital magazine, an ongoing project that I’ve always wanted to do. My books are stored in the cloud.

We use the cloud for communication. I use Google Voice for my business communication, Facebook to communicate with most of my friends, and Twitter to network with and meet new people in various industries.

The cloud houses most of my entertainment. Whereas I spent my younger years meticulously recording TV shows onto video tapes (remember those?), so that I would never be short of entertainment, I now use Netflix for much of my entertainment, along with Hulu, and I read a number of hilariously entertaining and thoughtful blogs.

I house my thoughts in the cloud with Evernote, I keep my day-to-day life in Google Calendar, and I even used the cloud to complete a correspondence course on direct response copywriting to expand my business. We manage our finances in the cloud with ClearCheckbook, and I can travel to new destinations and enjoy classic moments from movies and television with YouTube. You can even expand your knowledge about almost any subject with Wikipedia and a Google search.

The cloud houses your information, teaches you new stuff, keeps you entertained, and organizes your life. Heck, the cloud even makes me money every month. That is so cool.

If you are trying to reach a goal of yours, but feel like you don’t have the time, then it’s time to get more productive. But there are endless blog posts written on productivity – from systems like Getting Things Done, perhaps. But those all generally fall under the category of “work productivity”: trying to get things done that will move you closer to your goals. There’s nothing wrong with them at all, and you definitely need to be productive when you are working.

But there is also the little matter of wasting your personal time. Today’s average web surfer is trying to do a lot of things with a lot of different services. For example, some services that I use most often are:

• Twitter
• Google Reader
• Google Photos (Picasa)
• Evernote
• Facebook
• Gmail

With so many services to manage, I need to work with them as efficiently as possible to keep my time from spiraling out of control. Enter If This Then That.

If This Then That (or IFTTT) is a web service that links these different services together however you want them to, simply and quickly. I first discovered this tool from a post on Lifehacker called, “How to Supercharge All Your Favorite Webapps with ifttt”. There are loads of different uses for this tool, with services like the ones listed above, as well as Foursquare, Dropbox, RSS Feeds, Instagram, Last.fm, and others.

Once you link up the different services you use, you can create “tasks” that tell the services to do something when you take an action. For example, when somebody tags a photo of me on Facebook, that photo is automatically grabbed and uploaded to Google Photos for additional backup. When I click “Share” in Google Reader on a post I like, it will automatically be tweeted. There are seemingly endless possibilities, and the interface is very easy to use.

If you are unsure of where to get started, they have a “recipes” page, with tasks that others have created. Just browsing through those items can get you going. Here are the ones I currently have set up:

• If I am tagged in a Facebook photo, it is uploaded to Google Photos immediately
• If I star an item in Google Reader to read later, it is sent to Evernote as a new note in a notebook called “Links to Review”
• If I mark a tweet as a “favorite” for later viewing, it also is sent to Evernote as a new note in the same notebook (this means that links I save are now stored in one central location from both Google Reader and Twitter)
• If I share an item in Google Reader, a tweet is automatically sent with the link to share with my followers
• If I upload photos or a photo album to Facebook, then the photo(s) are automatically uploaded to Google Picasa

This is just the beginning of how you can use this tool. Other ways include:

• Receiving a text when it’s going to rain
• Sending automatic direct messages to new followers on Twitter (DON’T do this one though – it’s really annoying!)
• Save all Instagram photos to Dropbox
• Put Foursquare check-ins on your Google Calendar
• Sync Instagram photos to a Facebook album
• Receive a text alert when something specific pops up on Craigslist

…and so on. It’s a free tool, and it has eliminated many steps that I used to have to take on a daily basis. Do you use IFTTT? If not, try it out and play around for a bit. If so, what’s your favorite “recipe”? Share in the comments!

One of my favorite posts to run into as the weekend begins is The Simple Dollar’s “Ten Pieces of Inspiration”. It’s a relatively recent series where Trent lists various things in his life that keep him going, from videos to stuff his kids do and so on. It’s fun, and it helps me find new things to inspire me as well.

So I thought for a minute: what inspires me on a regular basis? And more importantly, where can you turn for inspiration? When you are working towards a goal, you may reach a point where it seems like nothing is pushing you anymore. This can be a dangerous spot to be in, because everybody needs to recharge their batteries. Get some more juice out of your batteries by looking around you for inspiration. Here are some places I go:

My wife

I’m not just sucking up because she reads this (hi honey!). When my wife walks through my office and sees that I’m a little frustrated, she likes to remind me how proud she is of me for working hard. She picks up extra hours at the hospital, most recently knocking out a 2:00am-7:00am shift. She was the one who told me to quit my job and go back to running a business again. She supports me and the pursuit of my dreams, and she’s along for the ride sometimes.

What about you? The best sources of inspiration are the people closest to you. You are who you hang out with. Do you surround yourself with people that push you to be better, or do you socialize with people that like to crap all over your dreams?

Twitter

Yes, I do like to spend a good amount of time conversing on Twitter. And while some people look to Twitter as a giant waste of time, others recognize it for being a place where you can socialize and network with people who are setting out to doing the same stuff you are. Looking to start a business? Get out of debt? Lose weight? Be a minimalist? These types of people are all over Twitter. You can follow a few of them and get all kinds of inspiration from the stuff they say and the links they share.

What about you? Do you have a Twitter account? If you do, are you just following celebrities? Try branching out and looking around for people who might be able to inspire you. Not only that, but it provides a great networking opportunity that can bring some serious benefits, bringing you closer to your goals.

In Treehouses and Poke The Box

I’m fascinated by the move to digital publishing and all that it offers. As a creative writer, I look forward to the opportunities that I might have to publish great content quickly and cheaply as time goes on. That’s why I subscribe to In Treehouses, which is a digital magazine devoted to the digital publishing industry. I also recently purchased Poke The Box by Seth Godin, a brilliant marketer who is now realizing the power of books in ebook form. These guys are transforming the way we look at words, while inspiring us along the way. Their work is what is fueling HustleLife Magazine, my free digital magazine project that launches next month.

What about you? Look long and hard at your goals. What people are out there doing what you want to be doing? Are they doing it differently? What can you learn from others that can fuel your passions and goals?

My Kindle

In the same vein as Poke The Box (which I read on my Kindle), I’ve got a handful of books on my Kindle that have been incredibly inspiring to me. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is a beast of a book and I’ve been working on it for over a month (only about 35% through it), but I’m continually amazed by the resolve and work ethic of this guy. I’ll be writing a post about it when I’m done reading it in 2016. Another one is Decision Points by former President George W. Bush. Politics aside, Bush explains his actions and shows that there are plenty of sides to an issue, and it’s not as cut and dry as people make it out to be. He also shows that there is honor in admitting when you screw up, which he does (though not as much as certain people would like).

What about you? If you aren’t reading books, get going. There are people out there that can light a serious fire under your butt when you need it. Start with some good, well-written biographies and autobiographies. Go the free route and make it easy on yourself.

My ProBlogger post

In case you haven’t heard, I wrote a guest post last week for ProBlogger.net, one of the most popular blogging sites on the internet. It sent a tidal wave of traffic my way, but even better, The “I Can” Movement is boasting an 89% increase in subscriptions, and HustleLife Magazine is steadily growing – without a single issue being released. I gained about 70 new followers on Twitter and have had hundreds of new conversations. The post was tweeted over 475 times as of this writing, and it sits with 134 comments. The fruits of that post are there, and very obvious. I’ve enjoyed getting involved in so many conversations with so many smart and active people out there. Seeing these kinds of results are great for a guy who has been blogging for a few years now.

What about you? Where can you see the fruits of your labor? I bet they’re there, even if you can’t see them right away. Look at the results of your hard work. Look harder. You might be surprised, but they are there. Maybe they haven’t transformed your life yet, but celebrate them.

As you can see, there are plenty of places to go for inspiration. Need more? Start clipping notes in Evernote, follow some blogs, or watch some videos on TED. Inspiration is everywhere, you just need to find where yours is.

You know him: That Guy always forgets stuff. He’s always got that great idea, but never follows up on it. You make plans, but he forgets. He intends to do all this great stuff, but “never has the time”.

That Guy isn’t a jerk. He means well. He’s very thoughtful. But he’s one of those, “His heart’s in the right place, but his mind just isn’t”-type people. But for as nice as That Guy is, everybody’s annoyed by him.

(And of course, if you’re female, you might be That Gal.)

While being organized isn’t the be-all, end-all to this problem, it can certainly be a vast improvement to what you used to be. Getting yourself organized does a lot of pretty awesome things for you:

• It shows maturity to those around you. Yeah, you need to start acting your age. Kids forget stuff. That’s why teachers spent so much time when we were younger teaching us to write stuff down and keep track of whatever. Like everything else we did in school, we just learned enough to get the teacher off our backs. Now we’re stuck. But if you’re over the age of 17, you need to start getting organized in your life. It demonstrates that you’ve entered adulthood.
• You will actually find more time to do stuff. If you think you “don’t have time” to get organized, you’re dead wrong. I guarantee that you’ll find all sorts of time that you didn’t have before. Nowadays, I look back at my disorganized days and think, “Geez, how the heck was I so busy all the time? I didn’t do anything!” Keeping track of your time and what you are doing with it will uncover some surprises.
• People will actually want to make plans with you. Being proactive about your time will free up lots of time to spend with others, and since you’re remembering your plans now, people will be much more apt to make plans with you.
• You’ll get more stuff done. You might even be able to take on those other projects you’ve been meaning to get to! It’s like life optimization.
• You might even sleep better at night. If you’re the type whose brain can’t shut off at the end of the day because you’re so worried about this, that, and the other thing, this might be your key to getting out of it. That means you’ll be a little healthier to boot!
• Those great ideas can actually blossom into awesome projects. Now that you’ll remember your great ideas and have a central location for them, you’ll suddenly be able to develop them into stuff that could change your life!
• You might save some serious cash. A lot of wastefulness goes into things like grocery shopping and other types of spending. We’re going to start getting used to making lists!

Okay, so if we’re going to get organized, we need to make sure that it is easy to implement, doesn’t take a lot of effort to maintain, and that it takes advantage of lots of free tools that are at your disposal. While you could use a number of great tools, here are the ones that I think are most effective at getting this done:

• Set up your finances in ClearCheckbook. While ClearCheckbook is not perfect, it certainly is handy. The bulk of the internet world swears by Mint, but Mint doesn’t work with a few of my accounts, and I like to be able to manually reconcile my transactions. I feel like it keeps me on top of my finances better. So you can sign up for Mint, or you can use ClearCheckbook. Either way, you’re going to have a service that you can access from your phone (so you don’t have to carry around a checkbook anymore), and you can analyze your spending. I like ClearCheckbook for the spending limits that you can enter in, so we always have a snapshot of how we are keeping up with our monthly budget. This helps us plan our spending.
• Sign up for a Twitter account. Trust me on this. If you want to get involved with Twitter more, be my guest. But we’re using Twitter for one specific reason (see below).
• Get an Evernote account. I’ve long touted the wonders of Evernote in my daily life, and I continue to use it more and more. I use Evernote as a brain dump, where I can toss in articles that I find will be useful, organize receipts for my finances, and every little thought that I have can go into it. I have lots of different notebooks, but I set my default notebook as a “To Be Organized” notebook, which I review on a regular basis.
• Link your Evernote and your Twitter accounts for anytime notetaking. Ever out with friends and you get some brilliant idea that you won’t remember later? Or you are chatting with someone and they mention a book that you should read? When this happens to me, I can use my phone to quickly text a note into my Evernote account. You can learn how to set up your Twitter account and your Evernote account here, and now you have an insanely quick way to take down that great idea as soon as you think of it.
• Set up your Google Calendar. One of my other favorite services, Google Calendar may be one of the finest services that Google has ever put together. With Google Calendar, I have all birthdays, important dates, and things to do scheduled out, and I can have a specific event be sent to me as a reminder, either as a text message or an email, at a time of my choosing (five minutes before, one week before, 9 days before, etc.). This ensures that I won’t forget any important event. Plus, Google has added sports team schedules to it, so I’ll never miss a Packer game or a Brewer game throughout the year!

None of this should take more than an hour to set up. Once you start using it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. Plus, your friends will no longer see you as That Guy (or Gal). Instead, you’ll be reliable, you’ll know what’s going on, and you won’t feel so stressed out when trying to remember anything. What’s your favorite tool for keeping things organized?

“Because we have access to so much right in front of us, we can help spread a message to thousands of people at once with only a click.” - Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

The year is 1970. You are trying to fight for an environmental cause. You want to spread the message as far as possible. What do you do?

The Old-Fashioned Way

At the time, your resources are only as good as the people you know and the places you can go. You might pick a big-time college campus to recruit students – possibly pick up some news coverage. You could even recruit a bunch to go door-to-door and get signatures and donations from housewives.

Dedicating yourself to this cause is a noble effort. It requires sacrifice and a significant time commitment. In exchange for that, however, you get results – you raise awareness of your cause, and potentially funds to help further it. You also get deeply involved in the cause, learning more about the problems facing it and how certain groups are fighting them.

Today’s Way: The Game of Telephone

Have you ever played Telephone? There are several variations of it, but the main idea behind it is that a group of people line up, and one whispers a message in the ear of the person next to them. It passes from person to person down the line, until it reaches the other end, where the end person announces the message they received. What makes it so fun is that the end message is usually radically different from the one that was started.

Today, when we raise awareness for a cause, everybody seems to jump onto social media, particularly Facebook. Going door-to-door is out the door. In its place is an encouragement to copy-and-paste a status update or change your profile picture. Heck, at one point, it was secretly posting your bra color. The intention is to create “awareness”, but is that enough? Don’t we already know about breast cancer? Besides, the message gets so garbled up within hours that everybody is doing it, thinking they’re doing it for fun and laughs, and everyone comments on it, but nobody knows why it’s being done in the first place. It got lost in the game of Telephone everybody was playing.

This method of supporting a cause has been dubbed, “slacktivism”, and I think it’s an entirely appropriate term. Supporting a cause takes remarkably little commitment nowadays. So instead of seeing the internet as a tool that can extend our reach beyond going door-to-door, we are seeing it as a tool to support a cause by doing as little work as possible. The result? We’re not really doing anything.

The “Cartoon Character” Profile Picture

Never was this more evident than in the slacktivist cause that took over Facebook a few months ago. Gradually, you noticed more and more of your friends changing their profile pictures to cartoon characters from their childhood. Because you thought it was fun, you did the same. Everybody commented on each other’s profile pictures, but not in the way it was intended at the beginning of the game of Telephone: “I LOVED Strawberry Shortcake!”, “Animaniacs was the BEST!”, “OMG I used to watch Ninja Turtles every day!”

The reason for the trend: raising awareness of child abuse. Yeah, really effective, wasn’t it?

The Two-Fold Problem with Slacktivism

First is that game of Telephone we discussed earlier: the message gets lost quickly in favor of the fun part of it. Everybody does it and nobody knows why.

The second problem is that, even if the message does get across, what does it accomplish? Are there less child abusers in the world now? What good is awareness if it doesn’t prompt the person to do anything? Raising awareness is just like any other form of marketing: you need a clear way to respond to this awareness. Otherwise, we’re just talking about a cause and then moving on. No money is raised. No problem is solved. It just ends there – useless.

What does this have to do with goals/dreams/changes?

Some of you may be reading this and wondering how this is related to busting through personal barriers. Look, we can set all the goals we want, and we can read about it, follow websites devoted to the topic, and get involved in the cause. But unless we are actively pushing ourselves to accomplish it, it’s not going to happen.

If you are reading blogs and commenting on stuff that entertains you or makes you think, that’s great, but if that’s all you are doing, you’re wasting your time.

The internet is full of talk. That’s the core of slacktivism: it’s all talk. We all need to make sure that we are backing up that talk with action, or we are just spinning our wheels in the mud. Ditch the fear that comes from the idea that you might fail in your cause and push yourself to wholeheartedly pursue it.

When we are done posting our bra colors or we finally change our Facebook picture back to a normal one, nothing has changed. When you are done reading that blog post, connecting with that person on Twitter, or reading that book, make sure you have found a path to action, and make some real changes in response to it.

Want to support some real causes?

If you are looking to support a cause, Google their websites and find their donations page. Even $5 can make a difference. For a place to start, try Kiva or the new Love Drop.

What’s your least favorite slacktivism project that hit the Web recently?

It’s not just the computer anymore, either. Your basic smartphone can vibrate, ring, and light up any time somebody says something on Facebook or sends you an email. You can view your tweets and other messages and respond in a matter of seconds. It’s great, isn’t it? How cool is today’s world?

The answer: well, not so cool. We live in an age of instant notification, but I would argue that it’s starting to do more harm than good. It was a big step, but recently, I decided to turn off all my notifications, both on my phone and on my computer. I’ve never been happier, because shutting off all these notifications brings some awesome benefits:

1. Increased focus and productivity. This was the main reason I decided to give it a shot. Especially in my freelance writing, I need to be focused on the task at hand. Think about it: you are in the middle of something important, and the corner of your screen displays a little mail icon saying that you have a new message. Your eyes immediately drift to the corner, and the only thing on your mind is checking out the new message and clearing it out. What if it’s somebody important? What if it’s a new client? What if it’s that job offer? Instead, you pull yourself away from what you were doing to see that somebody commented on a photo that you liked on Facebook. Yee-ha. Now, you need to re-focus your brain on your task. You lose lots of time by switching gears so much. Ease some stress on your brain by allowing yourself to finish that task at hand before pulling away to your email. The best way to do that is to switch off the notifications so that you can get some work done.
2. Better manners. Imagine you are hanging out with a friend of yours, and some guy keeps following you around, getting in your ear while you guys talk, saying, “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!” Sounds annoying, doesn’t it? So why is it less annoying when it’s coming from a phone? It drives me crazy when I see friends walking through a store, not even talking to each other because they are punching buttons on their phones. Or a guy on a date with his cell phone on the table at the restaurant. News flash: we’re not that important. Unless somebody’s in the hospital or something, we don’t need to wait on our phones. And I don’t care how many articles are posted on the Web about the “new manners” and how teens are rewriting what it means to hang out – put the crap away and enjoy the company you are with.
3. Setting realistic expectations. If I get an email from a client, I may sit on it for a few hours before answering. Why? Because I don’t want the client to think that I am available 24/7 to answer their questions. The same goes for Facebook stuff; we’ve all got friends who have nothing better to do than sit on Facebook and comment on your stuff. If you instantly reply to what they are saying, they will expect that all the time, and start annoying you when you take more than 20 minutes to respond. Temper people’s expectations now and you can answer them on your own time without offending them.
4. A life. You might have a different viewpoint than me, but I want my life to be about more than what I tweet or what I do on Facebook. I want communication to go deeper than emails sometimes. In short, I want a real life and I want to enjoy it on my terms. That’s not always possible, but notifications are something I can control.

So where are the biggest problems? Here are the big three that suck up all your time:

Email

Desktop: Unless you are at work (and even there sometimes), turn off the desktop notifications. That’s the first step. This was particularly hard for me, because there is an awesome notification app for Linux called CheckGMail, which I used to get all my pop-ups. I could mark emails as “read” and hit a “reply” button to respond right away, all within a slick interface. Then I realized that I had a hard time concentrating on anything when that little Gmail icon was red. I always felt the need to empty it out. Instead: Designate regular times throughout the day for you to pop in to your email and go through messages. You will plow through them much quicker and you won’t feel like a slave to your inbox.

Mobile: One of the most desirable advantages to having a smartphone is having access to your email at all times. It’s a great benefit. But there are times throughout the day when email is unnecessary, particularly when you are with your friends. Turn it off. Instead: If you find yourself waiting in line for something or whatever, feel free to pull out the phone and check your email manually. But again, do it on your time. Don’t respond to the little ringing.

Facebook

Desktop: Desktop notifications for Facebook are available, but not as widely used. If you do have one, you are also likely to have several hundred “friends”. That means every other minute, you are getting 47 notifications for stuff that they are doing. Again, turn it off. In addition, turn off all email notifications. This was one of the best things I’ve ever done. The only notification I left on was the one for receiving Facebook messages, since they are essentially emails. The rest of it – off. Facebook’s web page has a little notification icon for activity related to you, and that’s all you really need. There’s no point in getting emails for everything. Instead: Use Facebook’s web interface and check it – again – at regular times throughout the day, if needed. Better yet: regulate Facebook down to a spare time activity. Facebook is a social place, and you do not need to be available there all the time. Your social life is not your entire life. And if you want to update your status quickly, just set up your phone to allow you to text it in. Nice and quick (but don’t turn on the text notifications!).

Mobile: Just turn it off altogether. Please. Instead: Facebook has a fine mobile site that gets the job done.

Twitter

Desktop: I hunted high and low for the best Twitter desktop app. I found several I really liked, but man, it just kept getting more and more difficult. Plus, again, when the Twitter icon lit up, I felt the urge to check the messages. Delete your Twitter desktop apps altogether. Instead: You got it – use the web interface. Twitter’s web interface is actually quite good and clean. It doesn’t have all the notifications you need, but just click around a little bit. It won’t hurt you. Now, when I want to crack off a quick tweet, I just grab my phone and text it in. Infinitely quicker and easier.

Mobile: Again, off. Instead: Twitter’s mobile web site is very nice and slick. Use it.

So that’s how I do it. Does anybody out there have any tips? Have you tried it before? Share your experiences in the comments!

Google Chrome is one of those programs that has been around for a while, but when you first tried it, you weren’t that crazy about it. It was somewhat buggy, it didn’t have any type of customization available, and you couldn’t block ads. As much as I wanted to make the switch (being the Google nutjob that I am), I couldn’t do it without a few features that just weren’t available:

1. I needed ads blocked. Period. Even most of them would be sufficient.

2. Add-ons. I want to be able to customize it.

3. A way to integrate my Google Bookmarks so that I can use them like regular bookmarks.

Then one day a couple months ago, I heard that extensions were finally hitting the mainstream. Google Chrome Extensions were a great idea, but you needed to download Chromium, which was the “guinea pig” version of Chrome (which means it doesn’t always work properly), and you had to do a lot of nerdy command-line work to get it up and running. It wasn’t pretty. Once one-click extension support came around, it was time to dive back in.

Now, a few months later, I couldn’t be happier.

Why Switch From Firefox?

Hey, Firefox is a great product. Go ahead and download it if you’d like. It’s stable and it’s popular. But Firefox is very prone to bloatedness. After a while, it takes forever to load Firefox. Chrome just pops right up. It just feels light. Check out the screencast I took below of a comparison between a Firefox start and a Chrome start and you will see what I mean. The little box that pops up in the middle is Launchy, which is my application launcher. In layman’s terms, the box pops up and I start typing the name of the program. When the box disappears, that means I hit “enter” and the application is starting. First I try opening Firefox, then Chrome. Check it out:

If you time it, Firefox takes a full 7 seconds to load up for use, and Chrome takes about 1/2 a second – that means Chrome, in this situation, is 14 times faster loading!

Interested yet? Here are my full reasons why you should give Chrome a chance:

1. Speed. See the above video.
2. Full script support without any extra extensions. One of the best plugins for Firefox is Greasemonkey, which allows you to install “scripts” that will modify a particular website for you. For example, I have a script installed that makes my Google Calendar go full-screen without any sidebars by hitting the “F12” button. But working through Greasemonkey is a little abstract for the average user. In Chrome, you can just go to a site like UserScripts.org, find one you like and click “Install”. Chrome does the rest – and if you like wasting time on Facebook with Mafia Wars and FarmVille, they have tons of scripts to make it a more awesome experience for you (if you’re into that sort of thing).
3. No restart necessary. Want to install an extension? Go for it. It’ll just show up. You don’t have to interrupt your entire browsing session to install one script or extension. They’ll just be there for you.
4. Speaking of no restarts, the whole application won’t crash on you. Say you are in Firefox and you have a problem with a website that causes your browser to close. That sucks. Now you have to restart and possibly “restore” your session. In Chrome, only that tab closes out on you. So if you have a bunch of open tabs, they don’t depend on each other – minimizing the interruption.
5. More screen real estate – look at sites, not toolbars. I had to install plugins and customize Firefox to get as much screen as possible for browsing. Chrome’s got it all set up already. In fact, it doesn’t have a bottom toolbar, giving you even more room for surfing.
6. Turn web pages into applications. Sometimes I just want to open up straight to Gmail. I browse to my Gmail, then click the little page icon in the upper-right corner and click “Create application shortcuts…”. I can put a shortcut on my desktop, in my Quick Launch, and/or in my Start Menu. It will go straight to that site in a full window, just like an application (i.e., no address bar, etc.). I have that set up with Hootsuite as well.

Okay, okay – enough gushing. Time to get into the nuts-and-bolts: how do you set this thing up? Remember – it needs to do all the stuff that my awesome Firefox setup could do.

After installing Chrome, you need to block some ads

This is easily the most complicated part of the process, but it’s not that hard, really. Without a true contender to the ad-blocking throne, the best way to do it, in my experience, has been through a program called Privoxy. There’s a 7-step process to it that is awesomely-simplified in this post by Lifehacker and Geekzone. Just follow it, step-by-step, and you’re done. Bada bing.

Throw on your bookmarklets

Remember from my Firefox setup, I make full use of bookmarklets – little bookmarks that can do some awesome things in your Bookmarks Toolbar. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is to open up a Firefox window next to your Chrome window and literally drag your bookmarklets from Firefox and drop them into the Chrome toolbar. If you don’t have that, here are links to my bookmarklets and what they do. Instead of clicking on the link, just drag it up to your Bookmarks Toolbar:

• StumbleUpon Toolbar – All the fun of StumbleUpon with none of the bloated toolbar taking up space.
• GmailThis! – Like a page/article and want to quickly email it to your buddy? Click this icon and a new “Compose Email” window will pop up with the site title in the subject line and a link to the page in the body. Very handy!
• Subscribe in Google Reader – If I find a new blog, I can just click this button and it will automatically open up Google Reader and subscribe to it for me.
• The Hootlet – If you use Hootsuite to share stuff on Facebook and Twitter, clicking this will automatically open a new “hoot” with the title and shortened link to the site. GREAT for link sharing on Twitter!
• Lifehacker Random – The latest addition to my bookmarklets: Lifehacker just put out this button to go to any random article from their vast archives. What a great site.
• Readability – After setting this one up, you can just click it and it will clear your webpage of anything except the article text and pictures. Very useful with Evernote (I’ll be doing an article on that one soon).

Get some sweet extensions

Like Firefox plugins, these add-ons help you further customize your browsing experience. There are plenty out there, so feel free to browse around. Here are mine:

• GBX – Google Bookmarks For Chrome – This is a third-party extension that inserts my Google Bookmarks into the bookmarks toolbar to work like any bookmarks on a browser. Probably my favorite extension, just because I never think about it.
• Evernote Web Clipper – Like a page/article and want to save it for later? Just click this button and it will save it and set up a new note in your Evernote for you.
• Google Docs – One-click access to your most recent Google Docs, which is great if you just want to open up one quick document (or create a new one right away).

• Handy Google Shortcuts – If you like Google like I do, you use a lot of their products. This is a nice drop-down box of Google products (customizable, too) so that you can go straight to your Gmail, Reader, YouTube, or any of your favorite Google stuff.

Take it to the next level with scripts

No complicated Greasemonkey stuff. Just click “Install” on these bad boys:

• Facebook Fixer – There’s not enough room to fit all its features in here, which is why I wrote a full post on it a while back.
• Facebook Purity – Don’t care what quizzes people took? Annoyed by FarmVille announcements? God bless you. Hide them all with this script.
• Remove Facebook Ads – Privoxy doesn’t catch these. It does as promised.
• GooglePreview – Adds a little screenshot of each web site in the Google search results. Helps you figure out where you’re headed before you click on it.
• Google Images Enlarger – When doing an image search, this allows you to mouse-over the thumbnail and see a full-size picture without having to click through to the site. Very handy and a big time saver!

Your turn

Am I preaching to the choir? Do you already use Chrome? What are your favorite extensions/scripts? Why should we encourage more Chrome usage? If you’re a diehard Firefox user and you’re not convinced, tell us why. If you’re an Internet Explorer advocate, seek help immediately – we cannot help you here.