In another epic blog post, Leo Babuta explains how habits are more important than resolutions.

In that vein, below are the habits I’m going to focus on in 2012.

Every day:

• Write: I decided to finally write the book that’s been rattling around in my head. Writing a book seems like a daunting task, but by getting in the habit of writing a page a day seems utterly possible. If I write a page a day, after a year I’ll have 365 pages. If even half of those survive the final edit, I have a book. Progress begets progress, so writing more often here on my blog should help. Willie Jackson has been blogging great nuggets daily, so he’s been an inspiration for this habit.
• Lift: My friend AJ Leon spends most of his time traveling the world and helping others. He is just as likely to wake up in a tent in Africa as he is in his East Village apartment, so his fitness routine can’t involve fancy health clubs. Yet AJ stays in incredible shape through a simple series of bodyweight exercises (push-ups, dips, etc.) that can be done anywhere. I’m going to follow AJ’s lead and make simple, bodyweight resistance exercises a morning habit.
• Eat: Anyone who knows me knows that I love food. The habit here is simple: eat smaller portions of healthier, more natural (less processed) foods. This means eating more vegetables and lean protein and attempting to curb my current addiction to diet soda by drinking more water.

Every week:

• Read: Inspired by my friends Julien Smith and Andrew Hyde, I’m going to read even more than I do now and make a habit of finishing one book a week. First up, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
• Connect: I’m extremely blessed to know so many super amazing people and I love to make introductions that help both parties. Currently, the opportunity to make these connections comes randomly, either via email, social networks or in-person. In 2012, I’m going to be more like my friend Nicole Johnson and make it a habit to proactively identify these opportunities to make one really meaningful introduction every week. If there is someone I can introduce you to, let me know.
• Learn: This habit is to try and learn a new skill every week. For example, I know very little about meditation but many of the smartest and most driven people I know meditate regularly, so I’m going to give it a try. This isn’t about deliberate practice or becoming an expert but rather expanding my mind and trying new things.

Every month:

• Speak: I actually really enjoy public speaking and I did more of it in 2011, but still not as much as I’d like. My goal in 2012 is to speak publicly every month. Like many on this list, this habit is just about being more proactive vs. reactive.
• Travel: I’m writing this from the balcony of a condo in Hawaii, where Julia and I are spending the first week of the New Year. We both love traveling and thanks to Airbnb, we can do more of it on short notice. The habit here is to be more spontaneous, whether that means flying somewhere new or just exploring new areas of New York City.

If I follow through on these habits, I’ll achieve the following in 2012:

• Written a book
• Get substantially more fit and healthy
• Read 52 books
• Make 52 meaningful connections for others
• Learn 52 new skills
• Speak at at least 12 events
• Travel and explore at least 12 new places

That’s a damn good year, and one I’d be happy to look back on with pride.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do some pushups.

What habits are you going to focus on in 2012?

The online groundswell of support for Amit Gupta has been nothing short of amazing.

Countless tweets, tumbles, stumbles, blog posts and Facebook updates later, awareness of Amit’s battle with leukemia has spread across the internet.

Increasing awareness is great and important.  But it’s not enough.

Tweets alone won’t cure Amit.

The doctors can’t inject Facebook posts into Amit to save him.

Blog posts aren’t bone marrow.

Amit needs a bone marrow match and time is running out.

South Asians are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow registry. 

Amit needs you to swab your cheek with a free test kit.

Getting tested involves a simple cheek swab and about 5 minutes, but it takes a while to process. The registry needs your kit before Nov 30 to help Amit.

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

All the details and ways you can help are at amitguptaneedsyou.com.

Please act now. The registry needs your kit before Nov 30 to help Amit.

The good news: You don’t have to suck at email. Attend my WorkHacks session at PajamaConf this weekend and learn how to not suck at email.

See the video below for more details. Comment on this post explaining why you would like to attend PajamaConf and I’ll pick two winners.

If you don’t win, PajamaConf is only $10. Attendees will get recordings of all the sessions from an amazing group of entrepreneurs.

To quote a line from one of my favorite movies, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels… ”It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the sale of the &%$#& century. 

Register here.

image credit: http://sacc-usa.org/

My thoughts haven’t changed since the tweet I posted when I first found out.

More than our tweets and our tears, I think Steve would want our ideas and actions and initiative.

Thank you, Steve. For everything.

My friend Andy Traub is a man who ships things. He regularly ships the Linchpin Podcast, one channel of his Take Permission Media Network.

In June, Andy was nice enough to interview me for his Linchpin Podcast. The episode is pretty long at almost 90 minutes but we had a great conversation on the following topics:

• The two traits of an incurable entrepreneur (hint: you have both)
• A free website to launch and spread your idea in 15 minutes
• Why the cost of failure has approached zero
• We Work Labs – a new innovation co-working space in NYC
• How to pivot your idea for success
• The difference between ideas and shipping
• My first failed business (a non-profit involving an Atari 2600 and my brothers when I was 8 years old)
• How to finally write that book in your head (can you write a page a day?)
• How to meet more relevant people in your organization
• How Elliot Bisnow changed the world by dropping out of college and organizing an impromptu ski trip that spawned a world-changing organization.

Click here to head over to Andy’s blog to listen or click here to listen directly.

I hope you enjoy the show and look forward to your thoughts.

There are 1 billion people on the earth who don’t have access to clean water.

charity: water is changing that. Please take a few minutes to watch the following video.

charity: water 2010 September Campaign: Clean Water for the Bayaka from charity: water on Vimeo.

Here’s the deal. In four days, on September 20th, I turn 34 years old. I don’t need any more “stuff”. Most of us don’t. The U.S. storage unit industry does over $20 billion in annual revenue. So I’m donating my birthday to charity: water.

I’m also donating my dad’s birthday, although he doesn’t know it yet. You see, we share a birthday. I was born on his birthday back in 1976. I didn’t come gift-wrapped but he kept me anyway.

You can read all of the details on my campaign page here.
http://bit.ly/letsdrillawell

Our goal is to raise $5,000, which is enough for charity: water to build a well that will provide a village of 250 people with clean water for years.

$5000 buys a well. And it is an attainable goal. What is $5000?

$5 from 1000 people.
$10 from 500 people.
$20 from 250 people.
$50 from only 100 people.

We can do this.

On charity: water’s site, you can download photos, watch and share videos, blog banners and twitter backgrounds. I just updated mine. (Free marketing lesson from charity: water – make it easy for your tribe to share your message.)

So please, donate. Spread the word. Email friends. Tweet it. Post it on Facebook.

If you have a September birthday, start your own campaign.

The short link is:
http://bit.ly/letsdrillawell

Thank you.

So is Federov.

Isn’t that why we send cards?

If that’s not the reason, it’s just a selfish act on the sender’s part to communicate that they did remember the recipient’s birthday/graduation/Bat Mitzvah.

So if triggering an emotion is the goal, why do so many cards fail to do so? Between physical stores and e-card sites, there are tens of thousands of card options, yet maybe 1% are written well enough to trigger an emotion?

99% look something like this.

Really? Who sends cards like this?

(To be fair, I guess this card does trigger an emotion with me, but it’s not the desired one.)

Well in my never-ending quest to serve you, my brilliant and attractive Daily Sense readers, I have researched and found two sites to use to permanently upgrade your e-cards.

Someecards
This site is brilliant. The humor is often sarcastic and crass, something you would expect when one of the co-founders is a former writer for The Onion. Not all cards are safe to send to grandma, but it’s easy to find the perfect card to remind a friend or significant other of that inside joke or funny memory.

One of my favorite things about someecards.com is that users can customize their own cards and submit to the site. Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds, The Editor’s Picks in the User Cards section are often some of the best.

Story People
This is the site of artist Brian Andreas. Story People is much more than e-cards. Brian has built a nice little empire out of his inspirational snippets and whimsical artwork. You can browse the entire collection, creating your own e-cards by combining any of the text with any of the images. You can also order the physical prints for framing and other products.

The Story People cards are often amazing and emotionally moving.

[The full "Hi, Mom" disclaimer: My mother originally introduced me to Story People and she's been a fan for a long time. As always, all credit goes to her.]

Use these two sites to save you from ever sending another forgettable e-card.

I’m sure there are more than just these two. What other sites have emotion-triggering e-cards?

There is a lot of friction in buying a new house. Agents. Lawyers. Notaries. More agents.

I recently helped design a social media campaign for a client. The campaign was less successful than it could have been because there was too much friction. The process to participate had too many hurdles and some people abandoned it before completing.

One of the most effective things to do to improve your business (not always the simplest but the most effective) is to remove as much friction as humanly possible.

Then remove a little more.

I know a lot of companies that ‘secret shop’ their competitors. Many should secret shop themselves first, with an open mind and a critical eye toward removing friction.

Mint.com beat Intuit’s Quickbooks because it was web-based, but they weren’t the first web-based money management system. A tool called Wesabe was around first. But to use Wesabe (back then), users had to download a .csv from their bank’s website and upload it to their Wesabe account. (I can’t fathom the meeting where that level of friction got approved.)

Friction killed Wesabe.

The lack of friction made Mint.com millions. $187m to be exact.

Netflix took share from Blockbuster by removing friction. With Blockbuster, you had to drive to the store. With Netflix, you just had to go to your mailbox. (Blockbuster quickly followed suit.)

Redbox is taking share from both by removing even more friction. With Redbox, you don’t need a mailbox or even an account.

Think of the amount of friction in a typical Verizon store. Now think of the lack of friction in an Apple store or a Chipotle or a Starbucks.

The simple act of not having to sign certain credit card transactions under $25 removes friction and saves both the retailer and the customer time, saving companies like McDonald’s and others millions of dollars.

Most airlines did a decent job of removing some friction with online check-in and handy touch-screen kiosks. Unfortunately, they stopped there.

Think of the loads of friction in a typical primary care doctor visit. My friend Jay Parkinson is completely reinventing health care delivery, and he’s doing so by removing friction from the process.

I can stop by my local dry-cleaner, leave my shirts on the front counter and smile and wave to the owner in the back. In three days, I come back and my shirts are clean with light starch.

If he can remove friction from his business, you can too, right?

One of the best websites in the world just got even better.

TED.com recently rolled out a “Best of the Web” section, designed to be a “one-stop portal to the very best talks on the Internet”.

You can view some of the early selections at the TED Talks page here. In the ‘Show by Event’ selector on the left, scroll down to the bottom to “Best of the Web”.

Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have a Dream
Steve Jobs: How to Live Before You Die
Michael Sandel: What is the Right Thing to Do?
Robert Sapolsky: The Uniqueness of Humans
and the famous “last lecture” of Randy Pausch.

Wisely, TED is crowdsourcing new content for the page from their intelligent and connected tribe. If you find video worthy of TED’s new page, email contact@ted.com with “Best of the Web suggestion” in the subject line, and a link to where the talk can be seen.