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.

In just under 40 minutes, we riffed on:

• What is a tribe and why are they important?
• The critical importance of finding the first ten rabid fans for your idea.
• The benefits of Eric Ries‘ Lean Startup methodology
• How to quickly mock up your idea using a rapid prototyping tool for less than $50
• How to build virality into your startup, like Instagram did.
• Why your startup should give users a metric to be embarrassed about.
• The unique application and interview process for the Seth Godin MBA program.
• How SAMBA taught applicable business lessons vs. a standard curriculum.
• The genesis and vision for Spindows, my new startup.
• How to get your early customers to fund your startup.
• How to use search.twitter.com to find members of your tribe.

Watch the video below or over on Howard’s blog.

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.

On Wednesday, Vinicius Vacanti, founder and CEO of Yipit, the most popular daily deal aggregator on the web, delivered an excellent session for startup founders titled, “From Idea to Product to Traction.”  The session was jam-packed with actionable nuggets.  Some highlights and a link to the full post below.

Identify a real problem. The biggest mistake most entrepreneurs make at this stage is getting excited about an idea that isn’t solving a real problem that people have.

Make sure it’s a very big problem. Vacanti used a personal example of replacing a broken remote control for one of his televisions. Problem? Yes. Big problem (market)? No. Vacanti explained that when pitching entrepreneurs need to convince VC’s they’re building a billion dollar company.

Come up with a name and setup a landing page. Collect emails while you’re working away getting a product up to speed.  To do this quickly and easily, Vacanti recommended one of my favorite new startups, Launchrock.com. He explained a few simple ways to promote the landing page, such as including the problem you’re solving and the landing page URL in your email signature.

Come up with a less than 7 word description that succinctly explains the problem you’re solving. Tumblr’s is simple, “The easiest way to blog.” Yipit’s is “All the best daily deals in your city.” The original Apple iPod was, “A thousand songs in your pocket.” The shorter the better.

Don’t add features, throw them out. Vacanti explained that by trimming features and functionality, Yipit reduced it’s production time from a year and a half for v1.0 to four months for v2.0 and then down to three days for the current iteration of the product.

You can read the rest of the post over on Yahoo! Scene here.

Last Wednesday, Mary Van de Weil was nice enough to have me back on her wonderful NY Brand Lab Radio show.

Mary is brilliant. I was her first ever repeat guest and I hope to be on her show again soon.

The show is about 30 minutes long and we riffed on some interesting 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 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 dropping out of college and organizing an impromptu ski trip changed the world

I hope you enjoy the show.

photo credit: Wikipedia

That is the question posed by Seth Godin on page 92 of his book, Linchpin.

The point? True artists use the means of technology available to them during their life.

Shakespeare didn’t invent the play.

Edward R. Murrow didn’t invent radio.

Jerry Seinfeld didn’t invent television.

Steven Spielberg didn’t invent the movie.

Brian Clark didn’t invent the blog.

Tim Hetherington didn’t invent war photojournalism.

These are all artists who took an existing medium and pushed it to the edges. They shipped, over and over. They shipped even when they didn’t feel like it and when they didn’t feel like their art was worthy. For Tim, he shipped until it cost him his life.

They shipped failures but by continuing to ship relentlessly, they also shipped successes. You didn’t know that Steven Spielberg was an executive producer on Gremlins 2: The New Batch, but you’ve seen Jaws, E.T, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Jurassic Park. He kept shipping.

Shakespeare shipped. 38 plays (or 39, depending who you ask) 154 sonnets and numerous other poems.

People often overuse the word “calling”, as in “Steven Spielberg really found his calling making movies.” Deep down, they’re making an excuse that someone else managed to luck into combining a passion with a skill. The often unsaid thought is, “I haven’t shipped anything because I haven’t found my calling.” It’s a cop out. To borrow from the brilliant Steven Pressfield, they’re giving into The Resistance.

If Spielberg would have lived in the 1600′s, do you think he would have been a blacksmith? Unlikely. He had art in him and he used one of the available mediums of the time to release it to the world. To ship.

Would Shakespeare blog? Yes, I think he would.

Stop waiting for your calling. Bring your art to the world.

Thank you Shakespeare. And happy birthday.

This post was one small part of HappyBirthdayShakespeare.com, a brilliant tribute to Shakespeare where bloggers from all over the world post to tell the world how Shakespeare has impacted their lives.  This project was organized and shipped by my dear friends AJ and Melissa Leon, who lead by example and have taught me more about the importance of shipping than the Bard himself. Thanks, guys.

LessConf, put on by Allan Branch and Steve Bristol, the supergeeks behind LessEverything, is an annual two day conference held in Atlanta, GA.

Last year, I was lucky enough to speak at LessConf alongside friends and heroes Dan Martell, Saul Colt, Cameron Moll, Chris Wanstrath, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Peldi Guilizzoni and Alex Hillman. I spoke about the concepts in Linchpin, Seth Godin’s seminal book.

The video of my presentation is below. It’s almost an hour long but the concepts are important.

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

This year, LessConf is in Atlanta again, April 29th – 30th and features some amazing speakers.

1. Josh Williams – CEO of Gowalla
2. Jeff Lawson – CEO and Co-Founder of Twilio.com
3. Amy Hoy – Fearless Leader of Freckle & UnicornFree.com
4. Micah Baldwin – CEO of Graphic.ly
5. Hiten Shah – Co-founder of KissMetrics.com
6. Rhonda Kallman – Co-founder of Samuel Adams, Founder of New Century Brewing
7. Tom Rossi – Partner at The Molehill
8. Steven Walker – Lead Designer at Groupon
9. Jason Beaird – UX Designer at MailChimp.com
10. Sarah Hatter – CEO of CoSupport

Early-bird tickets are sold out. Remaining tickets (and a list of attendees) is here.

To get an idea of the buttoned-up, serious tone of LessConf, check out these videos.

Warning, language NSFW:

If you’re free on April 29th – 30th and want to be inspired, I highly recommend attending.