I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts on productivity and ways to optimize my time in a day so that I can be more efficient each and everyday, both for work and in my personal life. I was getting ready to start 2012 with a handful of resolutions which I did last year (some of which I met and others which I completely bombed) but I wanted more than just a list of resolutions and goals.

I recently read a post on chrisbrogan.com titled “My 3 Words for 2012″ which introduced me to a new philosophy for tacking goals as you approach a new year.

Chris Brogan explains this idea stating:

Every year since around 2006, I’ve been challenging people to forego the idea of a resolution, and instead, to come up with 3 words that will help you define your goals and experiences for the coming year. Resolutions are often too vague, or too directed towards one goal. It might be “quit smoking” or “lose 20 pounds” or “get hired.” These are all fine aspirations, but I challenge you to dig deeper, to find three words that could be used as lighthouses to guide you through stormy seas, that can be used as flags on the battlefield of your challenges, words that will bolster you and give you a direction that goes beyond the goals you might attach as a result of these words.

If you’re thinking this is easy, think again. At least for me it wasn’t. You can’t just quickly come up with three words that you want to help guide you through the next year. That’s not something I could personally take lightly.

So after thinking for a few days and speaking with Sarah (my wonderful girlfriend) I’ve come up with My 3 Words for 2012.

Focus – I am going to provide undivided attention to the things I want to accomplish thorughout each day. In order to accomplish this I’m following some email principles I’ve learned and will only be checking email 3 or so times a day. I’ll spend less than an hour on Facebook and Twitter until I’ve completed all of my To Do’s each day. I’m also going to focus on accomplishing about 3 tasks a day that will have a return on the effort I put in. Although much of this is pertaining to work habits there are many ways I hope to Focus on things within my personal life. I plan on focusing more on my health and exercise by attending at least 3 classes per week (Currently at Qi Denver). I also plan on having blocked off time to talk with Sarah while she is in Omaha and we don’t always get a lot of time to see each other. Dedicated blocks of time to Skype her beautiful face will be in effect as well.

Execute – This one has much to do with Focus as well. The more I tend to focus there more productive I am. I work way more efficiently and feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day. I’ve noticed in the pass I’ve probably “talked the talk” a bit and some lack of focus held me back from getting shit done. In order to make sure I execute I’m keeping active To Do lists with actionalble goals that are specific. For example, I’m working on launching a new project and at first my To Do was “Launch new website”. That is too vague. Now it’s “Finalize site map and wireframes by Jan 10th, Provide layered PSD’s to my developer by Jan 25th and turn site live by second week of February”. Can you see how much more specific these to do’s are?

Positivity – It’s easy to get down on yourself and let others affect your mood. I’m looking to always see the positive side of things this year. It’s not worth my time or energy to look at the downside or spend time worrying about the negative. Remaining positive towards my goals, the people around me and the situations I’m faced with on a daily basis allows me to stay motivated and build momentum.

Focus. Execute. Positivity.

I’m interested to see how making sure my monthly/daily goals ALWAYS meet these three words compares to the list of resolutions from last year.

What are you doing in 2012 to accomplish your goals? What are your 3 words?

Have you ever been involved in a project that has spun out of control? I mean a few months passed the deadline? Change after change after change? It’s hard right? You get tired, you work long hours but you feel like it’s just never going to end because it’s just THAT out of control.

Well, why did it get out of control? Was it your fault? Was it a problem with the process? Probably a mixture of these things, right?

I’ve been working on releasing an iPhone app for the last few months and a lot has gone wrong with the project that I won’t get into here but this project has made me think a lot about the saying “Less is More”. A lot of people have spoken about this and I’ve since fallen into agreement with the guys at 37 Signals that say “Less is more is bullshit”.
When it comes to product development I’m offically a firm believer in “Less Is Less AND it’s an Advantage”.

Let’s break this apart a bit.

Less Is Less

What does this actually mean? We’ve all heard “Less Is More” but what does more mean? Many believe it’s better. But whyyyyy? I started thinking of all the products I use and many of them really only focus on one or two things. They offer less features and overall they do less BUT the thing they focus on….man do they do it well. A few products I use that offer less functionality but kill it are:

iPhone Reminders – this is the new Reminders app on the iPhone. Many companies have been trying to figure out the best productivy/organizational app for a long time. We’ve seen Omni Focus, Remember the Milk, Things and Wunderlist. My personal favorite of all of these has been Wunderlist until Reminders came along. Reminders is essentially a digital version of my notebad. I can add items, pick a due date and now even tie a location to a to do time. That’s it. Simple. It even looks like a pad. BOOM. I love it!

ByWord – I’m using byword right now to write this post. In Full Sreen mode its one of the best apps I’ve seen that just lets you write. Better yet, it lets me export my writing to all the formats I’d ever need; PDF, Word, and HTML. It’s super clean and simple and does only what I need it to do.

A few others that I wont go into detail on are Twitter, Basecamp, Foursquare and TouchBase. But they all have a niche offering and focus on being the best in that niche. It’s worked out very well for all them.

It’s An Advantage

So why is offering less an advantage? Your competion is offering more, their product can do more blah blah blah. As we made our way through this app development process I wish we tried to do less with our app. Feature after Feature got added and it’s become a bit too much. Talks of where this app will go and what it will do in the future has me concerned with just how useful it will be if it gets too complex.

As the guys at 37 Signals said in their post, Less people can lead to less time which can lead to less distraction. If you know your product only has to do one thing well it becomes much easier to create the contstraints that keep you focused on doing one thing the best while your competition continues to add layer after layer of complexity.

We are all so busy these days and there are so many distractions that it’s become amazingly refreshing for me to use a product that only does one thing really well. I end up multi-tasking way less and even become more productive.

So by offering less you could put yourself in a position to beat your competior. Sounds pretty sweet huh? What products are keeping it simple for you? What are your favorites?

How can you try to make your next project do less?

As marketers it’s all about timing. More importantly it’s all about delivering the right message at the right time with the right context based on what the customer has requested. As a marketing professional I actively stay up to date on the latest technologies. I have to be an early adopter of everything if I want to stay on the ball and deliver the right strategies and execution plans to clients. Do you ever feel like your clients get caught up in it all because of a new product or app?  Do YOU ever get caught up in how fast things are REALLY moving? I had the opportunity to teach a class at the local college and was really surprised by what I heard…

My colleague and I spoke to an advertising class about both mobile and social marketing. We broke down tactics and examples and tried to conduct as much dialogue as possible. Below you’ll find the presentation we took them through. We also wrote about it on the company blog which you can find here.

Surprisingly, of the class of about 30, only 2-4 were using Twitter. About 3 had their own blog. Nobody could understand why they would user their smartphone to scan a QR code let alone even recognized what it was or why it would even be used.  We explained these these technologies and how than can be leveraged as part of a marketing strategy as well as took them through some examples. I also may have told them that they were not cool or “hip” since they didn’t “check-in” to locations they visited.

There were a lot of questions which created great conversation about marketing strategies and how tactics and tools within the mobile and social world can help businesses and brands achieve their goals. As you’ll see in the company blog we wanted to provide resources to them to dive into to follow trends as well as some individuals that inspire us. We kept the presentation simple and clean to make sure we got through it for Q&A.

Overall, this teaching experience made me realize that at the end of the day…we’re still super early. Gary Vaynerchuck said it best when he stated that:

The internet is only 17 or 18 years old…It hasn’t even had sex yet…

Our key takeaway points for the students were:

1. As an advertiser, brand or business you must go where your customers go and spend their time.
2. Marketing is no longer a monologue; it’s a dialogue. Brands and businesses have to start listening to the conversations that are taking place and participate.
3. After reading the required textbooks start following what’s actually happening in the world.

My personal takeaways were:

1. Facebook, SMS, Twitter, QR codes…These are all just tools. There will be new tools emerging everyday and I can learn how to use that tool quickly. Strategy should always come first. Always!
2. Stay up to date on the latest technologies but make sure to keep your clients grounded and make sure that they don’t go down the wrong path just because they got hyped up on “the new thing”.

I really enjoyed this teaching experience and I’d love to speak more. I have a lot to share from mobile experience to startup stories. Have you done any public speaking lately? Were you surprised how your message was received? I’d love to hear about it!

In the last week or two I started listening to Lupe Fiasco’s new album, Lasers. I’ve been a pretty big Lupe fan and this album definitely has me playing most of the album on repeat. As I started tweeting, urging people to check it out, I figured I’d check if Lupe was on Twitter. Well, he is and you can follow him  here. What really caught my attention was his Twitter image…a QR code. I quickly scanned the QR code with i-nigma ( my QR code reader of choice) and was pleasantly surprised with the experience.

I was really expecting to receive a non-mobile optimized experience as that tends to happen a lot these days with brands thinking they are being innovative using QR codes but then fail to drive to a mobile friendly experience. Lupe nailed it. Mobile friendly website, with video content, easy to consume and a drive to get the album.

Lupe and his crew offer up a nice little site (could use a little bit of work) but big points for being mobile friendly. He also did one other thing that was interesting. He linked up with the the crew that created the RedLaser app at SXSW and was promoting them on twitter as you can see here:

With his album being titled, Lasers, and him driving mobile visits via QR code it was an intelligent partnership on his part. So after I saw this i say to all you businesses and brands out there…If a hip hop artist see’s that the marketplace is demanding mobile, don’t you think that in most cases your customers are demanding the same and in the same places?

Think about it.

About two weeks ago a friend of mine had asked me for my opinion on his app, Contxts, a mobile SMS business card.  I’ve been  using the app here and there but never taken the time to explore it. or adopt it. With his team now in Austin for SXSW “re-launching” their product I’ve found myself using the app more often and promoting my own mobile business card. I think they have a great app and there is definitely some competition but I wanted to give my quick review and reason for not ever using a real business card again

As Contxts explains, they enable professionals to share their contact information via SMS. To see an example, just text GJHICKMAN to 50500 and see for yourself. This is an extremely simple idea but coupled with their app becomes a super simple contact exchanging experience. if you haven’t texted my username above here is what you would receive:

The first response is what every user texting GJHICKMAN to 50500 will receive. The second mesage is sent to the user who’s card was requested. Seeing as I texted myself I got both. You can store all your new contacts in their app which nicely captures much more information about users such as their twitter handle, facebook url, linkedin url etc.

You can see Danny’s contact info below:

So who would use this app?  Well, the guys at Contxts created a special landing page for those attending SXSW this year which you can find here.  They give you three clear reasons why to use it as well as a great video.

If you want to see a quick video about how to turn your iPhone into a badge while at an event click here!

So will I never use a real business card again?

• I can have multiple business cards using different keywords. Have a business card for your full-time gig, your side project or even share your contact info at the bar with new people…although I’m sure dudes approaching girls saying text my name to 50500 isn’t the greatest closer.
• For the cost to have multiple identities via Contxts ($4.99/month) it actually saves you money from printing business cards.
• Not only that…every time I want to give someone a business card…I usually forgot to bring them or don’t have any in my wallet.

With Contxts I always have my business card on me!  Try it out here!