National Day of Unplugging 2021

For the past few years, I’ve heard about the annual National Day of Unplugging. And I’m always intrigued by the idea of spending an entire day without technology. But, as you might imagine, I’ve always had a convenient excuse as to why I couldn’t participate.

This year (2021) was different. I was able to get the day off work and spend the entire day technology-free — at least relatively so. I had to use a microwave, and I caught glimpses of other people using technology. But I successfully avoided using technology myself.

Here are a few things that I learned…

Conference Notes

Using Analytics to Make Marketing Decisions | Brie E Anderson

• What numbers matter the most? Traffic & conversions.
• You need to know where people are coming from — eg. Paid ad spend or social media.
• When they come to our website, what are they looking at?
• The ultimate goal is to get people to convert, not just web traffic.
• Understand the value of each conversion and length of the sales cycle.
• Look at page views prior to conversion, most converting pages, and the conversion rate.
• Use UTM codes to create tracking links to automatically pull code into Google Analytics.
• This customizes the level of data that’s showing up in your…

The silver linings of 2020 for everyone

It would be easy to harp on all of the bad things that happened in 2020. Here are some of the good things that came out of the last year of pandemic for most of us.

• A new perspective on basically everything.
• A reason to sympathize with one another.
• A challenge for humanity to solve together.
• A deeper sense of gratitude for the things we have.
• More time to spend at home with family.
• Less time commuting to work.
• Leveraging some incredible technology.
• An opportunity to slow down.

The good things that happened to me in 2020

Overall, this wasn’t a bad year for myself and my family. It…

Book List

I read a lot in 2020 — even more than usual. Normally, I’m able to complete 50 or more books during a given year. But so far during 2020, I cleared more than 85 books (with a few weeks left in the year).

That was thanks in part to spending way more time inside during a global pandemic. It was also because I got four months free of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, and read quite a few books there.

During normal years, I make a list of every book I read and create a five-word summary. …

TL;DR

Georgia voters should participate in the upcoming Senate runoff election in January 2021 because the fate of the entire world is at stake. (OK, that’s overly dramatic, but it certainly feels that way at times).

Be sure to register ASAP and vote by January 5, 2021.

How do I vote in the runoff?

Well, first — you have to be a citizen of the state of Georgia. (People like Andrew Yang are relocating to the Peach State to help out with the election efforts. But only full-time Georgia residents can vote in the election.)

Georgia voters can request an absentee ballot now. Remember that you don’t need…

Politics sucks.

No matter which side of the aisle you’re on, you more than likely hate politics. That’s likely in part because it divides us by creating two sides of an aisle to sit on. A government should bring us together in unity, not split us up into constantly warring parties.

It seems like the only thing we can agree on is our frustration toward The System and The Man. For those of us in the United States, politics is broken and we know it. Where we get stuck is in blaming one another for why it’s broken. …

I hate text messages.

Of the primary ways we communicate, texting has to be near the bottom of my preferences.

1. In-person
2. Email
3. Video call
4. Snail mail
5. Social media
6. Phone call
7. Blinking morse code
8. Total silence
9. Text messaging
10. Fax

And I’m not alone in my disdain for SMS.

So I was wondering why this is. I realized that, in part, it’s because texting is an inherently flawed and ineffective means of communication. That doesn’t mean we can’t use text messages effectively. But it does mean that most people don’t. You might even say it’s the death of communication.

1. It’s easy to miscommunicate

Taking Notes

Why note-taking is important for writing

To be a better writer, you have to write — a lot. Even good writers are going to write a bunch of bad things. The key is to get the bad words out of the way to make room for the good ones.

That might sound like a bunch of new-age mumbo-jumbo, but it’s serious. Improving at any skill takes practice and time. That includes writing. The more you practice writing, the better you will be.

Some writers spend up to an hour each day just jotting down random ideas to clear their head and prime the pump for productive…