Why not be great?
It’s that time of year again, when people take a look back at what they’ve done and take a look ahead. Some, including Yours Truly, still even make New Year’s Resolutions.
Seth Godin has a great post on his blog today that fits right in with that theme. He says people should think about what they’re doing right now and ask themselves if they will be proud of themselves 15 years hence. Do we think these are crazy days? Godin says that’s nothing new:
So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.
If times are going to be crazy no matter how you slice it, says Godin, Why Not Be Great?
Sounds like a good Resolution to me.
Leo Burnett, the great ad man, had the same idea, which he put this way:
When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.
And Donald Trump said:
As long as you’re going to think anyway, think big.
To paraphrase The Donald, if you, like me, are going to build Web sites anyway, think big. Stretch a little bit this year:
- If you’re still coding layouts w/table structures, learn some CSS (Your Clients will thank you because their sites will be easier to update and maintain)
- If you’re still creating design concepts that depend on embedding a lot of images into each Web page, again, learn some CSS (Clients will appreciate that their pages are dramatically smaller, load more quickly and use much less bandwidth - bandwidth costs money)
- If you’re not yet writing valid code based on Web Standards, start (Clients will thank you when it becomes easier to maintain the look and feel of their sites across different browsers and operating systems
- If you haven’t learned about Web site accessibility, start reading up on it, and apply to your sites (your Clients, and their Web site visitors with visual and physical disabilities, will thank you for being mindful of their special needs)
- If you think it’s more important to bring people to your site - (search engine marketing) - than it is to keep them there - (Web site design and usability) - please think again (if you don’t, your Clients’ competitors will thank you for sending customers their way as they flee a hard-to-use site)
Here’s wishing you a happy, productive - and Great! - New Year!
