So I’m launching a little club and since I’m a relentless ego-maniac, I’m calling it the RyanWaggoner.com iOS Apps Club (takes 5 seconds to join up).

Why would you join such a thing?

Before I get into the benefits, I have five promises to make:

1. I will never share your email address with anyone, ever, for any reason.
2. I will never spam you.
3. You can unsubscribe at any time with a single click.
4. I will not email you more than twice per month (and likely only once).
5. I will only email you the kinds of value-packed emails I would like to receive myself.

So what do you get for signing up?

1. Sneak previews of apps before they’re released
2. Promotional codes for new apps (read: FREE STUFF)
3. Priority support if you ever have any problems or issues
4. The chance to ensure that my apps have that one MUST HAVE feature from day 1
5. Insider knowledge of what it’s like to be an indie app developer

I think this will be a really interesting project and I’m hoping you’ll join me. I’ll make sure it’s worth your time.

Click here to sign up in 5 seconds

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Check out our first post below, and make sure you subscribe!

How Cheating Has Opened the Door for Real Learning

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Every week on the political segment of “Talk of the Nation”, they pose a political trivia question. These questions are often very specific and obscure, I think to make it hard to Google. For example: “When was the last time that a political party gained control of a state legislature in the same year that the state’s university went to the NCAA playoffs?” And yes, that was an actual question.

So people call in and try to guess the answer. And what’s amazing to me is that Mr. Rudin apparently knows the history of every single political race in this country, ever. Seriously, he knows the history and life stories of candidates who ran and lost in obscure house races before he was born. These people probably don’t rate a Wikipedia entry, but he rattles off the stats and history without hesitation.

What’s more impressive to me is that he’s not at all partisan. I truly have no idea how he would vote in an election. He simply presents the facts and tells both sides of the story. His grasp and recall of the political arena are that much more impressive when you consider that he’s not there to promote an agenda, but because he loves the subject.

I bring all this up just because I really admire people like Mr. Rudin and I love observing mastery and great skill in action.

I don’t know that Mr. Rudin will ever read this, but if he does: I tip my hat to you, sir. You clearly love what you do and have worked very hard to master it, and that’s inspiring to watch.

Who do you admire for their mastery of a skill or subject? Extra points for being someone obscure.

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It is my right to be uncommon—if I can.

I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, “This I have done.”

-Dean Alfange

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“Don’t accept no from someone who can’t say yes.”

This stuck in my mind and has served me well ever since. Bureaucracies are built on the back of rigid rules and hierarchical structures, but even the most rigid systems need room for exceptions. But empowering individuals at all levels to make those exceptions is the antithesis of what bureaucracy stands for, so these organizations only give the exception-making ability to those at the top. But the hapless victims of the bureaucracy constantly want more exceptions than those at the top have time to handle, so the solution is simple: have the minions at the bottom just turn down any requests for exceptions to the rules as a matter of course. It doesn’t matter that those minions couldn’t approve the exception if they wanted to, because the victim asking for the exception probably won’t push it.

But if you do push, even a little, you can often get what you want. I left the Navy with about a year’s worth of college credits, across a hodge-podge of subjects. They didn’t fit the requirements for my degree at the University of Colorado, so they told me I’d lose some of them and have to take other classes instead. Unacceptable. So I fought and cajoled and bugged them until I got the decision-makers and got them to accept every last class. I didn’t lose a single credit.

Another example of this is customer service call centers. Roughly 90% of my interactions with customer service agents are negative, because I avoid calling unless there’s a problem. And they almost never solve the problem to my satisfaction. So I request to speak to their manager, at which point they balk and explain how there’s nothing better that can be done, that’s their policy, blah, blah. About 50% of the time when I get the manager on the phone, they offer me a better solution than the customer service guy at the first level did. If that’s still not good enough, I go to *their* boss, which is almost always very difficult. They very often just refuse to connect me, in which case I have to do some digging and cold-calling. But when you get that person on the phone, they’re completely empowered to solve your problem, and they often do. Kind of sad that corporate America has this kind of relationship with their customers, but that’s another story.

So decide what you want and ask for it. And don’t stop when they tell you no, especially if they’re not able to tell you yes.

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What difference does it make if you were born this way or if you chose to be this way?

What annoys me about this song is that it overemphasizes the role of nature in diversity, and chooses to celebrate and praise a variety of forms of diversity that are (arguably) pre-determined at birth, like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. (This also ignores a long list of very not-nice types of “diversity” that are likely just as predetermined at birth, like predisposition to addiction, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder, and pedophilia.)

Provided that you’re not harming someone else, why should we celebrate diversity in race any more than diversity in fashion styles? Do you only have the right to be proudly different in ways that you were born to be different?

The anthem of “born this way” strikes me more as a whiny excuse from someone trying to explain why they’re different: “Don’t blame me, mister, I was born this way!” This appeal to fatalism offers a haven for the victim, but a cowardly and ultimately fragile one. Cowardly because it attempts to shift the responsibility for identity to random chance instead of personal choice, and fragile because it might turn out that some of those supposedly predetermined traits aren’t quite as inescapable as we thought.

So rather than celebrating “black, white, or beige”, how about we celebrate diversity in all its (non-evil) forms? Except for hipsterism, of course. Hipsters should always be shunned.

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1. We have a call scheduled for right now (and I try to avoid those)
2. You’re my wife, immediate family, or cofounder
3. You’re in my address book (which is family, friends, and a few clients)

If #1 or #2 applies, I try to pick up 100% of the time. If #3 applies, it’s more like 25%. If it’s not one of the above, the chance is about 0%.

I know what you’re thinking: “How rude! Who is he to decide that he’s just not going to take my call?”

I know it’s frustrating to call someone and have them not pick up. That’s why I’m writing this post, actually…maybe it will shed some light on why I think this rude, antisocial behavior is actually polite.

I spend most of my day writing. It might be sales copy, a blog post, emails, or code, but it’s all hard. Maybe not for some people, but it’s hard for me. So hard that I have to get into a particular mental state to be able to do it with any degree of quality. And that mental state is ever so delicate (read Paul Graham’s Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule for more). The cost of a 15-minute call that comes in the middle of that time and derails my mental state isn’t 15 minutes, it’s hours, maybe the whole day.

Everyone wants to be the only and most important thing in the world, but they can’t all be. We all have to shuffle and prioritize and decide who we’re going to take care of right now. Trying to please everyone all the time is a recipe for failure. Trying to pick up your phone for every call is a recipe for never getting anything done.

However, I do understand that there are emergencies, so I try to always check my voicemail, email, and text messages within a few minutes after a missed call, to ensure that I’m not dropping the ball. Typically it’s something that can wait, so I wait until I’ve gotten to a good stopping point, and deal with it then.

So while it might seem rude that I don’t answer my phone, it’s actually my best attempt to be respectful. I want to deliver the best I can for my readers, my clients, and my customers. And when we do get on the phone, I want to be able to give you my full attention, instead of being distracted and frustrated by the interruption.

So if you need to talk to me and I don’t pick up my phone, you can leave a voicemail, send me an SMS, or send an email. Just don’t call back later, because I probably won’t pick up then either.

You’re welcome

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But how to choose? Before spending hundreds of dollars to buy a domain name and then investing in a logo and other design assets, we wanted to be sure we had the right name.

One of the things we’ve learned over the years is the importance of customer development. As this new startup has a broad consumer audience, what we really wanted to know was which name the typical consumer liked the most. Posting to our Twitter and Facebook streams yielded little response, so we started looking for some way to get our list of potential names in front of a bunch of strangers, hopefully without spending a fortune.

Enter Mechanical Turk. In case you’re not familiar, Mechanical Turk is a marketplace on Amazon for short, tiny tasks that only a human can do. If you’re a startup, you might use it to have people tag photos on your platform, or identify inappropriate posts. Things like that. You can price each task however you want, down to a few cents.

Worth a try, so I setup a survey on Mechanical Turk and set the “reward” for each answer to ten cents. However, I didn’t want people to just click a random answer just to get the ten cents, so I also included some questions about their demographic (age, gender, income, education), and some open-ended questions about why they liked or disliked the name, as well as questions about what kinds of things they’d like to learn if they had the opportunity. I did the initial run for 50 different people to respond, and published the survey.

I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to get 50 responses. I mean, it’s a freaking dime. But I was wrong: after only a few hours, we had all 50 responses. And some people took the time to write multiple paragraphs about which names they liked and why. Completely bizarre. DailyPath was the clear winner, with more than twice as many favorable responses as the next contender.

Best of all, the total cost was $5. Not the last time I’ll be using Mechanical Turk. If you have a question that you’d like 50 people to answer and you have $5, give Mechanical Turk a try.

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In January 2008, as part of our trek around Asia, my wife and I boarded a train in Hong Kong and traveled to Beijing, a journey of more than 1200 miles. The train was one of the nicest I’ve been in, clean and airy, private rooms with ensuite bathrooms, and electric outlets in each car. But of course no Internet, and we didn’t have cell phones for China. However, the journey to Beijing took about 24 hours and was pleasantly uneventful.

After a week of sightseeing in Beijing, we boarded the train for the return trip to Hong Kong. The first few hours went as expected, but then the train ground to a halt. We assumed it was just a minor problem, but the minutes turned into hours and it was almost 12 hours before the train moved again. This pattern would continue for three days, with us sometimes sitting for 24 hours on the track without moving. None of the train staff spoke English (or were willing to), so we didn’t really know what the issue was. I was bored and frustrated within a few hours the first time we stopped, so I wandered down to the dining car to have a beer. That’s when I met the old-timers.

The first guy was an elderly British man who taught at the university in Beijing. He was a big guy, a little gruff, and with that utter lack of concern that probably only comes from living in China for years and being used to these sorts of snafus. He spoke enough Mandarin to determine that the cause of the delay was weather-related, but that was the only info he could get out of the staff. Another elderly man, also British, took to joining us in the dining car and the three of us spent the better part of the next few days chatting over beers.

I don’t recall if it was a lack of reception or what, but for some reason their cell phones weren’t working properly, so we were effectively cut off from the outside world, so all we could really do was drink and talk.

And talk they did; they both had led fascinating lives, lived and traveled all over the world, served in the military, had multiple interesting careers. They told me about their travels, their jobs, their families. And we must have drunk cases of that shitty Dutch beer.

The level of connectivity and reliance on gadgets does worry me sometimes, but not because I wonder what will happen if it’s missing. People adapt quickly, so I doubt that losing access to our technology would be more than a temporary frustration. No, I worry because I wonder what we’re missing because we have the technology in the first place. The chances of me talking for hours with an elderly gentleman today are effectively nil, unless there’s some kind of blackout. There’s just too much to do and see online for me to wander down to a bar and spend a couple hours talking to a total stranger. And it’s not just me, either…all the strangers are busy too. Even the old-timers are on Facebook now.

I don’t recall a lot of those three days, but I do remember those conversations in the dining car, over lukewarm cans of Dutch beer. And thinking back now makes me feel…wistful? I have a sense of sadness, because maybe these kinds of opportunities for connections were once around if you looked, but now they’re disappearing altogether.

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She recently told me about a meeting she setup to back out of something she decided she just didn’t have time for. By the end of the meeting, she not only hadn’t quit, but she’d somehow agreed to a brand new commitment.

We all have this trait, some of us worse than others. And all in all, being too willing to help others isn’t the worst thing, but the end result is often overcommitment, which isn’t good for anyone.

When you have trouble saying no to requests from people, you almost invariably take on more than you can handle. And then your work suffers. Ironically, the more competent you are, the more requests you get and the more frazzled and overworked you become.

And the worst of it is that you know that you’re overcommitted but you still can’t seem to say no. You know in the back of your mind that by saying yes, you’re taking on something that you won’t be able to finish on time or with your best quality, but you still say yes. I wonder if some part of us thinks that it really is the thought that counts. That somehow by saying yes, we’re building up credit even if we can’t deliver later.

Maybe that’s our subconscious view, but the truth is almost the exact opposite: people will respect you (and your time) far more when they sense that you have a strong handle on your capabilities and you refuse to overcommit yourself. It’s almost always better to know sooner rather than later that someone won’t have time to do the thing you need done from them, because then you can make other arrangements.

But just knowing this doesn’t help you actually deal with all these incoming requests from people, so here’s the approach you can take to handle requests you don’t want to do:

1. Do we really need to do this?

90% of everything is crap, and probably unnecessary. Before you do anything, question whether anything should be done by anyone. Expect a fight here, because the person almost certainly has some attachment to this little project or they wouldn’t be asking you.

2. Not my problem, sorry.

Ok, this is ideal, but if it were this easy for you, you wouldn’t be reading this. But this is sometimes the best answer, though it seems harsh. Obviously, you wouldn’t say it like this. Instead, you’d say something like:

“Wow, Bob, I’m really flattered that you thought of me for this project, and it sounds really interesting. Unfortunately, I’m completely booked right now and I’d hate to take on more than I can handle and have this project suffer as a result.”

Don’t lie, obviously. If the project sounds like crap, don’t say it sounds amazing. But there’s no reason to burn any bridges unnecessarily.

3. Defer until later

Dangerous, but you can always ask them to hit you back up again in a few days / weeks / months / etc. If you do this, make it clear that you probably won’t have time then either, or you risk becoming the “sure thing” backup in their mind, which means they’ll spend about 10% as much effort trying to find a good alternative.

4. Pass the buck

This one can be really nice or really mean, depending on how you use it. If you don’t have time or inclination to help with something, why not suggest someone else for the project? Suggest someone else who would be interested and do a great job and you’re a hero. However, if you’re suggesting someone that you know won’t be able to say no, you’re an asshole. Don’t be an enabler.

5. Be noncommittal, in person anyway.

If you’ve had trouble saying no before, this is the path I recommend. When speaking to someone in person or on the phone, DO NOT SAY YES OR NO. Just say you need to think about it, check your calendar, etc. Feel free to say you need to check with your spouse / boss / cat / etc. Do whatever you need to get out of there without committing to anything other than thinking about it. Then shoot them an email or a text and say no.

Like breaking up, declining requests is best handled in person, but we’ve already established that you’re not strong enough to do that. Better to be aware of it and work within your limitations to be honest with the person than to try to take a high road you’re not strong enough to take and end up disappointing everyone.

If this is interesting to you, I suggest an exercise from Tim Ferriss: spend a few days or even a week and practice turning things down. Turn down everything you can without getting ostracized / fired / divorced / killed / etc. You can always go back next week and change your mind for the stuff you really want to do, but it’ll give you some good practice at saying no.

By the way, it’s normal to start to enjoy saying no, just a little. When you say no to something, you immediately squash an open loop before it really even starts, and the cognitive minimalism this habit engenders after a bit of practice is downright addictive. But don’t feel bad, because it allows you to say yes to the things you really care about, and kick ass with them.

PS – And if I ask you to do something, ignore everything above

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