It's 15 questions to change your life and more...

This is something I haven't done in a while. It's a version of what I have got 100's of start ups founders to do. It's 15 questions to change your life. 

This  version is from http://thinksimplenow.com/ 

And... an extra idea from Seth Godin to - if I can find it... which when it came out almost 5 years ago - no one really tweeted it much ;) 

Simple Instructions:

• Take out a few sheets of loose paper and a pen.
• Find a place where you will not be interrupted. Turn off your mobile.
• Write the answers to each question down. Write the first thing that pops into your head. Write without editing. Use point form. It’s important to write out your answers rather than just thinking about them.
• Write quickly. Give yourself less than 30 seconds per question. Apart from Q 10 and 11....
• Be honest. Nobody will read it. It’s important to write without editing.
• Enjoy the moment and smile as you write.

15 Questions:

1. What makes you smile? (Activities, people, events, hobbies, projects, etc.)

2. What are your favorite things to do in the past? What about now?

3. What activities make you lose track of time?

4. What makes you feel great about yourself?

5. Who inspires you most? (Anyone you know or do not know. Family, friends, authors, artists, leaders, etc.) Which qualities inspire you, in each person?

6. What are you naturally good at? (Skills, abilities, gifts etc.)

7. What do people typically ask you for help in?

8. If you had to teach something, what would you teach?

9. What would you regret not fully doing, being or having in your life?

10. You are now 90 years old, sitting on a rocking chair outside your porch; you can feel the spring breeze gently brushing against your face. You are blissful and happy, and are pleased with the wonderful life you've been blessed with. 

Looking back at your life and all that you’ve achieved and acquired, all the relationships you’ve developed; what matters to you most? List them out.

11. What are your deepest values? Select 3 to 6 (See list of words - thanks to Think Simple to help you) and prioritize the words in order of importance to you.

12. What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?

13. What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?

14. If you could get a message across to a large group of people. Who would those people be? What would your message be?

15. Given your talents, passions and values. How could you use these resources to serve, to help, to contribute? ( to people, beings, causes, organization, environment, planet, etc.)

Your Personal Mission Statement

“Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behaviour with your beliefs”
~Stephen Covey, ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’
A personal mission consists of 3 parts:

• What do I want to do?
• Who do I want to help?
• What is the result? What value will I create?

And from Seth Godin... 8 questions and a why

Who are you trying to please?

What are you promising?

How much money are you trying to make?

How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?

What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?

Which people?

Do we care about you?

(and after each answer, ask 'why?')

And one final thought...a quote from RWE.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spring springs - but have I sprung too far? A blog on working too hard... and hard working too.

May ALWAYS creeps up on me. I don't know about you. Spring springs and sometimes I don't even notice it has done - so deep is my winter mental slumber. 

However, a lovely day out yesterday at the local park and farm, with my wife, Leanne and my daughter Mia snapped me out of it. 

Whilst running to get ice cream, pulling branches to create flower showers, and stroking baby lambs I realised a few things. 

These 'things' had been introduced to my mind a few hours previously whilst waiting for the bath to run - when I got a chance to literally flick through Re-work. A classic book by 37 Signals. 

2 pages literally jumped out at me.  One on Workaholism which I fear I might be slipping into again under the guise of 'start up zeal' and the other is something I think the whole team I am working with needs to ask itself - why do we do what we do? 

Both are BIG thoughts for now 9.00am on a Monday morning. I hope they inspire you to act before spring has gone.... :) 

Workaholism

Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.

Has there ever been a time when you’ve felt wildly overworked? I’m pretty sure everyone will answer in the affirmative to that question. Now let me ask you this:since you are your own boss, why do you choose to work yourself like a slavedriver?

While you could probably give me any number of reasons to validate your workaholism, the simple fact is that overworking is not necessary. There is always a better way — a more efficient way — to get things done. You just need to figure out what that way is and apply it to your business.

I grew up with a father who was obsessed with his work. He dedicated more to his business than he would now say was healthy. I am determined to avoid the same mistake he made — I am passionate about leading a balanced life that involves work and play in equal measures. I am sure you feel the same, and yet so many of us still overwork ourselves.

Our culture celebrates the idea of the workaholic. We hear about people burning the midnight oil. The pull all-nighters and sleep at the office. It’s considered a badge of honour to kill yourself over a project. No amount of work is too much.

How many times have you come across someone who acts as if their ridiculously long working hours are something to be proud of? Can you actually recognize times when you have acted in that way yourself? It’s utterly absurd when you stop to consider it — why should working too hard be something you’re proud of? Wouldn't building a successful business while working reasonable hours be more impressive?

You may say it’s all very well and good to say that one should work less, but how do you actually go about doing it? Well, I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I think Rework offers some quite compelling statements for you to consider carefully:

• Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve.
• [Overworking] isn’t sustainable over time. When the burnout crash comes — and it will — it’ll hit that much harder.
• [Workaholics] try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force.
• No one makes sharp decisions when tired.
• Workaholics aren’t heroes…The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.

I like that last one especially. Give it some thought.

Reasons to Quit

It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you think needs to be done. It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.

No one likes giving up. It can be relieving to do so but it’s rarely a good feeling. After all, we live in a culture that directly associates giving up with failure. If you stop trying to do something, you have failed in your endeavor.

That may be the case, but I’d rather fail than carry on regardless. Surely applying yourself to something that will eventually fail is far more of a failure than recognizing the futility of your efforts and calling it a day ahead of time?

If you ever feel like you are going down the wrong path or that the work you are doing is not necessarily in your business’ best interests, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the motivation behind what you are doing?
• Who benefits from what you are doing?
• What problem are you solving?
• Is what you are doing useful?
• Are you adding value?
• Is there an easier way?
• What could you be doing instead?
• Is it worth the time/cost/stress?

These are great questions for anyone working in the start up to ask themselves, or any business for that matter. Is there an easier way? Who really benefits from what you are doing? All BIG questions for our team meeting today. Time to get "springing" into action at Justaxi in Manchester. 

Is the whole world speeding up? I thought it was because I was getting older....

Today I have been working on a talk for an event at UkFast called - #Fasterclass - sponsored by Justaxi....

This marketing training event at UkFast is one where each speaker is only given 17 minutes to train you. It has some great speakers going to it. 

It sold out in under 24 hours... which got me thinking about the world. 

Is the whole world speeding up? I thought it was because I was getting older.... 

So these stats on attention spans in one way shocked me and in another way proved my thinking. 

Average Attention Span Stats

When considering the average attention span of individuals, age is a determining factor of this. From babies to children to adults, the attention span of a child will get longer with age. The following statistics regarding average attention spans are outlined below.

Attention Span Statistics

According to The Associated Press the following interesting statistics regarding attention spans exist.

Attention Span Statistics
1. Attention spans have shrunk by 50% over the past decade.
2. Attention spans in 1998: 12 minutes.
3. Attention spans in 2008: 5 minutes.
4. Children diagnosed with ADHD: 9.5%

Causes of lost attention span
5. Stress: 18%
6. Decision Overload: 17%

Impact of lost attention span
7. Percentage of teens who forget major details: 25%
8. Percentage of people who forget their own birthday: 7%
9. Average number of times per hour an office worker checks their email: 30
10. Average length watched for a single internet video: 2.7 minutes

11. Average Attention of a Product Video
Commercial length time has been reduced from 15 seconds to a maximum of 30 seconds in recent times. Here is a listing of the average time and percentage the audience will watch a video for as according to Treepodia.com.

10 seconds or less: 89.61%
20 seconds or less: 80.41%
30 seconds or less: 66.16%
60 seconds or less: 46.44%
2 minutes or less: 23.71%
3 minutes or less: 16.62%
5 minutes or less: 9.42%

Based on the following averages, a third of the audience is lost by the 30 second mark. By a single minute into the video, more than half of the audience disappears. Finding ways to become more effective on time will help you maximize results.

Internet Browsing Statistics
12. Percent of page views that last less than 4 seconds: 17 %
13. Percent of page views that lasted more than 10 minutes: 4 %
14. Percent of words read on web pages with 111 words or less: 49 %
15. Percent of words read on an average (593 words) web page: 28 %
16. Users spend only 4.4 seconds more for each additional 100 words.

Big Data - small data - your data. Today is the birthday of the godfather of the scientific marketing method.

He was a legend.  He redefined an industry. He turned an art form into a scientific endeavor. He is the godfather of the scientific marketing method. 91 years ago, he wrote Scientific Advertising.

His name was Claude C. Hopkins. Today would have been his 148th birthday. (He liked exact numbers.)

To those who have dedicated their careers to “data-driven marketing”, “direct marketing”, or “scientific marketing”, as I have, we owe him, Claude Hopkins, a debt of gratitude.

I thereby declare today, April 24^th, “Happy Hopkins Day.”

Today, just like our godfather did, let’s share what we’ve learned from him or from other legends (John Caples, David Ogilvy, Lester Wunderman, Bob Stone, Seth Godin etc) or from our own scientific marketing rigors. We have learnt a lot at Justaxi - Manchester's best priced taxi app - with the wealth of data information we get from our mobile app but also the marketing data we get some platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Claude Hopkins to this extent said some great stuff and below are some cracking examples from his works.

Some people would like to start the Happy Hopkins Day festivities today. BUT here at Justaxi we are starting them tomorrow with some BIG style investigation into our app with analytic provider KissMetrics.

 Here are some of Claude Hopkins ideas/quotes that live on:

“The time has come when advertising has in some hands reached the status of a science.”

“Advertising, once a gamble, has become, under able direction, one of the safest of business ventures.”

“The compass of accurate knowledge directs the shortest safest, cheapest course to any destination.”

“The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.

“Treat it (advertising) as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesman. Figure cost and result. Accept no excuses.”

“I never ask people to buy. The ads all offer service, perhaps a free sample. They sound altruistic. But they get a reading and action. No selfish appeal can do that.”

“My words will be simple, my sentences short”

“We must get down to individuals. We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person.”

“Until one feels sure that the advantages are strongly on his side, it is folly to risk a battle.”

“The lack of fundamentals has been the main trouble with advertising in the past. Each worker was a law to himself.”

“I set down these findings solely for the purpose of aiding others to start far up the heights I scaled.

“My only claim is that I probably worked twice as long as anybody else.”

“The man who does two or three times the work of another learns two or three times as much.”

“If a thing is useful they call it work, if useless they call it play … all the difference I see lies in attitude of mind.”

“I came to love work as other men love golf.”

“What others call work I call play, and vice versa.”

“I consider business as a game and I play it as a game. That’s why I have been, and still am, so devoted to it."


So thanks for the above - follow @KimmelsCorner who wrote it on Twitter and share your insights today or tomorrow as we will at Justaxi... 

The bottomless pit of pleasing strangers (and what it means for crossing the chasm)

Amazing timing as every by Seth - as we were "just" chatting about this with Justaxi - Manchester's cheapest taxi booking app. 

The bottomless pit of pleasing strangers

You will never, ever run out of strangers.

And so, the goal of perfectly pleasing an infinite number of passersby is a fool's errand. 

They come with their own worldview, their own issues, their own biases.

Since they don't know you or trust you and don't get you, they're not inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt or invest what it takes to understand you.

Sure, some of them will applaud or smile or buy. And if that's your mission, have fun.

But perfection in stranger-pleasing? Not going to happen, not worth the journey.

For some people, some of the time, the only response is, "it's not for you."

So for Justaxi Manchester's cheapest taxi booking service - we are wondering - how do we cross the chasm? 

Or with players like Uber in the market. Have we already? 

Crossing the Chasm: is a term and a  marketing book by Geoffrey A. Moore that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early start up period. 

Moore's exploration and expansion of the diffusions of innovations model has had a significant and lasting impact on high tech entrepreneurship.

Crossing the Chasm is closely related to the technology adoption lifecycle where five main segments are recognized: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. 

For start up's like Justaxi this is amazingly important and knowing this theory and applying it is one of the reasons why they may well succeed. 

According to Moore, the marketer should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. 

The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early majority). This is the chasm that he refers to. And it is this chasm where I fear we are on the edge of with Justaxi. i.e. people have heard of both apps and taxis and now even Uber and our other competitors. But they will not have heard of Justaxi yet... 

If a successful firm i.e. like Uber can create a bandwagon effect in which enough momentum builds, then the product becomes a de facto standard. However, Moore's theories are only applicable for disruptive or discontinuous innovations. 

Adoption of continuous innovations (that do not force a significant change of behavior by the customer) are still best described by the original technology adoption lifecycle. 

Confusion between continuous and discontinuous innovation is a leading cause of failure for high tech products. 

It is in this area of confusion where I think Justaxi might be right now. That and trying to please strangers all the time. 

Am I too old to start again?

Am I too old to start again?

Not that I haven't been doing this for a while - Great Marketing Works has been working for 4 years now and before then I have had two other award winning businesses. BUT....

After having a child and after getting married (not in that order) can I really start again, at the ripe old age of thirty.... something (38)... .

This is what the wonderfully wise Doug Richard (someone I have worked for) has to say about it....

"You absolutely can teach an old dog new tricks. Anything to the contrary is nonsense. There'll always be those who point to age as a reason not to try something new, but this is terrible advice. When the entrepreneurial bug bites, age should be no barrier.

Some people suggest that entrepreneurs are marked out for success from birth. Entrepreneurs are often portrayed as youthful go-getters, full of the drive and enthusiasm that's necessary to weather the hardships that will undoubtedly be faced.

In a similar way, there seems to be a misplaced idea that owning and running a business is a privilege reserved for the select few born to do it. Wrong - with the right know-how, and support anyone can make a go of it.

Mature entrepreneurs often have an edge over their more youthful counterparts. Many find their age works to their advantage, allowing them to draw on the life skills, expertise and experience accumulated over the course of previous careers.

Of all the myths out there, one of the most infuriating is the suggestion that older people are risk-averse and reluctant to embrace new ideas. Not only is this offensive - it's not true.

Take Niklas Zennstromm. He was a 37-year-old tech-head who'd been sued after fronting file-sharing network Kazaa, before hitting it big. In 2005 he sold his former start-up for some $2.6bn. Then there's Evan Williams, who co-founded Twitter at the age of 35, not to mention Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, who was 54 when she set up in 2005."

So maybe after the blood moon of yesterday - now is a good time to start a new company. Still helping companies like Justaxi... but in a different way. 

Mistaken Identity, HeartBleed, Happiness, Advertising and a Vow to do something different.

I watched Mistaken Identity last night with my lovely lady. The film is really not that funny and a bit sad really, in ways, I think, the creators probably hadn't thought.

But anyways - it contains a few nuggets of wisdom.

One about identity and passwords and things that we should protect. Which means this morning I updated most (if not all) of my passwords. With fear of what heartbleed is doing. 

The other point I but here for my daughter Mia to read later on in life.

It's that money simply does NOT buy you happiness. 

The lady in the film steals people's identities and then their money.

But for me it's more about the lack of happiness this brings her and the fact that she only buys things to interact with the very shop assistants selling her things.

Anyhoo this is what someone MUCH wiser than me has to say about it all...as Mr Chopra has pointed about about modern life...

"This is where a very bad idea enters the picture. It holds that money buys happiness, and the more money you have, the happier you will be. In a sense, capitalism runs on this idea, but I'm not writing to outline the flaws in capitalism. Every economic system generates its own myths and is blind to its own defects if you believe in the system. The real problem with "money buys happiness" is twofold.

First, it's not true beyond a very limited point. Having enough money to be comfortable produces more happiness than living with the stress of poverty and want. Beyond this fairly modest state of financial security (not so modest if you were born into a poor country or have an impoverished background in a rich one) money brings more stress than it's worth.

Positive psychologists seem pretty sure about this finding, looking at a broad range of subjects, although of course there are exceptions - rich people who seem exceedingly happy and poor people who seem the same. Even so, if you really care about your happiness more than your bank account, you shouldn't devote your life to the pursuit of wealth, no matter how much our society glorifies being rich and mythologizes the wealthy as if they live in a paradise on earth.

The second reason that "money buys happiness" is such a bad idea is subtler. The pursuit of money prevents you from finding happiness another way. I hold the minority position about happiness, the one that says lasting happiness depends on our state of awareness, and to find the highest state of happiness, you must reach a higher state of consciousness.

The same view has been held for centuries by all the world's wisdom traditions, and ironically, now is the best time to test it out. In the past, the average person was helpless in the face of poverty, war, and disease. That's no longer true for millions of people who have enough control over their destiny to pursue happiness rather than simply try to survive.

It would be a shame to waste this golden opportunity by thoughtlessly adhering to such a bad idea as "money buys happiness." From the seed of this idea grows offspring, such as the idea that poverty means that you are an inferior person, a loser, or the idea that winning is everything, since winning implies monetary rewards.

Then there's the idea that you can use your money to buy so many glittery toys and distractions that these will constitute happiness, and so on. The truth is that happiness is an inner pursuit that is very different from the pursuit of pleasure or the amassment of a fortune. No one should accept this as a given; it needs to be tested out personally.

In the end, the message of the world's wisdom traditions is a call to find out the truth for yourself.

 It just helps to clear away the underbrush of untruths, and "money buys happiness" is just that.


Deepak Chopra, MD, Founder of The Chopra Foundation, Co-Founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, coauthor of Super Brain with Rudolph Tanzi and for more information visit The Universe Within. Come to the Chopra Foundation Sages and Scientists Symposium 2014."

To end I leave you Mia (and others that might read this) with a lovely advertisement from a country far away. 

Which proves for me two things: 

1. Advertising CAN do something positive.

2. Far away places are somehow much better than ours.

The advert is on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZGghmwUcbQ

The other reason is that at 14.04 today I am going to vow (whilst outside) to re start my own business.

Doing something outside of my time with  Justaxi - Manchester's taxi comparison app

Why 14.04pm you wonder? No reasons apart from it being 14.04 and 14.04.14.

I hope 4's are powerful. 1024 seems to be doing well with them :)

As the idea is in mobile gaming - perhaps it is something I can do with Justaxi as well?

The right moment

Again a wonderful blog by Seth Godin

You might be waiting for things to settle down. 

For the kids to be old enough, for work to calm down, for the economy to recover, for the weather to cooperate, for your bad back to let up just a little...

The thing is, people who make a difference never wait for just the right time. They know that it will never arrive.

Instead, they make their ruckus when they are short of sleep, out of money, hungry, in the middle of a domestic mess and during a blizzard. Whenever.

As long as whenever is now.

-------------

Amazing how Seth does this again and again - about 80% of the above it ME - right now. 

And so I but this here to remind me and hopefully to look back on the day that I decided 

at 14.04 on the 14.04.14 

to do something about it and start my own mobile games company - with a new game all about 4's. 

Oh wait that's 1024. 

I think I had best think of something else in the 4 hours I have left :) 

Stop checking your phone and write a single sentence a day.... nice idea.... but does Greg miss the point with his article?

In a great article written by a smiley face author called Greg Mckeown (who I rate) he writes... 

"In a recent study reported in TIME magazine, people check their phone on average 110 times a day. Some people checked it as much as 900 times a day; that’s once every minute of every waking hour of the day." 

Now don't get me wrong - BUT if your job is to be on the phone i.e. a PR person or social media person or a marketing person or a sales person - then perhaps this is no bad thing. 

Also IF mobile phones have made your work easier or more aptly made you able to DO more things because you keep checking it - then actually the rest of this article might be a little silly. 

But I put it here to show something. I will also let Greg continue...(as he is right about many things.) 

"Given those extremes, I don’t believe it makes me a Luddite to suggest it may be more productive – and certainly more Essentialist - to reach for a pocket notebook or journal before your phone. 

Here are a few reasons why:

1. Checking your phone forces you to be reactive than pro-active; it creates pressure to respond to texts and emails when other people want you to, rather than when it’s convenient for you.

I SAY - Absolutely right and we all feel that especially when linked into work. 

Writing in your notebook puts you back in control of your communication; it gives you the chance to craft your reply instead of shooting it off reactively, and respond on your schedule, not someone else’s

2. Checking your phone fills you with that frenetic, compulsive feeling that you might be missing out.

I SAY - FOMO - noooo waayyyyy - errmmmm yes way - the all too modern phenomena. 

Writing in your notebook has a calming influence.

3. Checking your phone tricks you with the trivial; it fools you into thinking that news and updates from the virtual world are more important than what’s right in from of you in the actual world right now.

I SAY - OK

Writing in your notebook reminds you of what’s important right now.

4. Checking your phone fills every spare moment with noise.

I SAY - Define noise... 

Writing in your notebook provides you time to think and reflect.

"Of course, the benefits of writing in a notebook or journal go beyond the realm of productivity. One of my grandfathers died a few years ago. Upon going through his things, I was struck by what I found, or rather what I didn’t find: not a single journal or notebook or any kind of written record about the life he had lived. Contrast this with my other Grandfather in England who wrote a single line in his journal every couple of days for some fifty years."

I SAY - Why do you think I blog - and why is the paper (which can be damaged / lost or stolen better than digital which can be stored forever in the cloud of Google, cue angels singing...)  

"What I am saying is that if we want to leave a legacy to those who come after us one powerful way to do it is to write a journal. David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian has said if you want to become the voice of your generation, write a journal entry every day and then gift it to your local university library at the end of your life. Voice of your generation or not, I believe that a journal is one of the most precious gifts you can give to those you leave behind."

I SAY - Seriously I would doubt this - I think universities and libraries - let alone university libraries have more important things to house, to do and to think about than 1000 people a day giving their precious memories to them in leafy tomes of personal and perhaps therefore socially nonsensical sentences to them.  

Greg continues... 

"If journaling sounds too daunting a task for you, I suggest the following simple way to get started:

Write One Sentence Every Day. 

If you want to create this new Essentialist habit, use this counter- intuitive yet effective method: write less than you feel like writing. Typically, when people start to keep a journal they write pages the first day. Then by the second day the prospect of writing so much is daunting, and they procrastinate or abandon the exercise. 

So instead, even if you feel like writing more, force yourself to write no more than one sentence a day. Apply the disciplined pursuit of “less but better” to your journal."

Well...I SAY, I never.... now this IS something I can do and I like - The irony being, of course, I will do this on my iPhone. Now let's make an app for that. 

You see the point here is that bemoaning mobile phones and technology totally misses a key point. Technology enables. That's all. If people want noise they can turn on the radio, the TV, heck even their own minds and talk to others. People who want drama create dramas. 

This article by blaming the mobile phone misses how much the mobile phone could really help the idea that the article is promoting. 

For example, I now meditate more than ever thanks to the mobile app CALM. Which I love and suggest you get - even if you are reading this 50 years from now. Which reminds me.... 

Just did my five minutes - you can check out the best website ever on http://www.calm.com. 

My one sentence today is - "Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change."

Which I will tweet now - which is kinda like writing isn't it? 

Best Digital Story #AprilFool ever - I think - so here it is.... Spoiler Alert - it is after 12 noon. So no retweeting ;)

Maximizing the value of worry: Snowden's new project

(From Seth Godin - so nothing to do with me - pure genius) 

"At a recent conference, I was talking with Ed Snowden about the range of data that's now available, not just to the government, but by extension, to servers in the cloud. We got to thinking about just how much worry is wasted.

Combine this with Google's work on the self-driving car,

and with the increasing use of wearable computers,

and home monitors and videocams...

It turns out that we've been spending countless hours worrying about the wrong things.

It's pretty clear what the next opportunity is. Today, Ed has given me the okay to announce that he has received $15 million in funding to launch a new startup: Worry.com (not ready for sign ups yet, but he wanted to announce this at the beginning of April because the space is about to get crowded). He and his partners already have a spokesperson.

Worry is the very first technological solution that maximizes the benefit of mankind's oldest task: anxiety.

The Worry app is a front end to a sophisticated, cloud-based trouble-recognition system. Using Bayesian probability as well as advanced Fourier transforms and Markoff chains, the backend of Worry will monitor and calculate what really matters—the things you can't control that somehow are a better use of all the time you're spending trying to change things merely by thinking and worrying about them. (I didn't understand all of this at first either, but Snowden is pretty smart, and explained it to me).

Imagine taking everything the web knows about you, including the content of your web history, your emails, your reading habits and more... then integrating that with real-time video cameras and GPS tracking... then adding to that what your friends, rivals and colleagues are saying about you (not just in public, but behind your back).

Using this flow of data, the Worry app computes the things you ought to be worried about. For example, instead of needlessly wasting time worrying about a random event like being bitten by a brown recluse spider, the Worry GPS system can point out that based on where you are, you'd be better off worrying about a different, unpreventable event like being killed by a fire hydrant flying through the air or perhaps by an angry rooster wielding a knife. The Worry app will alert you to that, whichdramatically increases the effectiveness of your worrying. 

Even better, the new Worry watch (sorry, I should call it wearable tech) will alert you in case you stop worrying. During worrying downtime, the watch will vibrate, indicating the most likely uncontrollable scenario on your horizon, so you can begin cycling through your anxiousness. 

Instead of spending time fruitlessly fretting about things that are extremely unlikely to happen, or worrying about whether your friend Sue was offended by what you said last night (he looked it up: she wasn't), now you can experience failure in advance on issues that are actually more likely to happen. Worry about the right stuff. 

Your sleepless nights will now be more productive, because you can be sleepless about the right things.

In addition to Mr. Snowden, board members include pioneers Cory Doctorow, Stewart Brand and Pema Chodron. Matt Cutts has agreed to leave Google to run their SEO efforts. Stay tuned!

Look for them to launch in about a year..."

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This is the Best Digital Story #AprilFool ever - I think. 

But remember it's after 12 noon in the UK. So no retweeting ;) as then you are the fool (or something...)