Whenever I get the chance, I’ve been studying up on my programming. I taught myself PHP long ago and took classes in C during college, but that knowledge has rusted. To get my knowledge back to a respectable level, I’m learning Python, and will hopefully move into Ruby/Rails and then Objective-C, since I’d like to write a couple iPhone app ideas I have in my head.

If you’re like me and you’re interested in picking up some development skills, then you’ll like this short video I stumbled across on Hacker News/Ontwik. It’s a very brief overview of some of the things you should be checking out if you really want to learn Ruby and the Rails framework.

Oh, and if any of you have any advice on what I should be reading/classes I should be taking in the SF Bay area/things I should be doing to get my programming back up to speed (Python especially), please let me know — I’d really appreciate it.

I’d like to take a moment to point to a great post Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell wrote on her personal blog: Fat Bloggers: My Own Weight Loss Journey.

Here is an excerpt:

Here’s the graphic point I’m trying to make: Bloggers live a fundamentally unhealthy lifestyle. We are bound to our office chairs, chained to our laptops, and whipped into a froth of stress at the drop of a hat. Our social events revolve around that most healthy of habits, drinking. And we idolize bacon, for some reason.

This is an issue near and dear to my heart: I used to be 40 pounds overweight — the chubby kid — until I decided to take control of my body and drop the weight with smarter eating and regular workouts between my junior and senior years of college.

At the end of ’08, I wrote about how mental sharpness is directly linked to physical health. I was surprised by how much my world changed after I dropped the weight — so many aspects of my life just became better, and my confidence has never been higher. I definitely feel sharper.

So, if you have a desk job like us online journalists … do consider what your habits are doing to your body, as well as to your mind.

While I spend a lot of time on entrepreneurial projects (two iPhone apps and a novel I’m trying to get picked up), I am best known as the Co-Editor of Mashable. I started writing for Mashable in 2009 before becoming Associate Editor in March 2010. Now I am the Co-Editor of a nearly 30-person company, and rapidly growing (by the way, yes, Mashable is my full-time job).

One of the most frequent questions people ask me is what do you do on a typical day? or what area do you focus on or how much of your time is spent writing?. Until now, I’ve never really answered those questions, but I thought today would be as good as any to talk about my life as a Mashable editor.

So what do I do on a typical day as the Co-Editor of Mashable? While my role has evolved considerably as we’ve grown, the short answer is this: I am the counterpart to our illustrious Editor in Chief Adam Ostrow, responsible for helping manage the newsroom, synthesizing editorial direction, finding the news, writing stories, and filling in the gaps whenever they’re needed.

Now for the long answer: I’d say that most of my activities fall under one of three categories:

- Writing: I don’t have a specific focus or “beat” at Mashable. I pretty much write about all of the subjects Mashable covers through the relationships and expertise I’ve built. You could find me writing about breaking news from Facebook or diving into a thoughtful opinion piece on the structure of the web.

- Editorial: I help Adam manage the news room, assign stories, and edit articles (though I want to take this time to say that Brenna and Lauren are amazing editors that make us all look good). I also work and manage a range of editorial projects to support the entire team’s efforts.

- Biz Dev/Strategy: Mashable has a lot of moving parts. While I leave the biz stuff to COO Adam Hirsch and the overall vision to Pete, I’m constantly helping out with events, internal projects, and figuring out our next steps.

There are many other aspects of my job (business relationships, speaking engagements, media appearances, story research, fixing bugs…), but my ultimate goal as Co-Editor is to support the team in any way I can so they can do their job of writing and publishing killer stories. That, I believe, is what being a good editor is all about.

img credit: Ken Yeung

The definition of Anecdotal Evidence, via Wikipedia:

(2) Evidence, which may itself be true and verifiable, used to deduce a conclusion which does not follow from it, usually by generalizing from an insufficient amount of evidence. For example “my grandfather smoked like a chimney and died healthy in a car crash at the age of 99″ does not disprove the proposition that “smoking markedly increases the probability of cancer and heart disease at a relatively early age”. In this case, the evidence may itself be true, but does not warrant the conclusion.

Contrast that with Scientific/Empirical Evidence:

Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical and properly documented in accordance with scientific method such as is applicable to the particular field of inquiry.

Anecdotal evidence is using your personal experiences and stories to illustrate your point. Empirical evidence is measured, unbiased, and replicable. Yes, numbers can lie, especially if you mess up the calculations, but making conclusions based off one person’s anecdotal evidence is just dangerous.

Anecdotes are fine, just have the numbers to back them up.

[Img credit: Sébastien Magro via Flickr]

Making a New Year’s Resolution is admirable: it’s an indication that you strive for self-improvement. It’s noble to want to be more charitable, to become physically fit, to quit smoking, or to make one of thousands of different changes that can make you happier and stronger.

Yet while a majority of people make these resolutions, only about 14% of women and 22% of men keep their resolutions. Another study says that number is even lower.

Why do so many people fail? Yes, part of it is the simple fact that many of these goals (especially losing weight) are very difficult to accomplish, things that only those with seriously long-lasting willpower ever accomplish. However, there is another reason why people fail: New Year’s Resolutions put you in the wrong mindset.

A New Year’s Resolution tends to begin on the New Year – you set a specific time and date to begin. That’s the first problem: you’ve already procrastinated by setting a future date. If you really intend to change something and it’s that important to you, you shouldn’t wait even an extra week to begin changing yourself for the better. New Year’s Resolutions promote procrastination from the start, which almost always sets you up for failure.

The other problem with New Year’s Resolutions: they treat lifestyle changes as specific events with start times and end times. For anyone who has lost weight and kept it off, they know that there is never an end time to a lifestyle change: it’s a permanent change you keep up forever. I dropped 40 pounds (204 to 164) years ago, but once I hit 164, I didn’t just revert to my old habits. If I had, I’d have gained the weight right back.

I’m not saying don’t make a New Year’s Resolution or resolve to change yourself. What I am saying is that you must treat any change you make for the better as a lifestyle change, something that will become a permanent part of your life. If you can’t commit to permanent change, then you have a problem.

And stop procrastinating; just start now.

Finances, organization, and priorities are simply a necessity in life. Without them, it’s impossible for society to function because work will never get done and the most important tasks will never get tackled. This is especially true in business. Some of the things a business has to think about:

• Cash Flow: A business either needs to be making more than it takes in or have enough cash flow to sustain itself until it has achieved profitability (burn rate).
• Functionality: A business’s products must be in demand. It has to be useful, entertaining, or in some way valuable to the consumer. Otherwise, the business dies.
• Organization: Businesses, from one-man operations to conglomerates, must keep personnel, finances, taxes, and information organized and readily accessible if it hopes to succeed.
• Competition: If an industry is profitable, a business can expect stiff and smart competition that will challenge it for customers.
• Prioritization: A business must know what projects are the most important and set everything else aside. Getting 80% of things 80% done is far worse than getting 30% of priorities 100% done.

Each and every one of these qualities and realms are important to a business. None can be ignored for a business to success. None of these qualities can be ignored for an individual to succeed.

The Individual as a Business

An individual needs to have positive or sustainable finances to stay out of bankruptcy or the streets. An individual must be functional and beneficial to other companies to be employable and to friends to be worthwhile. An individual must be organized to get anything accomplished, in either work life or family life. An individual faces competition throughout his or her life at job interviews, for sales calls, and even things as simple as auctions. And finally, an individual must prioritize his or her work, family, business, friends, and time or it all becomes a jumbled mess.

The correlations are rather striking if you think about it. This is why people should think of themselves as a business. When an entrepreneur works on a startup, knowing his or her financial position and how many months of negative cash inflow he or she can handle is going to save that entrepreneur from headaches or even bankruptcy.

With these thoughts in mind, here are a few tips for thinking of yourself more as a business.

1. Stop thinking of yourself as an employee: This is the predominant mindset, and you have to shake it. You are in business for yourself, first and foremost. It sounds a bit cold, but it is true. Don’t let yourself get pushed around in the workplace. Don’t make yourself so dependent on the paycheck that you are stuck in one place. And most of all, be the master of your own domain. If being happy means leaving your current job and taking a big risk, then I suggest staying true to yourself.

2. Always remember, cash flow is king: Everything you purchase has a purpose. Those diapers are for personal care. That T.V. is for entertainment and happiness. Nothing is a meaningless purchase. With that in mind, budget so that your necessities and needs are met, and make sure that budget doesn’t exceed your cash flow expectations.

3. Have two budget lines, bare-bones and comfortable: Know what purchase are bare-bones survival, like food, shelter, clothing, and communication. And yes, in the digital age, I consider a computer and a cell phone a necessity, although you can partially fulfill this at an Internet cafe if necessary.

4. Always be useful: The useful become the indispensable. Having a skill few others have, being productive consistently, and having a strong network are all things that make you useful to businesses and other individuals. After all, you are a business, and useless businesses don’t stay in business.

5. Compartmentalize priorities and goals as distinct projects: Think of each part of your life as a project. Your family is the most important project there is. Others can be your day job, your startup, your friends, your hobby, or your education. But each is a separate project and should be treated as such. Even if they overlap, separate as many elements as possible. Nothing is worse than the work life destroying the love life.

6. Stay competitive: There are more people than positions available for the most desirable jobs, just as there are more businesses competing than there is market share. Losers get relegated to obscurity, while winners ascend. It sounds a little harsh, but keeping a sharp edge is an essential asset when challenged.

You are a valuable entity and need to be treated as such. And if you don’t believe you are, find ways to become one.

Thank you to all of my friends on your support and congratulations! If you didn’t hear, I finally finished my novel yesterday, and I wanted to share some lessons from the experience.

I decided to do video this time because I need a break from writing (except for Mashable; I will be back on the case very soon)

I hope you all have had a great holiday so far. Until I have time to write up a longer article on the many random thoughts I have, I wanted to ask you how you organized your lives.

What do I mean by that? What tools do you use to accomplish the task of making sure you, well, accomplish tasks?

I use a series of tools that are centered around a private Mediawiki, where I place all of my ideas, write out spec sheets, and link to the most important tools I use (finance: mint.com;business management: Basecamp by 37 signals, etc.).

So what do you use? Is it as simple as a checklist, as detailed as my Mediawiki setup, or as unique as employing a virtual assistant?

Comment below, or send me a tweet with your thoughts.

- Ben

Got Depression and Economic blues? To say you’re not alone would be an understatement. People are radically pulling back on their spending, scared to open their 401k statements, and simply shaking in their boots.

In these hard times, people panic, especially when they don’t understand what exactly is going on.

For the next few weeks I’m going to be writing a series of articles on entrepreneurship during a recession. I’m hoping by the end of the series, you’re going to end up a little wiser, a little calmer, and a lot more aware of the opportunities that exist in down economies. And there are plenty of opportunities.

Before we get into how to succeed in a recession, we first have to get you into the right mindset. That means not panicking, making hasty decisions, and or forgetting to think things through.

So here’s 13 quick tips on how you can hold back your panic and think things through:

1) Open that 401k Statement!

The first step in your quest to hold back the panic is to face reality. Yes, that 401k statement letter on the counter needs to be opened, read, and examined. You need to know your position before you can act. Not knowing will only preoccupy your thoughts. If you can’t do it, get a significant other or close friend to open it and read it to you.

2) Calmly Assess Your Current Assets

Request statements from ALL of your accounts. Assess your investments, loans, and cash on hand. Know how much you pay out each month and what it will do in the next year. Know how much your investments have fallen and how that relates to your cash standing. If you’re not a financial-minded person, bring in a friend who invests to help you sort it out.

3) Understand your Risk Tolerance

This type of market is a true test of your risk tolerance. If you were screaming at 2% drops, how will you react to 40% tumbles? Truly ask yourself if you’re high risk or low risk. Treasury bills, money market accounts, and CDs are all fine investments for your money during these risky times. If you’re a person who can stomach the downturn and enjoys options, futures, and short positions, then that’s fine as well. Know your tolerance, though.

4) Take a look at the Big Picture

This is the big picture. Since the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index was created, stocks have increased in value over time. Even after the crash, stocks rose again over the long haul. And we have more safeguards than back then to hold back such a fall.

Stocks WILL go back up in value eventually. Forgetting this can kill your money and your sanity.

5) Set a Consistent Budget and Stick to It

Now that you know all about your current money position, budget based on it. Set strict limits on how much you’re willing to spend on electronics, rent, utilities, groceries, dinner, and more.

Mint.com is a great way to manage finances and set budgets automatically. But once you’ve set a budget, stick to it. If you go over on any item, stop spending, period. And always take some time to think before making an “impulse purchase.” That may even mean banning Woot.com from your browser.

6) Decrease your Dependence on Debt. For Good.

I would say this one is an obvious one, but for many people, it really isn’t. Over reliance on credit cards and mortgages has killed our economy, and it will kill your finances if it has not already.

If you don’t remember anything else from this post, that’s fine, so long as you remember this. I pay off my credit card in full each and every month to avoid the fees and debt. That type of behavior will always make sure you don’t spend beyond your means.

Quickly pay off your debt if you have it. Cut spending, take a hit in your cable or your clothes shopping while you drop the debt down. When you don’t have any debt, you have piece of mind. Peace of mind means you aren’t panicking.

7) Prepare/Expand your Emergency Fund

The emergency fund should be a separate, liquid account that can help you through six months of unemployment. Store six months of rent, groceries, and interview expenses in the fun in case things go south for your career. It can be a savings account, money market, whatever you are comfortable with. But make sure that it is a low-risk account and that it is absolutely NEVER touched unless you face a dire financial emergency. Low Christmas shopping funds IS NOT AN EMERGENCY!

Be prepared, so say the Boy Scouts.

Have Action Plans Prepared and in Place

What’s the first thing you would do if you were suddenly fired from your job? Where will your emergency funds come from if you are permanently injured in an accident?

People don’t like asking themselves these questions, and they hate planning for these scenarios even more, but it is necessary and it will help you not panic if the time comes. Have a plan for major injury or being fired. Will you move in with your parents? Have you talked to them about this? How about your girlfriend or wife? Do they have resources backed up? Will you finally move to Chicago like you always talked about?

Put this onto paper and keep it in a safe place. Just knowing you have the plan will put you at ease.

9) Do What You Love

What? What the hell are you talking about?! I have rent to pay, a family to raise, and you’re telling me I should quit this shitty job I’m in and try to be an artist?!

Well, not quite, but close.

If you hate your job, you’re looking over your shoulder, worrying about being fired, worrying about not meeting deadlines and quotas, and simply stressed. You’re panicking, but you don’t even know it. And if you are eventually fired, you’re just going to get worse.

Stop the cycle now. There are still plenty of job opportunities for people who are motivated and hard-working. Hell, I’m willing to help you find those opportunities, and so are many other people you may not be reaching out to.

If you’re in a job you love, you simply do better, feel happier, come home more refreshed, and don’t dread work the next day. Even if that just means starting a side project, a new business venture, or writing a novel, then do it!

It may be easier said than done, but it will make you panic less.

10) Remember What’s Important in your Life

Is money or family more important? Your happiness or your job? Only when you put these comparisons into direct terms do the answers seem so clear.

Money is important, but money comes and goes and has limited return. Family, friends, life, and love are once-in-a-lifetime events that have unlimited returns.

Corny, yes. True, even more so during tough times. Rely on what’s important when you’re about to panic.

11) Take up a new Hobby; Try Something Different

There’s a reason that people love the phrase “Variety is the spice of life.”

It’s because it’s true.

You’ll go nuts doing the same tasks every day. And that will bleed into fear, panic, and hesitation. So nip it in the butt now. Take up piano lessons to soothe your mind. Or do some Yoga to enhance the body. Or you can be crazy like me, and try to start a business and write a novel at the same time.

Just take a different path. Take a random drive into the unknown or learn swing dancing. Learning something new, trying something new will put your focus on fun and useful tasks rather than the news.

12) Watch and Read the News Less

Tell me now: How many times have you searched the financial news or watched the Dow Jones charts in the last two weeks?

You’ve been adding to your panic.

Checking once a day to get your news and information is good. It’s good to be informed. But four straight hours of financial meltdown news is not good for your psyche. It will cause you to shiver in fear and become addicted to the news.

So do yourself a favor and just close those news tabs and turn off CNN. Watch House, football, or do what I suggested in #11 and start a new hobby.

13) Smile

Just think about the great things you have in life. Take a look outside, think about how you’ve grown. Then smile and pat yourself on the back.

Thanks to Compfight, MotherPie, olivander, and analyzeindices.com for the images.