Let’s suspend disbelief for a moment, and imagine that you are a customer of my cable company. Your bill just arrived, and it’s $50 more than it should be.

You probably know what happens next: you call my 1-800 number and speak to a very frustrating robot that I purchased to waste your time. Eventually, you get through to a person (not me) who has the power to help you, and after some back-and-forth, you’ll convince them to fix your bill. Afterward, you’ll wonder: why do I put up with this?

I’ll tell you why.

You see, in corporate parlance, the point at which you are frustrated enough to stop being my customer is called your “breakpoint,”¹ and—fortunately for me—you didn’t reach it.

Modern customer service employs artificial intelligence to find your breakpoint and allow you to reach that limit but not cross it. At scale, this is much more efficient than ensuring that each customer is individually satisfied.

Isn’t technology grand?

If you run a business, it’s helpful to remember that this is what your customers are dealing with regularly.

Granted, it’s not always such a nightmare scenario. Nowadays, many companies are trying to “personalize” the support experience—but by and large, customer support is a metric to be optimized, and the bar is LOW.

When your competitors view customer support in this way, make it your competitive advantage.

When your next support ticket comes in, ask yourself: how can I surprise this customer with delightful customer support?

If you run a business and aren’t personally handling support, maybe you should be—it’s a great way to talk to your customers.

1. Everyone Hates Customer Service. This Is Why. ↩

I’ve made a tradition of reading these historical documents every July, highlighting some of the great turning points in American history. The list is far from complete; I am slowly adding to it each year. If you have a suggestion, send me an email.

Happy Independence Day! 🎇

• Declaration of Independence (1776)
• What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
• The Gettysburg Address (1863)

I’ve been checking out Basecamp’s new email product, HEY. There’s a lot to like about it. HEY collects many email best practices into a simple package. As Basecamp is an opinionated take on project management, HEY is an opinionated take on email.

HEY isn’t perfect, though; its approach seems limited to simple use cases. For instance, I tried forwarding multiple email accounts into it, with mixed results. More advanced features are on the way, but until then I don’t see HEY as a complete alternative to my current email provider: Fastmail.

I use Fastmail to manage all of my email accounts, and it’s great. These are the features that I find particularly useful:

• Multiple sending identities w/ Gmail integration
• Personal domain management/DNS hosting
• Email aliases
• Filters and rules

You can replicate some of the magic of HEY in Fastmail with the downside being that you must put more effort into setting it up and maintaining it. There are also many more choices available, so it’s important to pick useful patterns (and be alright with “good enough” in other cases).

For me, the best part of HEY is the Screener. Like the telephone, email is better when you screen who you talk to. When someone new emails you for the first time in HEY, their email shows up in the Screener, where you can first decide if you want their emails or not, and what to do with them in the future.

This is how I set up my own screener in Fastmail:

The end result: new contacts arrive in the To Screen folder, keeping my inbox reserved for people I know.

Create the folder

1. Navigate to Settings -> Folders
2. Click Create Folder:
   • Name: To Screen
   • Parent: (None)
   • Color: Green
   • Show in sidebar: Hide if empty
3. Click Save
4. Move the new folder right below (or above) the Inbox; you never want to miss a new message.

Create the rule

1. Navigate to Settings -> Filters & Rules
2. Click Create Rule:
   • If all of the following conditions apply:
     • Sender is not a contact
3. Click Continue
4. Click Create Rule:
   • Move to “To Screen”
5. Click Save

Screening contacts

New emails will now begin to arrive in the “To Screen” folder, which is visible only as long as there are emails in that folder (you can also hide it when there are no unread emails). To screen a new sender, click into the email and add them to your contacts:

All future emails from Ben will now arrive in my inbox.

Taking it further

You can add rules so that other actions are performed for some senders–for example, automatically moving receipts to a Receipts folder (like the Paper Trail in HEY). I do a little of that, but the simple screening setup works pretty well for my email process:

1. Scan the To Screen folder, picking out contacts who should be screened/require action and moving those emails to Inbox
2. Select all -> Archive
3. Deal with the remaining emails in Inbox as time permits

This process allows me to spend very little time on email while pretty much always maintaining inbox zero in my To Screen folder.

Finally, I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters (all of them, basically), but I don’t like to read them in my email. I send them to Feedbin instead.

If you want to email me from HEY, you can! My email is josh@joshuawood.net.

JAM Stack is so hot right now. Like many others, I’m exploring frameworks like Gatsby, Next.js, and Nuxt.js, but not on this blog. My goal for this blog is to get JAM stack performance without the JAM stack.

Instead of Gatsby or Next.js, I’m using a Ruby static site generator (Jekyll) with HTML, CSS, and minimal JavaScript for progressive enhancement. My litmus test for this blog is that you can still comfortably read it if you disable JavaScript¹. With JavaScript enabled, this blog should feel very close to a single page app.

Here’s the stack:

• Jekyll
  • Generates static pages
• Webpack w/ PurgeCSS
  • Bundles both CSS and JavaScript
• Turbolinks
  • I’ve also added a script to prefetch pages for Turbolinks when you hover on the links for longer than 400ms (greatly improves Turbolinks experience).
    • This script is similar to instant.page and InstantClick.
    • To see it in action, try hovering over this link right before clicking it, and see how fast it loads:
      • F*ck-That Money
• Font Awesome
  • I’m considering ditching this because it’s a lot of overhead just for the handful of icons I use.
  • Currently using the SVG kit, which remotely loads the individual icons (so not bad performance)
    • This is still dependent on JavaScript which I’m OK with, except there is a flicker on initial page load.
  • Ideally I would like to include a subset of icons via CSS or direct SVGs.
    • Is there an easy way to include a subset of icons via CSS?
      • css.gg has this, but doesn’t have the brand icons I want
      • Fontello doesn’t support Font Awesome 5 (and is missing a few icons I use)
• Netlify
  • Web host
• OpenGraph image generation API deployed as Netlify function
  • source code
  • egghead course
  • I’m planning to check out this approach by Jason Lengstorf
    • It also uses Cloudinary but with fewer dependencies afaict

1. Idea: add an option to disable all JavaScript. ↩

For the past 12 years, I’ve been preparing myself for the next big downturn. With the markets falling to pieces over the past month, that event may finally be here–the lasting economic impact of COVID-19 will be heavy.

Meanwhile, my automated investment plan has been doing its thing. While it has been nerve-racking to watch my account balances plummet, I appreciate the test of resolve.

As short-term investors have dumped stocks in recent weeks, I’ve been feeling increased pressure to take greater advantage of the resulting discounts. At one point, I even had a basket of companies that I was considering buying directly over the next few months.

That’s when Daniel Kahneman slapped me back to reality, via Jason Zweig:

Years ago, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman told me that one of the keys to investing is having what he called “a well-calibrated sense of your future regret.”

Jeff Bezos has a similar approach to making big decisions, which he calls a regret minimization framework.

After checking the stock quotes for the Nth time on Friday morning, I decided to apply a regret minimization framework to stock picking:

1. I will never risk enough in individual stocks or even ETFs to make any real money in them. I’m too risk-averse. That means that:
2. If I do buy stocks, it will be a small amount, for fun.
3. If those small investments do exceptionally well, I’ll probably regret not irrationally putting more into them.
4. I don’t want to regret acting rationally. If I don’t buy individual stocks at all, there will be nothing to regret.

Immediately, a huge weight lifted. I don’t speculate, not even for fun. Picking stocks is an unproductive distraction, and I’d rather spend my time on other things.

In the next hour, the market jumped 10%, and my discarded basket of stock picks did pretty well. I don’t regret not buying them.

This post originally appeared on the Honeybadger Developer Blog

I’ve met some hugely successful people. Some of them are happy. Some of them… aren’t. I’ve noticed some things about the ones who aren’t:

• They’re obsessed with their careers
• They spend a lot of time at work
• They aren’t fulfilled by the work they do
• They aren’t content with what they have

In many circles, these people are way more successful than most of us. They probably have better networks. They might have fancier job titles. They certainly make more money.

The Silicon Valley meme goes, “start a company and sell it for so much money that you can say ‘f*ck you’ to anyone in the world.” Or maybe an alternate career path is to climb the corporate ladder at Google until you’ve banked that privilege.

So much toxic bullshit stems from that line of thinking.

I’d rather have f*ck-that money—e.g., a moderate amount of money that empowers you to live a meaningful life. F*ck-that money isn’t about being a pretentious asshole; it’s about keeping your priorities straight. For example:

• Miss your kid’s soccer practice to catch up on emails? F*ck that!
• Power through lunch? F*ck that!
• Skip the gym? F*ck that!
• Work over the weekend? F*ck that!
• Save that side project for when you have more free time? F*ck that!
• You get the idea…

At Honeybadger, this mindset has led us to turn down acquisition offers and investors—to stay small and grow naturally. We’re not in this business to be rich; we’re in it to be free.

Regret the best years of our lives?

Fuck that.

Next time you rinse off, do this:

Standing right under the showerhead, gradually increase the hot water. When you can’t handle it anymore, turn the temperature all the way to cold (and brace yourself). Wait to stop hyperventilating before turning the water off.

Do this every day. Not only is it refreshing, but it’s also a daily reminder that for many things, getting past the initial resistance is the hardest part. 🚿

At Honeybadger, we’ve found that when paired with the right offer and some self-aware humor, playful bribery can be a fun and rewarding way to nudge your customers in the direction you’d like in the buying process.

One such example is such a hit that it’s now a regular source of paid conversions: 10% of qualified trial users who get this email add their credit card before their trial ends. Let’s walk through it.

After you set up your first project in Honeybadger (which tells me you’re serious), you’ll receive an email:

Inside, I’ll introduce you to our favorite gift: an exquisitely designed super-badger tearing through the chest of an expensive tri-blend tee.

Modeled by an enthusiastic customer showing off the shirt I sent them on Twitter, it’s the kind of garment you’d spend your own money on.

“S/O to the guys at @honeybadgerapp for hooking me up with the dopest shirt I have ever had⚡️”

Midway through the email, I’ll make you an offer: if you’re enjoying your Honeybadger trial so far, would you enter your credit card early? When you do, I’ll send you a shirt of your own–for free.

I’m super excited you signed up for Honeybadger and reported your first error. I’m trying out this thing where I send new trial users some swag (our famous “Ship It!” t-tshirt–featuring a badass Honeybadger, and some stickers) when they enter their payment information early, and you’ve been selected!

If you enter your payment info now, we won’t charge you until the end of your trial, and you can cancel any time before then. The only difference is that you’ll have an awesome, one-of-a-kind t-shirt to wear while you decide if Honeybadger is right for you. :)

What do you think?

Thanks,
Josh

PS: Reply to this email after you enter your payment info and I’ll send you a link to choose your size and shipping address.

Would you take me up on that?
(Of course, if you sign up for Honeybadger, you really can… ;))

Entering your credit card is a critical step in the buying process. If you do nothing by the end of your trial, you become a customer–a choice you made in a quality exchange that added some whimsy to your week.

The offer must be something people want, which means spending money–this won’t work for everyone.

That said, if your customer lifetime value is high enough, consider bribing your customers. It’s worth it, they love it, and it’s just good fun.

I have always had a bad temper. It’s how I’m wired. I’ve learned to control it in many situations, but sometimes my anger blinds me, making it difficult to reason.

One thing that gets me is unfairness; especially when someone asserts themselves at the expense of others. I’m often blindsided by this while driving.

When some people get behind the wheel, they change. They merge with the machine. They try to dominate the other vehicles. That used to be me.

Someone would tail me; I’d brake hard. Someone would pass too close; I’d edge them out. When I’d see a car being abusive to someone else, I’d chase them down just to give them the finger.

One day, after a particularly heated incident, I resolved not to be that kind of driver anymore. I decided to reinterpret my relationship with the road.

When you make a “snap judgment,” what you’re really doing is interpreting the situation using mental patterns that you’ve previously stored in memory. When you have an interpretation that fits with experience, you respond accordingly.

Reinterpretation is a mental trick that helps you change your interpretations of the past—essentially rewriting memories. It works because of the way the brain works. In The Personal MBA, author Josh Kaufman explains:

Reinterpretation is possible because your memory is fundamentally impermanent. Our memories aren’t like computer disks-every time we recall a memory, it doesn’t simply re-save to the same location in the same state. Every time we recall something, the memory is saved in a different location with a twist: the new memory will include any alterations we’ve made to it.

It’s possible to change your beliefs and mental simulations consciously by recalling and actively reinterpreting past events. (p. 206)

To reinterpret the kind of driver I am, I needed a new story to tell myself. Before the change, I was a crusader out for citizen-justice, enforcing my view of “how things should be.” Break a rule of the road? Feel my wrath. You will not push me–or anyone else–around.

My new story is this: I used to be a hothead, but now I drive the speed limit.

Driving the speed limit lets me cruise in the slow lane. When someone tails me, I move over. When someone cuts me off, instead of chasing them, I shrug: I can’t catch them anyway–they’re speeding. There are fewer hotheads in the slow lane.

Reinterpreting the kind of driver I am helps me keep calm when I’d otherwise lose my temper.

I used to be a hothead, but now I drive the speed limit.

The first rule of quitting social media is not to talk about quitting social media, at least not for 30 days. :)

That said, know that I didn’t leave because of you. I plan to continue the relationships I’ve made online, hopefully, more substantively. If you’d like to catch up, talk shop, ask questions–whatever, I’d love to hear from you: josh@joshuawood.net.

If you still want to follow what I’m up to:

• Subscribe to my personal newsletter below 👇
• Subscribe to the Honeybadger newsletter, and read the Honeybadger blog
• Listen to FounderQuest

See you around!

-Josh