Tuesday's news is all new; after a good cry, stories of inspiration, innovation, and laughter fill the page.  January says a sweet goodnight to us tonight, and tomorrow starts the shortest month of the year.  Time to reflex at the start of the year, regroup if needed, and reaffirm if our resolution muscles are showing fatigue.  End the day and the month with music notes, quotes, and a surprise. 

We ran across a Twitter Thread from Sieva Kozinsky, who talks about the Last Time principle.  Like the Rocking Chair exercise, the Last Time principle makes you think about a finite life and what if this was the last time you could do whatever makes you uncomfortable.  The Rocking Chair exercise is about imagining you are sitting in your rocking chair at the twilight of life.  Would the tough decision(s) you are working through now go a different way if you thought about them from the chair?

When kids are young, and you take them to places like church or a public library and for any of a hundred reasons, they are not happy, and they start to cry, sometimes even scream, there is a little trick we've used with success.  Tell yourself they can't scream for 5 minutes, and start the countdown clock in your head.  9 times out of 10, the kids were done screaming in less than 5; on the rare occasion they went longer, you might have to remove them from the space.  The 5-Minute Rule works with internal issues as well. 

In another story highlighted by 1440, a website called reasons to be Cheerful reports on bicycles and how they bring transportation to areas in need.  The story starts with Working Bikes, a bicycle repair shop that repairs and processes 11,000 bikes a year, many of the bikes were abandoned or heading for the dump.  A classic win-win, save the resources and help people in need.

This is a program Working Bikes uses to accept referrals from social service agencies to determine some of the placements of the repaired bicycles.  The story continues and warms the heart, giving you a "yea people" moment to brighten your day. 

A unique story about tech bros not taking themselves seriously, Vice reports on The Socially Inept Tech Roast Show.  Nerds roasting nerds, and since both speak “awkward," it ends up working.  Or, in a flurry of ten-cent words, Vice describes it like this:

Everyone is in on the joke, and in the modern-day assembly line factory work of the knowledge economy, anything you can do to let a little steam out of the super thinker tank can be helpful.  It's also a great idea, and more people will seek this out or, better yet, replicate it in other areas.

Visual Capitalist tracks the Top 50 Websites in today's graphical charts to chew on.  As an old SEO hack, I remember when we used to look this information up in the early days of Google, looking for websites with the most relevant backlinks for SEO.  Back in the day, news sites, CNN, USA Today, and MSN would show up as most viewed.  Websites like whitehouse.gov and apple.com were among the authority leaders, and authority was based on grades given by Google based on its algorithm. 

What happens when the world's largest website is THE search engine, and it buys a popular video-sharing website?  It means Google and Youtube account for more website traffic than the following 48 websites below it combined.  How do you challenge that dominance?  Build something better, and there will always be something better.  For now, data nerds and casual observers of website trends can appreciate Visual Capitalist's images and information. 

Digital Music News reports on new information that shows older songs are getting more listening than previously assumed.  The article discusses that the push to promote a larger swath of a catalog is by design.  In the new age of music, promotion, and listener attention, all bets are off, and all innovation and testing are on.  A company called Playlist Push leads the way.  According to representatives from Playlist Push, publishers, and labels are going deeper into catalogs and promoting what is already available as a more extended play than all the focus on a new release.

[Music Notes]

New news, another reason cereal is bad, and listicles.

Reflect and regroup.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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