In fact, as a web developer it’s somewhat daunting. You can have a thought like “what if I made a tool to keep track of when my next oil change comes due?” and a few seconds later realize that dozens of apps have beat you to the punch.

Sure, you could maybe improve the interface, make it prettier, promote it better, integrate it with Twitter, etc. But it seems like there’s nothing left in big chunks that isn’t a minute improvement on a small facet of something else.

Let’s skip to another subject for a second.

In 1997 NASA, in conjunction with the European and Italian Space Agencies, launched the Cassini-Huygens space probe. It had a far-reaching set of goals, most of which seemed more optimistic than legitimate. It’s track was outward from Earth- taking a layman’s tour of our solar system as it became accessible by coincidentally calculated orbit.

After near-space tours of Earth’s moon, Venus, and Jupiter, Cassini was en-route to one of Saturn’s moons named Enceladus. By this time it was 2005, and Cassini had already discovered three new moons of Saturn, tested General Relativity and made countless other minor discoveries leading to better understandings of our close corner of the universe.

As Cassini neared Enceladus for it’s second trip, nearby a faint glow was picked up around the moon. Just 310 miles in diameter, this moon is barely a chunk of rock in cosmic terms, but Enceladus clearly had an atmosphere. What’s more, it’s irregular halo clearly showed something more exciting. Something called cryovolcanism, which is essentially ice-spewing volcanoes. Amazing.

By analyzing the light given off by the halo around the moon, its effect on nearby Saturn’s rings, and it’s pockmarked surface, scientists were able to say with near certainty that the tiny moon had a salty sea beneath all that ice and rock.

It’s a seemingly minor finding, but in terrestrial terms, literally every time we find liquid water on the Earth there is some sort of living eco-system thriving within. Always.

So here we have a hopeful expedition, a collaboration of many minds, and many goals. Countless thousands of things could go wrong; many did. Despite the odds, the cost, and the time elapsed, real discovery happened that moved humanity forward.

I don’t believe you can calculate its worth in dollars. At least not today. But I don’t believe anyone rational would discount the worth of the eye-widening endeavor.

Sometimes we don’t know where a journey is going to lead. Often times (every time?) we need to set aside our ego, and turn our focus toward curiosity and wonder. What if? It may seem grandiose to compare an oil change web app to astrophysics and rocket science.

I suspect the analogy is more accurate than we realize. Somewhere in NASA, someone is designing a piece of a latch that goes on an instrument that goes on a satellite that fits in a rocket that hundreds of people have slaved over for years. Some day that latch needs to do its job, making sure that snap happens at the right time so the little lens can see that brilliant corona that lets us understand the tiny moon floating in the dusty ring around the huge planet that just might contain a few living microbes that are the very first discovered outside of our home planet Earth.

I think the problem with discovery is that it’s nearly purposeless in its beginning. But I don’t think you can discount it because of that. That tiny web app may never make you rich, it may never improve more than a few people’s lives, but it was your job to follow your curiosity and make it happen. There are many greater things than monetary reward in this short life, on this tiny planet. We all owe it to ourselves, and each other to put aside our egos, and do our small part to make the big picture move forward.

If you want more on science and inspiration, follow this article up with this video.

We all know he was a polymath who had a strong influence on the basic foundation of the U.S. that is still relevant today- hundreds of years later. But he was cool to me for another reason.

Despite his sometimes obvious shortcomings, Jefferson knew one thing. He knew how to study.

In school, I was a smart kid who had been taught by the system to do the minimum. Studying never occurred to me; I either absorbed info while I was doodling, or throwing things at classmates, or I crammed, cheated, and faked my way to a C. Jefferson had it right though. To pseudo-quote the documentary, Jefferson lived life to its fullest, he had no fear of learning, and no fear that he could not be good at everything.

He woke before sunrise each day and wrote letters to famous scientists, poets, statesman, and architects. Then he read books, sometimes 8 at a time. He was a consummate gardener, author, father, grandfather, vintner, astronomer, and of course politician. He just did not quit.

I’m 34 now. I only wish I had learned early on what it meant to apply myself instead of skate by. There is a sort of nobility to minimizing your effort through school. It demonstrates that you’re too cool to have to work hard. But once you hit the real world, (which I did about a decade ago) doing the minimum is decidedly uncool. I’ve been learning that lesson yearly, monthly, daily. Sometimes to the minute.

You can do more. Are you the best at your profession? Why not? Do you want to be? What are you doing to get there?

Oh. I’m sorry, that episode of Futurama kept you from reading about HTML5 last night. And last weekend when you had a near 60 hours to brush up on your early swiss design grids, it just didn’t seem to get done because you needed a nap and to catch up on your Netflix Q. Aw. Too bad.

Jefferson himself would not have told you to sacrifice family time, or the love of those dear. He was a devoted lover of life and those around him. He was a gentle and engaged father, grandfather and husband. But he just did not F* around with anything that was not enriching his own life, or that of humanity. He wasn’t perfect; he failed often at politics, fidelity, and even contradicted the very tenets he laid down. But he worked hard regardless of his successes and failures. He tried desperately hard to be good at everything. Like… everything. He was better at more professions than most people who practiced an individual trade all their life. Jack of all trades- master of all trades.

So you have no time. Kids, family, a chest cold, hobbies, whatever. Have you ever totaled up what 30 minutes a day adds up to over the course of your average life expectancy? For most of us that’s almost two years. How much do you think you can learn in two years? Now what if you found the five hours a day that Jefferson found each day (7 days a week) usually before anyone else in his house was awake- to read, think, and study…

Let’s put it this way. At the age of 83, Jefferson didn’t count being president of the United States among his three biggest achievements.

What you include, and likewise, what you actively choose not to include is what becomes part of you. Being able to do so while being consistent with what you know to be true is the intersection between conviction and risk. And that won the crown every time.” – from Bobulate.

She nailed it.

We can’t just throw ingredients into the mix without first analyzing why they should be there in the first place. It’s careless. Why would we do that with our apps’ features?

“I let go of the law, and people become honest.”
Such a smart thing to say… And true of app development too. The less rules you give people, the more they can be inventive within the app. The less features they really need (because features are just a reaction to rules)

“He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers.”
It’s easy to react to feature requests and complaints with malice. We work so hard on these apps, and spend our waking nights thinking about how to make them better. “Who is this middle-aged schmuck who thinks he knows how to do my job better than me?”

It’s wrong thinking. We should take comfort in the fact that these are their only needs, and that we must have satisfied so many more of the others that they took the time to talk with us about the ones (in their opinion) that we missed. It’s a tremendous compliment.

“He thinks of his enemy as the shadow he himself casts.”
The app market is thick. We tend to react quite sharply when we see new apps in our same genre. Comments, and critiques fly around pretty fast. But these apps exist along with our apps, and because of our apps. You can’t have a coin with a tails, but no heads. We need these apps to drive us forward, to inspire us, to react against.

“He teaches without teaching so the people will have nothing to learn.”
The goal these days is to make apps that don’t require a manual. It’s a response to the crufty mess that companies like Microsoft have heaped onto us for years. But the simple apps that are so simple there is nothing left to learn might be short lived.

At Paste we choose to believe that apps should have a learning curve. Every function does not have to be immediately apparent, but rather the app should “unfold” its hidden features as you use the app. You should not need to know everything about the app on day one to use it, nor should you be out of new things to do with the app on day 100.

“Confront the difficult while it is still easy”
The best time to fix a bug is before it is one… Having simple and sturdy construction in the beginning is the greatest secret to having less bugs later. It’s much easier to fix it before it breaks.

“Think of the small as large”
“God is in the details” is thrown about like tissue paper these days. But lets take a step back and think about what it really means. These many details when taken in sum -become your app. There’s a trend these days to say “good enough” -but there is a fine line between good enough, and not good. Certain personality types benefit from permission to leave loose ends. Otherwise things would never get done… But the majority of us ought to be striving for greatness in all details. It’s important not to rely on self-help books, or quotes to give us excuses not to work hard.

“Accomplish the great task by a series of small acts”
Here’s the best one… We know it, but most of us fail to act on it. Pick one feature, pick one page, pick one paragraph. Make it better. There’s nothing easier than completing a small task, but you’ll be shocked at how much better things get on your app if you can just make small things better every day. Every day.

I take great inspiration form Apple’s latest effort with Snow Leopard. They’ll obviously make less money with this release than with previous releases. But because of their efforts to optimize, and improve, they’ll be the recipients of a better, more reliable, and probably simpler system to work within. They’ll be happier, more productive, and faster in the future. The revenue they lose is only delayed, and will most likely be much greater because of this detour towards “better.” All these very small things are turning into one big great OS.

“Put things in order before they exist.”
The best time to make revisions is before you write any code, or design any mocks. Use your imagination, talk a lot, -think. You will never regret a single day you spend planning your app before you build it. We have avoided thousands of hours of work towards apps, and features we wouldn’t have been proud of by just planning more… Planning saves time, – it doesn’t increase it.

“Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
Therefore the master takes action by letting things take their course.”
This is not an excuse to procrastinate. But it is an excuse to take the time to get it right. There is a lot of pressure to push apps out the door, -by your clients, by yourself, by your bosses, and coworkers. But be resilient to the pressure where you are able. We’ve scrapped entire versions of our apps because “they didn’t feel right.” I don’t regret a single hour we spent working on the lost versions, and not releasing them is one of my proudest decisions. We were teaching ourselves how to make a better app. And you don’t have to do that in front of an audience…

“What he desires is nondesire”
Are you trying to finish your app? Or are you trying to have nothing left to add to it? Like most of the Tao, its semantics, but it makes you think more deeply about your actual intent. Trying to “get done” is one thing, but “being finished” just feels different when you really contemplate it. While we plan and debate our apps exhaustively before starting, – we let the apps talk to us about what still needs done, and what features can wait. When an app feels useful, and is not begging for polish in any areas that you use frequently, – when you have no desires left within the app that keep nagging at you, – it just might be time to launch…