Happy Groundhog Day, Palindrome Day AND The IFOD Turns Three

by | Feb 2, 2020

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I love Groundhog Day. It makes total sense that an overgrown rodent can predict the weather! Punxsutawney Phil has been correct about 30% of the time.

It’s also 02/02/2020 which is a true date palindrome (dates such as 9/19/19 aren’t really date palindromes because the year is truncated). IFOD on palindromes here.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the IFOD. Thank you for reading. The thing I like best about writing this blog is the personal interaction from comments, emails, and in-person discussions.

Over the past three years I’ve published 635 IFODs. Both daily, and over longer periods of time, the number of clicks follows a power-law distribution as you can see in the chart below. Every day the top click getter is that day’s post. But many clicks come from Google and are of prior posts; the current day post usually gets less than half the day’s clicks.

ifod-clicks-chart-2020-2257354

Here’s a link to the most popular IFODs: https://www.theifod.com/most-popular-ifods/

Here’s a few IFODs without many clicks but which I think are pretty interesting:

Views of Luck: An Important Mental Model

The Relaxing Breath

Thinking About Thinking

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

How Many Languages are Spoken in the World?

Beast Mode: Motivation and the Key to Success

The Best Place to Hide a Tree

9 Comments

  1. John , I always take great pride in telling people that you are my nephew. I just keep trying to find out where your brain power came from. 🧐
    Love, Uncle Gary

  2. Look forward to each Ifod
    The years pass so quickly, so carry on for us all.

  3. Congratulations on the IFOD’s 3rd anniversary! I really enjoy the blog and have passed on links to many of my friends. Thanks John!

    • I’m out here enjoying your content in anonymity!

      Hi John.

      Spock

  4. Congratulations!!

    • First, super congrats on 3 years!

      Second, very proud of my daughter Eliza who spotted a closer palindrome date: 03/02/2030 — only 10 years away. (and I suppose a bunch more after that, like 04/02/2040, etc.). Part of the fun of the IFOD — it keeps you thinking. Thanks, John.

      • Wow. Good point!

  5. Happy anniversary, John. Even though you’re now a fancy-pants Forbes contributor, I hope you continue gracing us with these well-written pieces about anything & everything.

    Peter

    • Thanks peter.

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