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what are the advantages over having your yahoo or gmail calendar text you? will remembering my goals better actually help me reach them, as is stated? why mig

what are the advantages over having your yahoo or gmail calendar text you? will remembering my goals better actually help me reach them, as is stated? why might that be? do you vary the frequency of the reminders at all? Would this be enhanced if you had human mentors that saw the interactions? I find messages computers are dismissed pretty easily, while people a need to respond or show progress to humans.

mahmud 16y ago
will remembering my goals better actually help me reach them I think quite the opposite. What makes you reach goals is never forgetting them to begin with. I can't speak for others, but I have very few goals, and they haunt me, awake or asleep. The rest of the "self dev" stuff I off-load to my fiancee :-P
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  I think what really would be helpful is breaking down goals into concrete tasks, which only a human can do or push you to do. I think technology can facilitate mentors as they ask the questions one needs to answer if one is to translate goals into the actions required to achieve them.
  - derefr 16y ago
    > breaking down goals into concrete tasks, which only a human can do or push you to do. If it's a goal a lot of people have, and which follows a general formula, then once someone has written it down, the software can store it in a central database and let everyone else make use of it. Imagine entering "write book" into your to-do list app, hitting TAB, and watching it expand into "write proposal chapter, find writing group, show chapter to group, modify chapter using feedback, write outline for draft, [...], submit to publisher." Then, if you immediately know how to "write proposal chapter," you can just stick with that and check it off when it's done—but if you're unsure, you can select that sub-task and hit TAB again, and it will expand into "select writing tool, find environment suitable to writing, schedule writing time, create new document"—and then there would be a placeholder step with a question in it, "what are you writing: {prose fiction, technical guide, biography, etc.}" You'd select, say, prose fiction, and it would replace the placeholder with more steps: "think of name and other physical details for main protagonist, think of conflict, write first paragraph introducing both character and conflict, [...]" And there's already a collection of such lists available online to get your database off the ground: the eHow/Wikihow/etc. type sites. You could also parse the StackExchange-driven sites for answers that look like ordered lists.
omarish 16y ago
I think the advantage over yahoo or gmail is that this app texts you at random times throughout the day. If you know that you set a reminder at a certain time during the day, you'll instantly know that you're being reminded when your mobile gets notified. To get around this, I put in some randomization where the app messages you at random points throughout your working day, that way when your mobile buzzes, you don't know right away that it's from Mr. Goal. You can change the SMS frequency in your profile page under "SMS Frequency". It's a dropdown for now, but I've been doing some testing with a jQuery slider bar. As for actually achieving your goals, I think that one is more likely to get something done if they are consistently conscious about it. That's the rationale I have for now -- you'll make small adjustments to accomodate your goals. Speaking personally, most of my goals are not things that take years of effort to do; they simply require that I remain consistent and think + act about them often. There's definitely a lot to be said about the psychology behind reminders. For now, my strategy is to make the service seem as personal as possible without making it seem like it's artificially trying to grab your attention, like a real person would. I think that this blog post does a good job explaining some of the considerations: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/avoiding-the-uncanny-valley-of-user-interface.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/avoiding-the-uncann...

mahmud 16y ago

will remembering my goals better actually help me reach them I think quite the opposite. What makes you reach goals is never forgetting them to begin with. I can't speak for others, but I have very few goals, and they haunt me, awake or asleep. The rest of the "self dev" stuff I off-load to my fiancee :-P

stretchwithme 16y ago
I think what really would be helpful is breaking down goals into concrete tasks, which only a human can do or push you to do. I think technology can facilitate mentors as they ask the questions one needs to answer if one is to translate goals into the actions required to achieve them.
- derefr 16y ago
  > breaking down goals into concrete tasks, which only a human can do or push you to do. If it's a goal a lot of people have, and which follows a general formula, then once someone has written it down, the software can store it in a central database and let everyone else make use of it. Imagine entering "write book" into your to-do list app, hitting TAB, and watching it expand into "write proposal chapter, find writing group, show chapter to group, modify chapter using feedback, write outline for draft, [...], submit to publisher." Then, if you immediately know how to "write proposal chapter," you can just stick with that and check it off when it's done—but if you're unsure, you can select that sub-task and hit TAB again, and it will expand into "select writing tool, find environment suitable to writing, schedule writing time, create new document"—and then there would be a placeholder step with a question in it, "what are you writing: {prose fiction, technical guide, biography, etc.}" You'd select, say, prose fiction, and it would replace the placeholder with more steps: "think of name and other physical details for main protagonist, think of conflict, write first paragraph introducing both character and conflict, [...]" And there's already a collection of such lists available online to get your database off the ground: the eHow/Wikihow/etc. type sites. You could also parse the StackExchange-driven sites for answers that look like ordered lists.

omarish 16y ago

I think the advantage over yahoo or gmail is that this app texts you at random times throughout the day. If you know that you set a reminder at a certain time during the day, you'll instantly know that you're being reminded when your mobile gets notified. To get around this, I put in some randomization where the app messages you at random points throughout your working day, that way when your mobile buzzes, you don't know right away that it's from Mr. Goal. You can change the SMS frequency in your profile page under "SMS Frequency". It's a dropdown for now, but I've been doing some testing with a jQuery slider bar. As for actually achieving your goals, I think that one is more likely to get something done if they are consistently conscious about it. That's the rationale I have for now -- you'll make small adjustments to accomodate your goals. Speaking personally, most of my goals are not things that take years of effort to do; they simply require that I remain consistent and think + act about them often. There's definitely a lot to be said about the psychology behind reminders. For now, my strategy is to make the service seem as personal as possible without making it seem like it's artificially trying to grab your attention, like a real person would. I think that this blog post does a good job explaining some of the considerations: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/avoiding-the-uncanny-valley-of-user-interface.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/avoiding-the-uncann...