I thought the video at http://vimeo.com/101948793 was helpful. Lots of "fake" work like email sucks your time because it's right there in your face. Seems like this app tries to put important but not urgent goals and habits on an equal footing with urgent but not important tasks.
pg said it pretty well: "If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. Dealing with email, for example. You do it sitting at a desk. It's not fun. So it must be work."
If the app works well, it may be because it guides you toward the right long-term priorities instead of you getting caught up in busy work.
If you are interested in tools that will help you see the important from the urgent, check out http://weekplan.net which is heavily inspired from the book "7 habits of highly effective people" from Covey.
You'll find for example the Quadrant view, and other tools to help you stick to your goals.
I've been using Timeful since the beta. The "first beta" wasn't very good, but I've been using the second beta every day now for the last week or so - it has improved a lot. It's a really cool product with a solid vision.
The basic gist of it is to collect events (time at place, happens without you), todos and habits (things you want to do regularly) in one place, as well as nudging you with these things in the right circumstances (context awareness - they still have some work to do but it's getting there). It does this based on your custom defined sleep/work/high-focus hours, as well as what you actually end up doing (for example, completing a habit or ticking off a todo).
If you're a fan of Dan Ariely and experience problems with calendars, todo lists and all these fancy systems - and who doesn't? - definitely give it a try.
I was surprised that Timeful, a pre-launch product, was able to raise a whopping $7M in Series A financing. Then I realized it was Dan Ariely. Is this the primary reason?
I mean, our company has two products with like a quarter million people actively using it now (2.7 million times a month), paying us real money, and I haven't found such enthusiasm among VCs yet. I am fine with that, but I always wonder what motivates the VCs and I think it's relationships, team credentials, and products have to just be somewhat believable as possible hits going after huge markets. I mean look at Color's $40M round for example. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the--did-color-raise-a-cr...
On the other hand there are teams with great potential products, but no relationships, and if they raise VC early they probably get bad terms to "get access to the old boys club" of the industry. Sort of like how talented artists discovered by A&R in the past might go on to sell millions of records but barely make anything from their first few. These days there are other options.
I wonder, does anyone know what terms Timeful got, for $7M? Did the VCs take 40% of the company? Did they make board seats and corporate governance such that they could take over at any time?
I sounds very interesting indeed. After completing Dan Ariely's class on Coursera I think he actually knows what he is saying and doing, so I'm going to give it a try.
If you're looking for the app on Google Play or iTunes - it's not there. Go to to http://www.timeful.com/
If you believe the scientific literature, says the Duke
behavioral economics professor and popular author Dan
Ariely, we humans have about two hours of peak cognitive
capacity, generally first thing in the morning after
we’ve fully woken up.
That settles it. 2 Hours every morning working only on the next big project thinking, designing, writing, and coding.
Thank you for working on a web copy, Timeful developers. My Samsung Convoy 2 cannot run iOS or Android apps--by design. The calendar the noted manufacturer of flip-phones and phablets (I kid, I kid!) thoughtfully included is, however, crammed full of events.
The product potential and the funding make it seem like this is a bunch of insider baseball going on here. This is something I feel I could build in a few months, let alone require 20 people. Aside from all the jargon about these researchers, what's special? I'm not sure users actually care about some interesting insights some professors have because how does it manifest in the app? Color me skeptical.
I wonder whether "iPhone first" is really such a competitive position to take? (personally, I count it as hipster-ism) I would think developing for the Web should be easier and can reach a larger audience.
There’s a legitimate question people raise when asked to provide personal information: “How do you make money? And does it involve selling my information or otherwise sharing it?”
Here’s our answer: We don’t yet know how we’ll make money. We believe if we are successful in helping people make better use of their time -- this most precious and perishable resource -- then they will be willing to reward us for it."
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has raised $7 million from Khosla Ventures along with Kleiner Perkins, Greylock partners, Data Collective, Pitango and Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments.
I'm not saying that all you have to do to raise funding, apparently, is be from Stanford but...well, yeah, I guess that's exactly what I'm saying.
Two of the three co-founders are Stanford affiliated (a CS prof and a Ph.D candidate.) Ariely's name and popular research is a draw for investors, but a couple of Stanford CS folk in the founding team did not hurt either...
pg said it pretty well: "If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. Dealing with email, for example. You do it sitting at a desk. It's not fun. So it must be work."
If the app works well, it may be because it guides you toward the right long-term priorities instead of you getting caught up in busy work.