Neat concept. In my experience its helpful to reset the clock and remember the mindset you were in when you were happiest to help guide you towards where you should go next.
I like the concept, good job on getting it out there! However the choice of font (Lobster) pains me, there was a period where it was so overused that it's almost on the level of Comic Sans at this point. #sadface
very nice!
I have a few ideas but have never done mobile development and frankly it seems a bit overwhelming for the 2-5 spare hours in a week.
Is the best way to get started to create a reactive site and port it into an app?
if you can build a mobile-first website (eg w bootstrap or zurb foundation to do the css heavy lifting), then you can use trigger.io (or phonegap) to generate ios and android apps that wrap it...
Is the information stored on the device or on your servers somewhere? I like the idea but I'd also like to keep this data for longer than a company may be around for.
+Android and keeping this as device-only-data (aka, no upload/sync) would fetch several $ from me. If I want to be honest on the app and ensure I'm having a meaningful dialogue with past/future me, I do not want 3rd parties to have any means to see that (aka, chilling effect).
I wouldn't mind having them uploaded via Google's backup API. It basically makes syncing settings and what not between devices painless, so if I have to move phones, or I lose mine, I'm not worrying about losing my journal and having to start over. That or a sync to dropbox or some service I can opt into would be great.
Great idea. It seems like something that would be incorporated in Facebook given it's ostensible goal of documenting your life. Perhaps they'll even hear about your idea and release a "new Achievements" feature in the coming months. Have you considered building your own on top of their api/platform to increase the "virality" of remember win?
One feature to add might be a view for one year ago today. There are journals that have 365 pages and you write a line for each year of the highlights of the day. As you write the new year's line you end up reviewing what you were doing in previous years. It seems like you have most of the pieces to do this.
I use Oh Life for daily email journaling. One feature I really like is the "Oh snap, remember this? X days ago you wrote..." prompt, where X doesn't always equal 365. The random retrospective glances are great. For example, when it's Christmas, I don't necessarily want to be prompted to compare it to the last one...
Didn't know about that one! What an absolutely great thing. I keep a log over the work I do and being able to look back at the work I have done and examine the thoughts I had say a year ago is incredibly valuable. I wouldn't be surprised if you can get the same benefits from this.
It would be great too if in the settings, you could set a notification time for each day. For example, I could set it to ping me at 7:30pm with a notification reminding me to do an entry for the day. When I clicked on it, it would auto-load to entering the log for the day.
I love the sentiment and inspiration. I think this is great for fighting burnout and getting back in the game. The design of the app is really clean and it looks great.
That being said, I feel like the replies here are a bit of a hugbox. As far as the app's value itself goes, I don't see any benefit of this compared to an accomplished.txt file. In fact, a txt file is better because it covers more use cases and has a simpler interface(just start typing).
Why should I use this rather than a notepad? Look for features you can add that would be useful for manipulating data about accomplishments. Find ways to set the app apart.
Accomplishment ranking could be one useful feature. Then you could list even the tiny accomplishments, but if you want to just look at the big accomplishments you can always sort based on ranking to clear out the noise.
It's better than a notepad in that it will send you reminder notifications of accomplishments. A notepad requires you to look at it again.
There are also counters on each category so you begin to notice and feel confident about how accomplished you are on certain areas of your life.
There is also a strengths/skills page which collects notes you've made on each accomplishment. It needs to be improved but eventually you will see patterns in the skills you use to accomplish things.
I hope that helps. I probably should have written that on the website.
I don't know, keeping track of accomplishments in retrospect seems to be rather an additional burden. I'd rather change the app so it helps you to pursue current goals (todos for a goal, notes etc.) and reminds you of goals you have accomplished.
I'm working on a platform which does just that. Don't really want to detract from the thread (as I appreciate the simplicity of this app in just focusing on one aspect), but the link is in my profile if you're interested.
This should help you keep your strengths intact regardless of your current situations ... who is to say that next endeavor will be better than the previous one.
I run an online game, and I think I'm going to try this as a notice for players of positive achievements in the past. Perhaps it makes them all feel like they are doing better than they feel they are.
I think that's a great idea. Team Fortress 2 does things like this after a death (ex: That was the longest you've stayed alive as the Engineer, That was the most points you've ever captured with the Scout) and I find that they do motivate you to keep going even if you're being decimated, because hey at least you did _something_ better than before.
There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but my inner writer cringes, since it's a random throwback to Jobs' commencement speech, and it seems a bit out of place (especially in contrast to the previous 3 headings). I tried to come up with something short/powerful/meaningful, but in the couple minutes I've spared I've come up empty handed.
I would recommend finding a different background image for your header, as I think you could find something a bit less noisey. I like back5 with an y-offset of 540, but another stars/galaxy image would be great if you can find one available for free!
BUT. It looks great! I really wish it was available for android. Keep it up, this is a win for you to remember :)
edit: And just to be clear, I don't see where it would be an issue using it in the app, as the title of that book was supposedly inspired by Jobs saying the phrase, who in turn got it from yet another book. Just wondering if the fact that it's a book title is what the issue is.
I'd love to hear more about your actual story, how you came to realize you were burning out and what kind of changes you made in your life to fight it. Did you leave your job to develop this app?
That's a great idea and good looking app. I had kind of a similar idea: an app that would preserve nice things said about you by others to counteract all the negativity.
I'm really impressed by all these polished launch pages that Show HN folks design. Lack of such is an admittedly lame reason why I refrain from posting projects on HN.
hey! good point - I felt the same so amy trying to create a template website that would make polished app pages easy for mobile developers! hope to share the beta with you soon!
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[ 9.2 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] threadLooks nice too :)
My bad. I'm not a fan of cliches either, even visual ones.
Info is saved on the device.
One feature to add might be a view for one year ago today. There are journals that have 365 pages and you write a line for each year of the highlights of the day. As you write the new year's line you end up reviewing what you were doing in previous years. It seems like you have most of the pieces to do this.
Thanks for sharing!
It would be great too if in the settings, you could set a notification time for each day. For example, I could set it to ping me at 7:30pm with a notification reminding me to do an entry for the day. When I clicked on it, it would auto-load to entering the log for the day.
It doesn't quite auto-load though.
That being said, I feel like the replies here are a bit of a hugbox. As far as the app's value itself goes, I don't see any benefit of this compared to an accomplished.txt file. In fact, a txt file is better because it covers more use cases and has a simpler interface(just start typing).
Why should I use this rather than a notepad? Look for features you can add that would be useful for manipulating data about accomplishments. Find ways to set the app apart.
Accomplishment ranking could be one useful feature. Then you could list even the tiny accomplishments, but if you want to just look at the big accomplishments you can always sort based on ranking to clear out the noise.
It's better than a notepad in that it will send you reminder notifications of accomplishments. A notepad requires you to look at it again.
There are also counters on each category so you begin to notice and feel confident about how accomplished you are on certain areas of your life.
There is also a strengths/skills page which collects notes you've made on each accomplishment. It needs to be improved but eventually you will see patterns in the skills you use to accomplish things.
I hope that helps. I probably should have written that on the website.
An app is way better than a notepad. Reminders, categorization, tagging with skills, extracting patterns, these are very useful things.
How about a Windows Phone version (Hey stop laughing! I am too being serious)
Stress burns the mind in the same way as physical activity burns the muscle. At some point you need to give your mind a rest. I suggest this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom-Illness...
or this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-Go-There-Are/dp/140130778...
This should help you keep your strengths intact regardless of your current situations ... who is to say that next endeavor will be better than the previous one.
Great concept.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10328969/stayhungrystayf...
I am curious now.
There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but my inner writer cringes, since it's a random throwback to Jobs' commencement speech, and it seems a bit out of place (especially in contrast to the previous 3 headings). I tried to come up with something short/powerful/meaningful, but in the couple minutes I've spared I've come up empty handed.
I would recommend finding a different background image for your header, as I think you could find something a bit less noisey. I like back5 with an y-offset of 540, but another stars/galaxy image would be great if you can find one available for free!
BUT. It looks great! I really wish it was available for android. Keep it up, this is a win for you to remember :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Hungry_Stay_Foolish
edit: And just to be clear, I don't see where it would be an issue using it in the app, as the title of that book was supposedly inspired by Jobs saying the phrase, who in turn got it from yet another book. Just wondering if the fact that it's a book title is what the issue is.
Building something you think might help other people is good for your sanity.