TimeAlign

@leopaz8 Ape brain indeed 😂 That is exactly the reason I needed this product. Or at least one of the many reasons. I have ADHD, and so TimeAlign helps me navigate that with a data-driven and intentional approach. Setting intentions for time and then seeing my time tracking towards that intention are incredible external motivators to remember to stay focused singularly. Regarding future features telling you when you tend to slack off/how to fix - this is part of our vision for the product. Once we dial in the complete time management feedback loop and make the UX as intuitive as possible (with user feedback), we'll layer on integrations with popular tools and 3rd party data sets to make tracking/data collection easier. But then it gets even more fun! 🎉 We have advanced ML models in the works to help you really derive insight from your life. And part of that, to me, is knowing when you're distracted and ideally having some way to try to intervene in the behavior. I.e. I say I want to be writing a blog post, but I open Instagram. I'd love for my watch to give me a strong haptic buzz - a "pavlovian shock" of sorts to bring me back to intentional awareness. Or the opposite side of that, finding ways to correlate your high-energy, clear-minded, joyful days with different activities and weekly breakdowns. There's a lot we can do with it as a platform for self-experimentation and self-understanding, as well as positive behavioral modification. These things are down along the path - but things I think about a lot 😅

@jordan_dominguez You're definitely thinking about it the right way! Will be following the journey

@kostyabolsh Well that's an idea! Thank you for that. What other feature do you think should we add in our future updates?

@kostyabolsh this is a great idea and something we've been thinking about too! You can already set time and habit goals for mental activities and make progress towards achieving them. Activity loops could be a delightful data vis!

@jordan_dominguez @hennrunnel Hi Henn! Cofounder and head of product here. Closing the feedback loop on time management, comparing your tracked vs scheduled time, is the foundation of the TimeAlign system. From this core feedback loop, we calculate an "Alignment Score" which is a measure of how well your time is aligned to your schedule and goals. This is powerful because we are able to take a lot of data and simplify it into a single metric that accurately represents something important. This is a concept used by other popular behavior change apps like SleepCycle and Whoop, but instead of optimizing sleep or fitness, we are optimizing your time. The Alignment Score insight also gives you a clear idea of what actions you need to take in order to increase the score. Users can quickly grasp if they are doing well and quickly understand what to do to improve the score. The "social gamification" is something we've thought a lot about. Currently, it is not a feature built into the app, but we do like to share our scores in the Discord community! I am a competitive person myself, so I would really love to find ways of leveraging competition for better time optimization.

I think @matty_reed covered most of it - but I wanted to ask you specifically @hennrunnel - would you be interested in that sort of "social gamification"/leaderboard feature? We've been trying to gauge interest.

@jordan_dominguez As a highly competitive person myself, I'd love to see that implemented. It'd not only boost motivation among users, but also optimize user experience and create loyalty in the long run, if you ask me. Recognition is a very powerful tool, just...consider it.

@toshit_garg Absolutely - an app to gamify your self-discipline. One big challenge we now have to contend with is the nature of humans themselves! An app can only do so much, and notification blindness is a very real thing. It's very easy to ignore things when we see them often and novelty wears off. We're going to try to explore ways to make the app impactful. Gamification, as we've written about, is one of them, but another that I want to explore in the future is that of using AI to personalize messaging to fit your specific goals, context, and communication preferences. So for instance - the first time your reminder to go run goes off, it's just your average reminder. You snooze it, or skip it. The next time, it takes into account your "why", reminding you there was a reason you set that timeblock to go run, you want to get in shape for that vacation you're going on in two months. There are lots of opportunities to use AI to personalize and improve these experiences. The communication preference side of things as well - maybe you prefer your AI "coach" to use more comedy (reminds me of TARS in Interstellar), or be encouraging yet professional. My little brother was talking about his and he said he'd prefer it to cuss at him 😂. So hey, whatever works to break the monotony and remind you why you set the intention in the first place.

@shw1nm Thanks Shwinny! Your support is much appreciated. We'd love all your thoughts and feedback, let's set up a chat sometime

@jordan_dominguez @francis_wade Thanks for the support Francis! It sure does. It's been a long time in the making... and we're just getting started!

@francis_wade Thank you Francis! It feels good indeed - though today (and the last month) have been a madhouse of work and emotions haha. I am incredibly proud of the work we've done and I hope everyone finds the product as useful as Matty and I have, and see the vision and the potential for what we are creating. It's one milestone in a long journey but damn it feels great to make that step! Happy to have you with us on it, and also super excited about all of our potential collaborations in the future.

@memphys_sk The primary gamification mechanism works by closing the feedback loop on time management, comparing your tracked vs scheduled time. This unique approach to time management is the foundation of the TimeAlign system. From this core feedback loop, we calculate an "Alignment Score" which is a measure of how well your time is aligned to your schedule and goals. This is powerful because we are able to take a lot of data and simplify it into a single metric that accurately represents something important. The app also gives you a clear idea of what actions you need to take in order to increase the score, which is a classic use of gamification to induce positive behavior change. Beyond the alignment score, we have layered some additional gamification mechanisms that set it apart from other productivity apps: - Alignment view: The alignment view shows your tracked time next to your scheduled time for the day. You can drag and drop scheduled time to the tracked column or begin tracking in real time. Aligning your tracked and scheduled time will increase your alignment score. - Goals: goals take habit tracking a step further by actually encouraging the user to schedule time to achieve them. There are lots of studies that show that you are much more likely to do something if you scheduled time to do it. - Data insights: the app gives you in-depth insights to see how much time you scheduled and tracked and compare it to previous weeks. We also have a lot of exciting gamification features that will be released in the near future: - Streaks: goals streaks are nothing new but when combined with the Alignment Score, it is uniquely compelling way to induce positive behavior change over time. - Levels: We are combining best practices in time management with behavioral psychology in a new way. The TimeAlign Levels are not meaningless ladder to climb, but rather a purposeful progression that gets more challenging and returns more value to the user at each stage. For example, the second level is called "Audit"; it based on time management best practices and designed to help you find clarity before you dive head first into complete optimization. We have many many more plans for new gamification features on the roadmap, so let me know if you want me to continue! We also go into much more detail in our whitepaper if you're interested: https://www.timealignapp.com/whi...