Measured life is worthless if it is not actionable when you need it to be…
Yet most of the measurement tools that have been built have been built only around measuring. This is great and leaves the measurer the opportunity to analyze the data, combine it with other data, and gain a deeper understanding or a different perspective.
What if we did the analysis though and helped the person measuring themselves without their input?
A text at lunch with a restaurant suggestion
If you have been tracking your food, your workouts, your sleep etc. Wouldn’t it be nice as your usual lunch time was approaching if your weight management system sent you a friendly text with a link to a dish at a healthy restaurant that has an ingredient/calorie profile that fits your weekly limits? A nice salad if you could use a lighter lunch today and maybe something more indulging if you haven’t indulged lately. If there was a small 5% discount coupon, it may be just enough to tip the tables and get you to head for that restaurant as well.
An email about a nice walk to burn a few extra calories
Turns out, you worked through lunch and ate a protein bar. Not exactly bad – but not exactly good either. It would be great if the next email that came into your inbox had a nice reminder that you haven’t been for a walk or other exercise today. Perhaps a little graph showing your trend and how actually getting up today will keep you on track for beating your trend. Maybe a walk by the new art gallery that just opened or a walk over to a talk that is being given at a nearby accelerator.
A reminder not to work tonight
Seriously – long lunches, long walks – when are you going to work? At night – duh! Well what if after logging in, you were alerted that you have worked EVERY night for the last three weeks. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the next episode of House of Cards was available and that the hour you’ll spend decompressing away from work is below average amongst your peers, but still necessary.
A reminder to take your kids out with a groupon
You are seeing the trend is around reminders and threading the tools that are readily available today together to give you a better life. This could easily extend to even your calendar. It would be great to know on Thursday that you have nothing scheduled for the weekend and there just happens to be a Groupon for a new play. It is a pain in the neck if you have to go look at the calendar before deciding to buy the groupon, or missing it entirely because you are sick of the emails. Wouldn’t it be great if the emails only came when there was a spot in your calendar to fill in with something you actually would want to do?