Showing posts tagged review
Awesome talk about being the entrepreneur of your own life or living it in “Permanent Beta” from Reid Hoffman centered around his new book called ”The Start-up Of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform your Career.”
In short, the book suggests that you live your life and treat your career as if you’re a startup. He uses the term “Permanent Beta” to suggest that we recognize that we and our careers are full of bugs. We need to constantly be developed and tested like a product in beta or a startup company searching for a sustainable business model. If you don’t feel like you’re improving, developing and most importantly learning for at least 80% of your work time then you’re probably not in the best place. Reid is a believer that there is most likely significant upside in a career move that makes you feel like you’re in over your head.
Some of my favorites takeaways from the book were not those that were new but those that were motivating. Chapter 6 is “Take Intelligent Risks” and some of my favorite takeaways were:
- “Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson puts it this way: ‘To keep our ancestors alive, Mother Nature evolved a brain that routinely tricked them into making three mistakes: overestimating threats, underestimating opportunities, and underestimating resources (for dealing with threats and fulfilling opportunities).’ The result is that we’re programmed to overestimate the risk in any given situation… Overestimating threats and avoiding losses may be a fine strategy for achieving evolution’s cold mandate to pass our genes on to future generations. But it’s not the way to make the most of this life.”
- “When it’s not clear how something will play out, many people avoid it altogether. But the biggest and best opportunities frequently are the ones with the most question marks. Don’t let uncertainty lull you into overestimating the risk.”
As for the video above, I suggest watching at least the first half. Reid talks about why plans or roadmaps are embedded into the way we live… you are taught early on that if you work hard in school then you can get into a good college and if you get into a good college then you can get a good entry level job (maybe as an associate product manager) and if you do well then you’ll become a product manager > senior product manager > director > executive > la di da di da. Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do because that was the plan, right? Wrong… At least I’m starting to think that was wrong. You can take that path if you want simply because you were taught it was the right path but it may not be what you want to do; there is no ‘right’ path. Dead are the days of creating a 3 year career plan. Just like for web products, 3 years from now a product could be completely irrelevant; you can hardly roadmap more than 6 months out… The same goes for your career. In the book, he talks about how Detroit (well, the major car companies) became irrelevant after being too complacent. The book places an importance in tapping into your network and making the most of it. It provides lots of examples for when and how (and as expected, many incorporate LinkedIn).
What this means for me… I’m a product manager today and was originally an associate product manager and before that I was an intern and a student at a “good” college but that doesn’t mean I have to be a senior product manager on up to an executive next. The landscape is changing and what you do or want to do can change too.
I’ve used “you” and “I” in an annoying manner but that’s because I’m trying paraphrase what Reid suggests while relating it to my personal experiences. This book entered my life at the perfect time. I’m about to turn 25 and am feeling a mid-mid life crisis coming on. I own a great house and have a beautiful girlfriend so life is pretty good but I also care a lot about what I work on everyday of my life so it’s a great time to step back and reflect on my career up until this point to think about how I want to change it going forward. Maybe I can get off the stereotypical product management career ladder and become a “product guy” at a small startup. Hell, I could still become a fireman, a full time student, a scuba diving instructor, or an intern at a VC firm. I could take a gap year… I don’t want to look back when I’m 30 and say “now I’m too old to try this”.. whatever “this” ends up being in my career.
Watch the video and read the book. It’s refreshingly thought provoking and inspiring.
Jawbone UP Review
The lack of Jawbone UP reviews has inspired me to write my own. I’m hoping other early adopters will find this and share their thoughts. The inability to find many reviews also shows that either the product isn’t considered to be as “cool” amongst the tech world as I had anticipated, that people are skeptical of its accuracy, or that it’s priced incorrectly.
Note: I’ve only had the wristband for a couple of days and I’m not using the social/team features or food tracking.
Is it “Cool”???
If it’s not cool then I’m a much bigger dork than my girlfriend claims. I’m fascinated by the product and I’m super stoked for the future based on this first gen. Being able to analyze your life (activity and sleep) is very fucking cool and quite frankly, I’m shocked it’s not something that most common folk have been able to do until now. The products tagline, “Make Healthy Living Fun & Social” doesn’t actually interest me. I’m more interested in just knowing and being able to quantify my daily activity (or inactivity) for no other reason then the fact that I think it’s cool to be able to do so.
Why I Bought It
The cool factor obiously played a role in my purchase decision. If I could have bought a $100 iPhone app, $100 ankle band or a $100 business card sized device that offered the same ability to track and analyze my activity and sleeping ‘performance’ than I would have. However, I was not interested in the identically priced Fitbit because I knew I’d wash the clip in the washing machine or forget to attach it on a daily basis.
I wouln’t have bought the UP and wouldn’t find it nearly as “cool” if it didn’t track my sleeping patterns. In fact, I may have bought it if the only thing it did was track my sleeping patterns (which shows that there’s a unique market opportunity there). Sleep interests me because it’s mysterious… we don’t know much about our own sleeping habits or what goes on while sleeping. I’ve long suspected that I’m a light sleeper and hopefully I’ll be able to quantify that soon.
Secondly, I wanted (and still want) to see how they incorporated game mechanics into the UP experience. As I disclaimed earlier, I have not taken advantage of any of the social features (which itself looks like the primary game mechanic). I’m a true believer that everything we do in life will be ‘gamified’ over the next few years because games are true motivators. It’s hard not to believe this after watching Jane McGonigal or Seth Priebatsch speak.
I primarily bought it because of a developing personal fixation to work on things that improve peoples lives (which involves incorporating gaming). This is a fire that has been slowly spreading inside and products such as the UP wristband and the Glooko glucose monitoring solution make this seem like an area I could realistically work in because I know I could help improve the applications by making them more useful and user friendly. As an old mentor had written on his whiteboard for over a year, “Data, data, data.” Collecting this data is the first step but making it pretty and helping its owners visualize it and make meaning of it is extremely powerful. This is a world in which I could make an impact on technology and peoples lives while thoroughly enjoying doing so.
Product Improvements
The majority of my recommended product enhancements are obvious and shared amongst the other early adopters’ reviews that I’ve found.
- An accompanying Website - The current website allows you to sign in and manage your Account Info (Name, Gender, Address, Password, Email Preferences, etc.), and … Oh wait, that’s it. I’m assuming Jawbone will roll out a full fledged website to accompany their native app before the next gen wristband comes out but I’m pretty disappointed that they don’t already have one, considering how underwhelming the native iOS app is. I want to see detailed reporting including actual analysis with intelligent tips. I want to be able to export data and add notes inline with the graphs. Data, data, data… I bought this to track and make use of data so please help me do that, or better yet, analyze it for me. Also, what is a step exactly? What exactly is light sleep versus deep sleep? According to my math, a step has been 2.5 feet for me but I want to be told this by Jawbone. Please improve your help and education.
- Ability to Set a Default Sleep Time Range - I and 75% of other UPers will forget to manually put their wristband in sleep mode at least once a week. I’m rarely awake after 1am and sleeping past 7am so let me set my default sleep mode to those times in case I forget to push the button one night. If I manually throw it in sleep mode then great. I’m pretty sure Jawbone could roll this functionality out with a software update.
- Wireless Syncing - This seems to be the most common complaint but if you bought the first gen, you shouldn’t be complaining… It’s not like Jawbone didn’t make this known ahead of time. I’m assuming that bluetooth or wireless hardware would either not have fit inside the wristband, and/or would have blown up the price. Either way, I understand it and accepted it but most consumers won’t. Wireless syncing isn’t just becoming expected anymore, but more importantly it improves the overall experience. It’s about creating magical products that just work the way they’re supposed to without any human intervention. Consumers don’t want to think. They want and need their interaction with products and services to require little to no thinking. They have to be effortless. You look somewhere and you see what you want. Not, you plug in, look, and see what you want. Not a huge deal when reading it in a blog but it becomes one when you’re interested in seeing your data several times a day but need to plug it in to do so. Like I said, I accepted this by buying it but completely understand why most people will wait until the second gen comes out with wireless syncing capability.
- Expose Network Data - Jawbone has probably refrained from doing this to push their social features but I still think they should expose top level data. I want to know how I stack up against others in my demographic and across the entire UP network/community. You’re starting to collect a wealth of knowledge so share it!
- Inactivity nudges - I literally laughed out loud when my band vibrated while working today. It tickled and I wasn’t getting up to walk around or stretch. Perhaps I would have if it vibrated repeatedly until I moved around but since it was one quick vibration, I wasn’t motivated enough to remove myself from my computer screen.
- Improved Native iOS App - The app has a loonnngggg way to go (even though I think it’s a great start). Considering there is no web app yet, I’ll put all of these recommendations under the native iOS app but I’d expect them to persist in the website as well once it’s up and running.
Actual Analysis and Tips - I got 1 hour and 28 minutes of deep sleep and 5 hours and 28 minutes of light sleep last night. Awesome. That’s great to know. It would actually mean something if I knew that was average (or good or bad) from a medical point of view. It would be great to know how I stack up against other 24 year old males. It would be great to know how I may be able to improve it. Thanks for telling me that my sleep quality is 69 but what the hell does that mean? Tell me all of that!
I walked 4.6 miles today… Awesome. How far did I walk at 7:34pm? How does that compare to the same time the previous day or the average for the same day the entire month before? How does this stack up against the rest of the network? I have no clue because the app can’t tell me any of that.
Recommendation
Don’t buy it. “WTF, Why not!” …
Despite my abundance of excitement, I don’t recommend buying the product yet. I’m soo happy with the first generation that I’m convinced the next generation will be worth the wait. Jawbone doesn’t need to make many improvements but the few they can (and I think will) make will be worth the wait.
With that being said, this market is extremely young and I’ll be proud in 5 years when I say that I bought and still own the first generation UP wristband and am thrilled (but not surprised) by how far we’ve come since then.
Holes
Because of the fact that I’ve only had the wristband for a few days, I didn’t talk about a lot of things including but not limited to the social and gaming elements (challenges & goals), food tracking, or accuracy (which is probably more important than anything else). More notably, I didn’t talk at all about whether I feel encouraged to live healthier. I can’t yet say that I want to walk 100 more steps tomorrow than I did today or sleep for 10 more minutes. That’ll determine the true verdict. If that happens then the $100 price tag may be a bargain and this thing will really take off. Until then, I’m going to continue collecting my own data and thinking of ways that I can make positive impacts on peoples lives with unobtrusive technology.
