December 2011
20 posts
1 tag
When you’re a one man show you have to focus on... →
November 2011
1 post
5 tags
Vision
In choosing to do our startup in the San Francisco Bay Area, near the heart of the Valley — the world center for technology and innovation — and joining an incubator run by Xooglers, we didn’t expect our company’s most powerful and transformative lesson over the past 4 months to be that in the realm of the visceral, intangible, and emotional. What we learned first and...
September 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Personal Accountability, Collective Inspiration
This guest blog post comes from Bassam Tarazi, founder of Colipera. Colipera uses both individual goal setting and the social pressure that comes from being a part of a group endeavor to help you stay committed to your goals.
We find plenty of reasons to not start; plenty of made up, self-sympathizing reasons to never see a dream or a goal through to the finish. Truth of the matter is, we...
2 tags
Crowdsourcing Product Positioning
We have a broad-based, loosely constrained web application. Our users engage with the site in a variety of different ways for a number of reasons. That makes it difficult to take a bunch of usage information and turn it into actionable data about how to position our product.
In searching for data to form the basis for a concise statement on our site’s value proposition, we ended up in an...
7 tags
Anatomy of Three Writeups
The lean startup movement disdains the big press launch, and rightfully so. However, the polemical nature of the argument gives off the impression that press should never be sought. Quite the contrary, press should be sought ceaselessly. That being said, it’s important to understand the magnitude of traffic that you can expect from press and of what kind.
We’ve been fortunate to...
August 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Schmoozing for Introverts
I’m often asked how iDoneThis has been featured so often in the press. Business Insider picked as one of 20 startups to watch, Bob Scoble tweeted about us, and Lifehacker, Netted, The Next Web, and The New York Observer have all written about our modest three-man band.
For us, press has come from making a case to be heard through relationships with the relevant people. Knowing people results...
8 tags
Google Calendar, iDoneThis Sharing, and More!
Hi there. We’re proud to announce two new features to you. Friends, iDoneThis users, humans, Dundee the productive dog — lend me your ears.
Get your iDoneThis daily dones in your Google Calendar! Click on the “Feed” link underneath your iDoneThis calendar. You will receive a secret link that you can plug into your Google Calendar.
We’ve made iDoneThis calendar...
1 tag
How Rakesh Nair Stayed Productive for 100-Straight...
Meet Rakesh Nair, software developer, writer, and foodie. Rakesh stays productive with his many projects so that at day’s end he can write down his accomplishments in iDoneThis.
BIO
I express myself almost completely in three words which form a part of my Twitter bio: Fat, Humorous, Witty.
I love food, all kinds, with absolutely no exception. Chinese food, especially noodles, is my top...
July 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Corey Maass, Productivity Expert
Meet Corey Maass, productivity expert, software developer, and musician. Corey uses iDoneThis to keep track of work, play, and everything in between.
BIO
Corey’s been working on the web for 15 years, enough time to learn a little about a lot of things. In 2004 he launched his first web app, and has created a dozen more since. Working on his own ideas, or helping clients, his passion...
7 tags
How I Ran a Quarter Marathon
Incremental progress is almost a law of nature; nevertheless, I’ve often fantasied about accomplishing a lofty but distant goal, pursued it for a month or two, merely made incremental progress, and quit.
Sometime in January, shortly after we first launched iDoneThis, I decided to pursue my long-standing desire to run long distances. I’ve started that many times. Shin splints, knee...
June 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Ernesto Ramirez, Wellness Polymath
Meet Ernesto Ramirez, Ph.D student in public health, Quantified Self organizer, and disliker of to-do lists. Ernesto uses iDoneThis to feel great about what he gets done every day, to motivate himself to do more, and to create a record of his life. He made the following word cloud to show his last 62 days on iDoneThis. Ernesto’s an inspiration to us at iDoneThis, too — we’re...
2 tags
Brianna Roux, Scientist
Meet Brianna Roux, young scientist, college student, and amateur knitter. Brianna uses iDoneThis to track school projects, check-in on her knitting progress, and advance medical science.
BIO
I am currently a senior Biomedical Engineering major at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, with a minor in biochemistry/molecular biology. After I graduate, I plan to continue my education and get a...
4 tags
Cheryl Yeoh, Entrepreneur
Meet Cheryl Yeoh, first-time entrepreneur, co-founder of CityPockets and recently named one of 25 women driving NY’s tech scene. Using iDoneThis every day, Cheryl traces the footsteps of her rising startup and already has a couple of major milestones logged into the calendar.
BIO
I co-founded CityPockets, a daily deal digital wallet with a secondary deals marketplace that’s based...
May 2011
2 posts
6 tags
Dr. Hari Palaiyanur, Ph.D
Meet Hari Palaiyanur, newly minted Ph.D, NBA fanatic, and eater of vegetables. Hari used iDoneThis to motivate him to make progress on his dissertation every day, until he had his degree in hand.
BIO
I was born in India and have grown up in the US for most of my life. At some point in college, I became addicted to basketball. I’ve lived in the Bay Area since graduating college and am...
1 tag
Andrew Zarick, Digital Media Strategist
Meet Andrew Zarick, digital media expert and hip hop enthusiast. Using iDoneThis every day, Andrew has discovered that he gets more done than he otherwise gave himself credit for.
BIO
I’ve lived in Brooklyn for almost 8 years. I started my professional career as Digital Strategist for DUMBO-based interactive marketing agency, The JAR Group. I recently founded a marketing agency called...
April 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Copywriting as Scalable Customer Support
Technology provides the basis for this two-man team to run a web service that has handled nearly 30,000 email entries. But going from about 600 registered users in late March to over 5,000 in mid-April not only required us to scale our technology, it forced us to find a scalable solution to customer service as we saw our support emails explode from 23 total requests between January and late March...
9 tags
Willem Bult, Entrepreneur
Meet Willem Bult, world traveler, entrepreneur, and software developer. Willem uses iDoneThis to build fine internet products by reflecting every day on his step-by-step progress towards his goals.
BIO
I write code and travel the world. I’ve lived in Europe, SE-Asia and the US. I’ve always been interested both in software development as in entrepreneurship. At age 15, I was...
12 tags
How We Got Our First 5,000 Users
Celebrate — this week we got our 5,000th user! This is the most users either of us (Rodrigo and I) have ever had for any web project of ours. In the past, we’ve taken the “build it and they will come” attitude towards web development … and they never came! Here’s the story of how we did it by constructing custom narratives for influential communities.
Hacker News. At 9am PST on...
3 tags
Alex Z., Food Logger
This is the first in an ongoing series profiling iDoneThis users. Meet Alex, denizen of New York City, and active food logger. Alex uses iDoneThis to write down every single thing he eats every day.
BIO
New York City native. Tried caviar at age 7 and loved it. Not a superstitious person outside of sport. I enjoy looking for things and ultimately finding them.
Age: 28
Location: New York,...
