Hey! This is Mark. Welcome to the brand new AskMeEvery blog!
We'll be using the blog to share interesting resources to help you measure and manage those aspects of your life that are most important to you. We'll also be analyzing the AskMeEvery community data and will share relevant trends.
That's one of the reasons AskMeEvery is so great. It's such an easy way to collect data about meaningful variables in your life. Sleep is a variable - how many hours you sleep on a given night could have a significant impact on the quality of your day. Measure it! Exercise is a variable - whether you go to the gym and for how long are variables that might be important to you. Track them.
From data we can learn insights about ourselves (like, I am averaging 6.04 hours of sleep so far in January... yikes!). As they say, knowledge is power. With this knowledge, we become aware of habits and behaviors that need to be changed. As we develop our new behaviors, data keeps us aware of our progress. It allows us to answer (with at least a high degree of certainty) one of the most important questions in behavior change -
"Am I closing the gap between where I am and where I want to be?"
Change usually doesn't happen in one enlightened moment. Change develops over time in tiny increments. If you can string together a series of small but consistent steps towards a goal, you will be successful.
I read something recently that resonated with me. It was a quote by BJ Fogg, the well-regarded Stanford researcher who specializes in behavior change. He said
"Simplicity changes behavior."
If a task is easy to do and you are prompted to do it, then you will perform it even if motivation is low, and as we have all experienced, motivation is a variable that often oscillates high and low.
This, I believe, is one of the strengths of AskMeEvery. Since the question comes to you, you are prompted to take action. At that moment, the task of responding to the text or email is very easy; it is a task we do many other times during the day. This makes tracking with AskMeEvery convenient, even on days when our motivation is low.
So we love data and we love simplicity. This has been our mission - to help you collect the most meaningful data in the simplest way. Our next steps will focus on increasing motivation and accountability to further help you achieve your goals.
Over the course of the next few months, you'll see a lot of changes (did you see the redesign? tell us your thoughts). These changes are completely influenced by what everyone wants to see, so email us if you have feedback or ideas.
We're excited for the future of AskMeEvery. We've heard really inspiring success stories from a lot of you and we are working hard to make sure that success continues for a long time.
Look for more posts coming soon!