It goes back 18 years. I had read a couple of Benjamin Franklin biographies and was fascinated by his daily progress tracking. His was a self-proclaimed “Plan for Moral Perfection” and was tracked daily in “a chart with columns” (a primitive spreadsheet).
It goes back 18 years. I had read a couple of Benjamin Franklin biographies and was fascinated by his daily progress tracking. His was a self-proclaimed “Plan for Moral Perfection” and was tracked daily in “a chart with columns” (a primitive spreadsheet).
The Spreadsheet Era
I started my first goal/habit tracking spreadsheet in 2006, but focused more on the specific actions that I wanted to perform rather than a list of virtues like Franklin.
For the next 17.5 years, I tracked…
I learned and iterated…
learned more and iterated again…
and again…
and again and again.
Takeaways
- Every day has to feel like a fresh start — It’s the opposite of the New Year’s resolution approach. If you live the New Year’s resolution way, then only one day out of every 365 feels like a fresh start. It becomes slightly less ridiculous at the month level or the week level, but it’s still pretty stupid if you think about it. The tracking method has to be forward looking in order for you to wake up every day excited about the realistic possibility of reaching your targets.
- There has to be a daily score — Let’s face it, we’ve all been programmed since a young age to keep score (of everything) and to be motivated by scores. Each action that you’re tracking has to be made quantifiable (“50 pushups” rather than just “pushups”). From there, scoring how you’re doing on that action, the action category, the day, the month, etc. is all possible. A single, numeric, daily score is the most critical piece of information and it acts as the lynchpin for understanding how you are doing.
- Tracking methods need to be flexible — There are things that I want to do every day to build a consistent habit (Read a book — 10 minutes, every day), and there are things that I want to do regularly, but not every day (Listen to a thought provoking podcast — 1 show, every 8 days). There are also things that I want to allow (or even force) myself to skip occasionally (Eat right — 1 full day, 5 of every 7 days). They all have to be tracked and scored properly.
- Some is better than none — If I want to do 50 push ups and I do 40, then I didn’t do my stated goal, but I certainly didn’t do nothing. I should get 80% credit. If I don’t get any credit, I’ll just skip it altogether.
- Long term trends should be clear — It’s great to have a single day score, but it’s also very motivating to be able to see progress over time. Streaks and patterns become apparent and it unlocks a different level of motivation that helps to keep me moving. Every day is building toward a bigger picture.
The App Search
Around 2018 (12 years in), it was becoming a little ridiculous to still be using my spreadsheet. I was pulling Google Sheets up on my phone to do my editing and it was obviously painful. It was time to move on.
There was really no shortage of habit/goal tracking apps on the market. There are even more today, but they are all unfortunately misguided in the same ways. Many of them do not employ ANY of the five discoveries that I made through years of trial and error. There are a few that take advantage of one or two, but none of them hit the jackpot. Given that all of my findings had been meaningful, my spreadsheet unfortunately continued to be the only thing that I could use!
Taking the Leap
I failed to mention to this point that I happen to be in the business of creating software. I started my career as a software developer 23 years ago and co-founded a software company (Clear Blue Design) a little over 10 years ago.
We have made numerous apps as a company, but we honestly did not plan to make this one. We had a lot of work to do as it was, but in the end, due to frustration with the market, we decided to dedicate a percentage of our time to start working on Ever Better.
Designing the App
Over the last ten years of building apps at Clear Blue Design, we have refined Our Process and we stuck to it rigorously throughout the design and build phases of Ever Better.
Since I had so many years of experience tracking my habits in a spreadsheet, I thought that I knew exactly what we needed to build, but the collaborative design phase proved to be just as revealing for this app as all of the others that we have built.
Our MVP (Minimum VALUABLE Product) definition had a clear target: KILL THE SPREADSHEET that no other app has been able to kill.
Even given the 5 takeaways from prior years as a foundation, there were dozens of decisions that we made in the user experience (UX) design phase that steered us toward the result. We iterated many times and ended up with hundreds of sketches that went unused in the next phases of design and ultimately in the app itself.
Side note: we use Excalidraw for the most liberating sketch experience. It’s a game changer.
The App Era
After 17.5 years, on February 17, 2024, we had an internal version of Ever Better that allowed me to stop using my spreadsheet. For the next six months, we used it and continued to iterate with improvements. In August, we had publicly launched to the app stores.
Ever Better will get Ever Better
We are big believers that a software product is a living thing that requires constant reflection and improvement.
While we know that we have the best core habit tracking app on the market, there are many things that we will be doing to enhance the experience for our users. Whether that involves keeping up with and integrating the latest findings of the research behind habit formation, strategically integrating AI to make action creation more seamless, or adding a “support group” social component, Ever Better is dedicated to being Ever Better.
