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Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

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Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#91
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as I die I'll be able to look back on my life and see that I had everything properly organized into neat folders.

Not sure what the snark is for. Perhaps I didn't explain its usefulness that well. I may write a post about it because there seems to be some interest.

Okay, sorry, let me spend some more time and give you an example.

One big problem with a unified dashboard is that not everything in your life should be monitored on the same frequency.

Here's one example: You probably need to check your email several times a day (if not, god bless you!) but checking your 401k balance several times a day is almost certainly harmful to your well-being. It probably doesn't make you happier; contemplating your money rarely does. Instead it will alternately make you worry (as every dip in the stock market causes nightmarish visions of a retirement spent in a cardboard box), or make you irrationally exuberant (as every good trading day makes you dream of buying a second home). The net effect is that it will subtly encourage you to trade, because if you don't trade your 401k is the most boring thing imaginable, and you feel the subconscious urge to tinker with it to make it do something. But trading is a disaster, because churning your investments makes other people rich at your expense, and because timing the market doesn't work, and telling yourself not to time the market usually doesn't work, either.

For much more on this topic see the work of e.g. William Bernstein (The Four Pillars of Investing, The Investor's Manifesto) or any of the so-called Bogleheads, or try Ramit Sethi:

https://wordsofward.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-single-best...

Here's another example: The ideal amount of time to spend monitoring your weight is none, unless your weight is unhealthily large or is increasing significantly. (If you're prone to anorexia, a continuously updated dashboard showing your weight is potentially dangerous. You need to avoid playing that game.) And unless you're some sort of edge-case athlete, by no means should you monitor your weight daily: You should either weigh-in weekly, or weigh yourself daily but compute a running average (and have a deep understanding of what a running average is and why you're computing it). Otherwise day-to-day fluctuations are likely to destroy your confidence in your diet. (I'm told that, for this reason, Weight Watchers explicitly trains members to weigh-in weekly, not daily.)

Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#92
post #27

I got really excited after reading the submission title because I thought someone had finally created a service I've wanted for a while. This is great, but you should take it further! Here's the idea: I've wanted a personal dashboard to track everything in my life at a quick glance, like weight/health metrics, financials, to-do, schedule, emails, twitter replies, etc; something that'll give me a quick and comprehensi…

You can do this very easily by putting your data in Google spreadsheet and use https://my.infocaptor.com to track it. Here is how you would connect to google spreadsheet http://infocaptor.com/help/google_spreadsheet.htm

A while ago I built a similar tracking tool for my kid and then introduced to his friend's parents in our neighbourhood and they love the concept. We still use but haven't checked if his friend's parent still use.

Basically it is a google form, so we trained my son to go in and add the time and note down the activity http://www.infocaptor.com/help/kid_activity_dashboard.htm

And here is the sample google spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgQUzbm48k2ydDJ...

Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as I die I'll be able to look back on my life and see that I had everything properly organized into neat folders.

This is coming from a person who probably hasn't seen a benefit from using services like Mint.com. Since I've started using it I have been drastically more aware of my finances. The stuff that you are able to put into neat little folders _should_ go into neat little folders.

I use a service like Mint.com. I check it about once a month. That may well be too often, and a sign that my automation and budget aren't fully mature; once a quarter would be more ideal.

A continuously-updated Mint dashboard? If I needed to micromanage my money that closely it would be a sign of trouble. And it would certainly be stressful.

Most of the money-management advice I trust emphasizes the role of automation. If your budgeting system requires constant mindfulness it's not working well.

Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your customer/employer not only doesn't care how the product is made, they don't want to know: They are hiring you to abstract away the detailed steps involved in making the product. [1] They don't want to babysit you, or live your life alongside you. They don't want to understand every little thing you do. That is the very opposite of what they want. They want you to deliver something valuable with as little fanfare…

I fully understand the thrust of what you're saying, but feel like it's reading a lot into my thoughts that I certainly don't intend. It's a bit smarmy too. Still, abstract from what I actually said or meant it's an educational perspective and I genuinely thank you for it.

It's a bit smarmy too.

My apologies.

Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#95
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is your work relevant if you've created the results? The mentality that carefully-documented work is a substitute for results is the bane of almost all professional managers. It's crazymaking when you set out to achieve a result and receive instead a detailed log of steps that failed to produce it. That happens often enough that I might not want to signal that particular "survival skill" to a prospective manager.

Perhaps the methods used to achieve the results or the context in which they were achieved aren't relevant from one position to another? Maybe the methods would reveal a momentary success that happens to be unsustainable? I feel like your angle here is frustratingly assumptive in the same way as the other response below. Having seen it twice now, maybe what I'm saying looks just like the symptoms of some "process not…

Your good intentions aren't relevant. This thread is critiquing a marketing message. I'm sure you're great at what you do, but the strategy of producing volumes of well-groomed data about your process will work against you with many managers, and isn't expected by any managers.

Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For hosted, an annual fee is appropriate here. A $25 annual fee is quite similar to a one-time fee of $25 because once it is paid, there is nothing to do but use it for an entire year. After a year, it's very obvious whether the app is worth another $25 or not. Either way the developer's compensation is nearly the same assuming many accounts share the low cost of the servers.

There is a mental line between annual and "once and forever" type purchases. I think it comes down to the thought of getting more value and the fact that you own it..it's yours. Secondly, what if I purchase an annual subscription and forget about it the next year? I just paid another $25 for an app I stopped using over 10 months ago. I don't like that hassel of having to remember what my card is attached to and what…

I agree people are like that, although I am not sure more people are willing to self-install than pay for hosted.

You also make a good point about renewals. Because the cost of annual plans is out of mind for most of the year, it's important they allow users to disable auto-renew. I use Pandora, RescueTime and Forrst and they all have this option.

Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#98
post #27

I got really excited after reading the submission title because I thought someone had finally created a service I've wanted for a while. This is great, but you should take it further! Here's the idea: I've wanted a personal dashboard to track everything in my life at a quick glance, like weight/health metrics, financials, to-do, schedule, emails, twitter replies, etc; something that'll give me a quick and comprehensi…

  Basically a Mint meets Ducksboard for my life, or even better, a universal life platform that services can hook into.
I'm working on that and looking for TestFlight Beta testers. http://makeperfect.me

Re: Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

#99
post #73
post #27

I got really excited after reading the submission title because I thought someone had finally created a service I've wanted for a while. This is great, but you should take it further! Here's the idea: I've wanted a personal dashboard to track everything in my life at a quick glance, like weight/health metrics, financials, to-do, schedule, emails, twitter replies, etc; something that'll give me a quick and comprehensi…

Check out your.flowingdata: http://your.flowingdata.com/ It allows you to record and create beautiful charts from any arbitrary data you want to send it. It gets the data by you tweeting direct messages to it, so it's really easy to do from just about any device.

I wanted to try this, but it doesn't autofollow you so that kind of breaks the whole "send a DM to yfd" interface.
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