In this release we’ve added a new Today widget that shows your upcoming Lift goals in the Apple Notification Center. This is a new feature in iOS 8 and you need to manually turn it on. Luckily, the steps are easy:
- Pull down the Notification Center by swiping down from the top of your screen with one finger.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Today section and tap Edit.
- Lift should be one of your options. Add the Lift widget by tapping the plus button.
Extra credit: move Lift to the top of your list of widgets.
Once you’ve turned it on, you’ll see Lift goals that you haven’t completed yet for today and you’ll be able to check-in directly from the widget.
Read on for more about this feature.
There’s a lot of general enthusiasm for technology in the Lift office. So when Apple makes changes we get excited. Esther’s been showing off her iPhone 6. She got hers on the first day. My iPhone 6 Plus arrives on Monday. All of us can’t wait to get our hands on an Apple Watch.
But at the end of the day, I always like to bring the enthusiasm back to goals. Does this new technology help us help you perform at a higher level?
The Today widget that we just released falls into the category of mindfulness. The ‘so-obvious-you-will-forget-it’ strategy around achieving your goals is that it has to occur to you to do the work.
BJ Fogg from Stanford calls these Triggers (they’re the T in BMAT). In real life people leave sticky notes, write on their hand and stack physical reminders next around their house. In the morning, when I can’t find my keys I often find that they’re hiding under a stack of papers that I wanted to remind myself to bring to work.
In Lift, reminders are our most direct form of trigger. But the dashboard also plays a role. We’ve long found that the most successful Lift users had multiple goals. You’d think that one goal at a time would be the most successful strategy.
But people who check in to one goal end up being reminded of their other, harder goals. The most successful strategy is to load your dashboard with a couple trivial goals. I don’t think it’s an accident that “Drink More Water” is a top goal on Lift. Seeing your goals multiple times a day helps trigger you to action.
Turning on the Today widget will mean that you’ll have another major reminder of your goals. I’ve had this feature on my phone for the last week and can see how powerful this trigger effect has been. More than a quarter of my check-ins are coming directly through the widget.
I want to quickly plug the Lift blog / mailing list / Twitter account. We’ve been experimenting with one-on-one coaching in the app and those are the places where we’ve been announcing the experiments. The current highlights, an amazing entrepreneur holding people accountable to setting priorities for the day (that’s been our most popular coaching experiment yet), building super sleep habits, and a former American Gladiator checking in your diet on a daily basis.
Check out these and more on the blog: blog.lift.do
In service,
Tony & Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Esther, Jeremy, Terrie, Dan
