Coach.me - Goals & Habits

- Fix text on coaching pages.

- Fixes layout issues with sign up / login flow

– Fixes crash when using 3D touch from your goal dashboard

Fixes issue sending messages to coaches on iPhone X.

Updated for iPhone X.

This release includes a number of bug fixes to underlying partner APIs. Uh... that just means we're updating our connection to Facebook.

How are you otherwise? You don't see a lot of app updates from us because so much of our work is on the content side. That work doesn't require an actual app release--rather you see it directly in the app immediately when we are done.

What's new since our last update?

* We're profitable. We weren't always. In fact, we used to lose a lot of our investor's money. But now we make money on our coaching business. That's a huge relief to me personally and should be at least a minor relief to you. From your perspective, what this means is that we won't go out of business or sell the app to some w.e.i.g.h.t watchers or anything like that.

* If you haven't seen, I'm running a personal coaching group of a few hundred people based around the idea of training your mind like you train your body. It's called Heavy Mental. Google it or look for the in-app promo.

* If you're looking for a new habit to track, I would suggest Write In Journal. We did a journaling module in Heavy Mental and it was the most powerful thing, you basically end up serving as your own therapist.

* If you're looking to get smarter, we've been publishing more of the Coach.me lessons over on Medium.com under the publication Better Humans. The articles we've published there have been amazing. I highly recommend checking them out.

* And, as always, lots of great coaches on the platform to help you maximize your success.

In service,
Tony, Founder/CEO of Coach.me

This release lets us put community announcements into your notifications tab.

That probably sounds like ads. Let me say a bit more about what I want to do.

There are two goals on Coach.me that I want to promote.

One is a paid goal that I run to do deep dives on different productivity topics. So far we've done personality assessments, single-tasking, and automation. We're about to move into morning routines. I'd like to let people know when we start a new topic.

That is an ad though--we make money when people join. However--you should know something really nice about that money. That paid goal was the last bit of revenue that tipped us from being a money losing company to a money making company. Hurray!

If you just pictured me flying around in a private jet paid for by your hard earned cash, let me give you a different picture. For years, we've been burning through investor money and we were getting really close to running out.

So, when I say profitable, what I really mean is that we tipped from an unstable startup into a stable company. Nobody seemed too worried--but I bet you would have been ticked if we'd gone out of business. That's not a risk anymore. Hurray, right?

The second group I want to promote is Use Coach•Me. That's a generic goal that already has a small community around it.

I'm thinking about promoting it more widely because I think our community needs a general discussion area. What's hot? What are working on? How are your kids? The best part of Coach.me is the community. But we're all segmented.

The problem with both groups is that we don't have a way to let people know about big community announcements related to them.

So, that's what this release is about.

In service,
Tony, Chief Coach

Urgent bug fix.

This release fixes the bugs that were causing crashes for people from yesterday's release.

* * * * *
Here are the release notes from the last release, i.e. what we were actually trying to do rather than introduce bugs.

This release adds a dedicated tab for personal coaching.

Personal coaching is about speeding up your path to success so that you reach your goals faster and maybe even surpass what you were originally shooting for. All of our coaches have personal experience with the goals they coach and have proven track records with hundreds of clients.

The most notable piece of our coaching program is the increase in success rates. A person with a coach is 300% more likely to reach their goal.

To try a coach, go to the coaching tab and either search for a goal you're interested in or choose from one of our popular coaching areas. We give a one week trial to everyone so that you can get to know the coach individually and test out whether they are a good fit for you.

* * * * *

The way we look at our app is around the concept of Levels of Coaching.

At the most basic level, let's call this Level 1, you are your own coach. If you've read our other release notes, then you've already read a lot of the science of self-coaching. We often reference BJ Fogg at Stanford and his BMAT model. Maintaining streaks produces Motivation. Structuring goals as habits produces momentum which increases your Ability to make progress and our reminders system acts as a built in Trigger.

The coaching tab we have today is about providing personal coaching. Let's call this Level 2. These coaches are focused on accountability and strategies for very specific goals.

For example, if you want to be more productive, that's a pretty broad goal. Our coaches would help you narrow that down to a goal like "Set priorities for your day."

Then the coach would check in with you on a schedule you both agree on (usually close to daily). This produces a huge boost in accountability.

And then the coach will drill down on the areas that are preventing you from making progress. Just the fact that a third party can observe and guide you is huge. The biggest obstacle to our success is often that we aren't fully aware of what we are doing.

This dynamic is covered well in the book Thinking, Fast and Slow. A emotionally driven subconscious makes most of our decisions. The biggest thing we can do to change is to force more of those decisions up to our conscious rational brain. That's a lot of what your coach will do for you.

After that, you'll examine the challenges together and come up with strategies together. It's really powerful.

And it's completely different than other coaches because it's so specific. You choose a goal. You choose a coach. You achieve that goal. Then you move on. I've used dozens of our coaches to improve every aspect of my life from sleep, to eating, to productivity, to inbox management.

In service,
Tony & the Coach.me Team

P.S. Please update your reviews in the app store. As I mention with each release, Apple only shows reviews for the most recent release. It's just a few taps to update your old review for this one.

This release adds a dedicated tab for personal coaching.

Personal coaching is about speeding up your path to success so that you reach your goals faster and maybe even surpass what you were originally shooting for. All of our coaches have personal experience with the goals they coach and have proven track records with hundreds of clients.

The most notable piece of our coaching program is the increase in success rates. A person with a coach is 300% more likely to reach their goal.

To try a coach, go to the coaching tab and either search for a goal you're interested in or choose from one of our popular coaching areas. We give a one week trial to everyone so that you can get to know the coach individually and test out whether they are a good fit for you.

* * * * *

The way we look at our app is around the concept of Levels of Coaching.

At the most basic level, let's call this Level 1, you are your own coach. If you've read our other release notes, then you've already read a lot of the science of self-coaching. We often reference BJ Fogg at Stanford and his BMAT model. Maintaining streaks produces Motivation. Structuring goals as habits produces momentum which increases your Ability to make progress and our reminders system acts as a built in Trigger.

The coaching tab we have today is about providing personal coaching. Let's call this Level 2. These coaches are focused on accountability and strategies for very specific goals.

For example, if you want to be more productive, that's a pretty broad goal. Our coaches would help you narrow that down to a goal like "Set priorities for your day."

Then the coach would check in with you on a schedule you both agree on (usually close to daily). This produces a huge boost in accountability.

And then the coach will drill down on the areas that are preventing you from making progress. Just the fact that a third party can observe and guide you is huge. The biggest obstacle to our success is often that we aren't fully aware of what we are doing.

This dynamic is covered well in the book Thinking, Fast and Slow. A emotionally driven subconscious makes most of our decisions. The biggest thing we can do to change is to force more of those decisions up to our conscious rational brain. That's a lot of what your coach will do for you.

After that, you'll examine the challenges together and come up with strategies together. It's really powerful.

And it's completely different than other coaches because it's so specific. You choose a goal. You choose a coach. You achieve that goal. Then you move on. I've used dozens of our coaches to improve every aspect of my life from sleep, to eating, to productivity, to inbox management.

In service,
Tony & the Coach.me Team

P.S. Please update your reviews in the app store. As I mention with each release, Apple only shows reviews for the most recent release. It's just a few taps to update your old review for this one.

This release adds a customizable start day for the week. A huge percentage of the world thinks the week starts on Sunday. And that's how our app worked until today.

Now you can also set your starting day as Monday which is what I and a lot of Europeans think it should be. Or, you can also set the start day to be Saturday which is common in the Middle East and Northern Africa. We still default to Sunday.

You may be wondering when this matters? Mostly this matters for targets. You set a target for how often you want to check in each week. That target resets at the beginning of each week.

For example, my conception of the week goes back to when I was a serious runner. I'd try to run at least six days per week ending with a long run on Sunday. That way of thinking was so ingrained in me that I'd always be confused when all of my Coach.me targets suddenly reset each Sunday. To me, Monday is the start of the week and the Sunday long run is the end of the week.

To set a custom start of the week go into settings. We default to Sunday still, but you can pick Monday or Saturday. If another day becomes globally popular, then we'll add that too.

---

Having the week start on Sunday was always my least favorite design decision in the app. I'm a Coach.me power user--I use it every single day. And I'm the CEO. And I'm the longest tenured employee. How did I lose this fight?

I actually remember it well. We were at a white board in a temporary office on Mission Street in San Francisco. And a person, who shall remain nameless but who was funding the entire endeavor, told me I was weird for wanting the day to start on Monday.

Technically he was right. Sunday is the most common start. And we were in a prototyping mindset which meant that we didn't want to spend extra time taking into account every individual person's preferences.

So I went along with it. And we never had a chance to revisit until just now. I'm so happy and I know that 1/3 of you will be as well.

In service,
Tony & Coach.me Team

P.S. if you have a moment please leave a review or refresh your old review. This only takes a few clicks on your iPhone and makes a big difference in terms of people deciding to use Coach.me.

This release fixes a bug that was causing crashes for people who are on iOS8. If you were experiencing this problem and this doesn’t fix it, please email support@coach.me.

That's it for official changes. Read on for a riff about replacement habits.

* * * * *

Last release note, we talked a little bit about New Year Resolutions and I shared that I was sugar free for 36 days (now 43).

Because that goals been so good for me, I wanted to share a little bit about the strategy I'm using for success, specifically replacement habits.

Obviously, I track No Sugar. I even have a coach holding me accountable to that goal. But I also track Drink More Water and that goal has contributed equally to my success.

Drink More Water is a replacement habit for times when I'd otherwise be enjoying sugary bliss.

Replacement habits are one of the standard strategies for breaking habits. Instead of willing yourself not to do something, you train yourself to do an alternative innocuous task.

In the brain science of habit cessation (that’s the phrase for breaking habits), the neural pathways for your bad habit don’t ever truly disappear. They weaken over time, but they’ll always be there.

That’s what makes replacement habits so important. Since you can’t truly break the neural pathways for your bad habit, your best bet is to create new pathways that are stronger than the old ones.

I always imagine the new behavior as this strong-man in my brain who’s crowding out the old bad behavior.

For me, that’s drinking water. For you, think about any bad habits you're trying to break with Coach.me and then consider also tracking a replacement habit.

Onward,
Tony & Coach.me Team

P.S. Would you please add a review or update the one you gave last time? All our reviews get cleared out every time we update the app.

This release fixes a bug that was causing crashes for when people opened the app. If you were experiencing this problem and this doesn’t fix it, please email support@coach.me.

There’s not much more to say about changes in this app. Pretty pedestrian actually. There’s just the bug fix.

+ + + + +

In other news, how are your New Year Resolutions going?

My big one is that I haven’t had sugar from candy, soda, pastries, ice cream or other desserts in 36 days. .That’s thanks to a No Sugar coach I hired in the system. Thanks Duff!

Most Coach.me users succeed at most of their goals. But we all have one that’s very hard or that we could use more help on. That’s the one where you need to put more thought and preparation into it:

Have you set reminders?

Do you have a reasonable target?

Have you planned out how to succeed? Is your goal SMART? Are you anchoring the goal to something that is guaranteed to happen?

Do you need more accountability? If so, you should get a coach.

I’m personally coaching four people right now. One is working on productivity in order to have the time to start a business. One is working on story telling so that his work gets more visibility with his coworkers. One is working on managing her association’s board meetings.

The coaching from our community can be your secret weapon. Why be your worst self, when you have this tool to be your best self?

Onward,
Tony & Coach.me Team

P.S. Would you please add a review or update the one you gave last time? All our reviews get cleared out every time we update the app.

This release fixes a serious bug in the Apple Watch app. Coach.me mostly didn't work on the watch and now it does (assuming you upgrade to this release).

* * * * *

Our Apple Watch app is meant to literally be a coach on your wrist.

Imagine you're at work. It's late afternoon. You're feeling low energy. Your body is telling you that maybe you need to go to the cafeteria for a sweet, sugary snack. Then the Coach.me reminder pops up telling you that you're on a twelve day streak of No Sugar.

I want to share something with you. I actually am on a twelve day streak of No Sugar. I get a message from my coach in the morning to motivate me. Then I schedule a reminder for the afternoon. I’m healthier and my productivity has gone through the roof.

That’s thanks to the coaching that I’m receiving every day. I’m smarter, more motivated and more aware of the decisions that lead to a better life.

When we designed Coach.me, we focused on making coaching as convenient as possible. Inconvenient coaching is when you drive somewhere to talk to your coach. Better: your coach is on your phone in your pocket. Better yet: your coach is on your wrist.

* * * * *

Coach.me can act as the voice of your better self. When you're tired and groggy, it can be the voice leading you to fulfill your potential.

I get to work at the same time ready to dive in. Coach.me is the voice reminding me to sit down and set priorities. It’s the voice reminding me to meditate on my subway trip to the office. It’s the voice reminding me to drink more water.

In short, Coach.me is the voice of who I want to be.

When we were building the Watch app, we thought a lot about the Angel and Devil on your shoulder. I first saw that concept in Looney Tunes cartoons. But it actually originates in the 15th century as part of medieval morality plays.

Your wrist is as close as anyone has ever come to putting an Angel on your shoulder.

So, there you have it. Today's bug fix helps fulfill a human desire that dates back 600 years. If only somebody would help us make the right decision!

* * * * *

How are your 2016 goals coming? Let us know on Twitter. We're @coachdotme.

In Service,

Tony & the Coach.me Team

P.S. Our reviews get wiped out with each new release. If you love Coach.me, would you please take a few minutes to update your review for this new release?

This release fixes offline check-in.

Were you expecting an essay?

This has nothing to do with offline check-in, but a lot of people are starting to think about New Year Resolutions and reflection.

The reflection part is more important than the resolution part. You shouldn't skip it. What worked in 2015 and how can you repeat that? What limited you in 2015 and how can you fix that in 2016?

Most people pick their New Year Resolutions at random: “I want to learn to fly a plane and have six pack abs and only eat vegetables because I heard that’s what Bill Clinton is doing.”

Don't be that person. Start with reflection.

One of the big meta goals for most people is to be happy or at least happier. Gratitude is one of the ways to get there. So, as I write this, I’m thinking about some of the things I’m grateful for. That's my goto form of reflection, "What am I grateful for?"

=At Work=

* I’m grateful for the Coach.me leadership team of Alicia and Terrie. These are the two that do the most to make this company run. I’m grateful for their work, their ideas, and their commitment to the mission of changing people’s lives.

* I’m grateful for our coaches. We have 5200 now (up from 700 at this time last year). 

* I’m grateful for our community. Every day someone sends me an amazing story of inspiration. Tracking is the core of self-coaching and your success is the foundation for everything else we do. Thank you!

* I’m grateful for our investors: Ev Williams, Bijan Sabet, Steve Schlafman, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, David Allen, Greg Yaitanes, Narendra Rocherolle, Jeremy LaTrasse and SV Angel. These are the people who paid for us to run a massive experiment in human potential. Of course, I expect the company to pay them back, but that was never a guarantee. So we should all thank them for their faith.

= Not Work=

* Always grateful for my partner, Sarah Milstein. We aim for an equitable partnership but it’s not. She’s bringing so much more to our relationship. If I was a power, then we’d be a power couple. 

* I’m grateful for my mom, a power user, and my constantly sprawling family. I grew up an only child and now have six siblings, a niece and four nephews. Such great people. Mixing work and not-work, grateful for my sister, Kati, who’s working for us right now.

* This next one came out of the blue. I reconnected with a really old friend who’s now a coach. In 1992, Graham Betchart and I ruled the basketball courts at Herbert Hoover Middle School. Now he does mental strength training for NBA players. I think long term friendships are the best, even if they have 20-year gaps.

* My favorite movie was Fury Road.

* My favorite TV was Master of None, Transparent, Fear the Walking Dead, Silicon Valley and Catastrophe.

* My favorite podcasts were Tim Ferriss and Call Your Girlfriend.

* My favorite vacation was Turkey. The American press doesn’t have very nuanced coverage of Muslims. For example, did you know that in Turkey, Muslim’s love dogs? I love dogs too. We have a lot in common. Also, the Mediterranean is great. 

* The self-help books that actually helped: Miracle Morning and The Art of Learning.
 
* My gym. This is my happy place. It’s like Cheers in that there’s literally a guy named Norm who greets you when you arrive. I have hundreds of Coach.me check-ins here ranging from swim, bike, weights, basketball and running. 

It’s a little bit weird that you read this far. Because, really, just use the app. Coach.me is for you. But if you did read this far, thank you. I think building apps and communities is social and I like being able to share a bit about myself as a way to be "not just the president, but also a member."

In Service,

Tony, CEO/Founder of Coach.me

P.S. My 2016 Resolution is going to blow this thing up (in a good way)! Switching from Lift to Coach.me was super hard and full of difficult decisions. But it was worth it and we're coming up on a big explosion of new stuff.

P.P.S. Please leave or update a review

Lots of goodies in this release:

- We’ve added a skip feature — swipe left on the dashboard and goals that you’re not going to do today will drop to the bottom.
- If you have an iPhone 6S, try force touch on the Coach.me icon.
- If you have a 6 Plus, we’ve fixed a major bug in the Today widget.
- If you have an Apple watch, our Apple Watch app should load much faster.

Mostly though, we’re excited about the skip feature.

Not every goal is a daily goal. So if you aren’t going to run today, you can swipe it off your dashboard.

Also, in case you didn't already realize this, swiping right checks in to your goal for the day.

In Service,
Tony & Team Coach.me

P.S. Please do us a favor and add or update your app store review. Even if you've left a review before, you still need to update it in order for it to show up on this version of Coach.me.

This version changes two things:

1. Updates the tutorial screens when you join

2. Adds testimonial and feedback if you cancel a coach.

Were you hoping for a longer release note? Most of our changes now are happening behind the scenes, so I'm starting to feel like our famously long release notes are antiquated. They're just not a great way to keep people updated anymore.

Since the last release:

- Coaching got 70% better as measured by client retention.
- We released the first ever Digital Coaching Certification
- 2,000 more coaches joined our platform

None of those things involved a new App Store release. So, sorry Chris Messina and whoever the other person who read these was =). I'm gonna start writing shorter release notes.

P.S. Does anyone want a Skip feature? I do. Maybe that's in the works.

P.P.S. Please update your reviews! They get cleared out every time we release.

This release has even more bug fixes. It's a fast follow on our last release because it looks like we didn't fix everyone's problems.

The most recent feature is a high-five for your important milestones. Here's how we described them in last week's update:

* * * * *

For a long time, basically the entire life of this company, I’ve been interested in positive reinforcement.

This is Psychology 101 — you are more likely to repeat behaviors that are reinforced and less likely to repeat behaviors that are punished.

Of course, for people, this story gets more complicated. We tend to overanalyze. Some of us even manage to convert a reinforcement into a non-event, i.e. we’re the people who can’t take a complement. 

So, one of the things we learned early on was that the reinforcement needed to mean something.

In the hierarchy of reinforcers that we’ve deployed props from a stranger beat points from our app, props from a friend beat props from a stranger, and a meaningful message from your coach beats any sort of props. In other words, the power of the reinforcer is tied to how meaningfully it is perceived. 

Our milestone release revisits reinforcements that are generated by our app. The first version of this app (only seen by my close friends) would give out points. Invariably, people would ask, “Why did I just get 50 points?”

So, I had to admit that points were meaningless. When we went back to the drawing board for milestones, we looked at the path of our most successful users. They all got addicted to making consistent progress.

The milestones feature is about calling out steps along that path. We’ve chosen important markers that show that you’re making progress.

Your first check-in is the most important. A three day streak is a great start. Your 50th check-in means you’re beating 95% of the world. (And, it should be noted that two of our users passed 1000 day streaks and didn’t hear anything from us.)

So, if you do get the milestone celebration from us, I hope you’ll agree that we’ve chosen an important marker of your progress and that you’ll envision the reinforcement doing physically reinforcing the neurons that are responsible for your goal.

 * * * * *

Also, if this version of the app doesn’t crash on you, please add or update your reviews in the app store. They get wiped out with each new release, so we rely on you to re-add them. It’s just a few taps if you’re on your iPhone.

In service,

Tony & Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Terrie

This release adds celebrations when you reach streak or progress milestones in any of your goals. We’re calling the feature milestones.

We also fixed a bug that was causing crashes for some users. If you ever experience a crash in the future, email our support: feedback@coach.me. We almost always have a workaround.

 * * * * *

Here’s a little bit more about milestones.

For a long time, basically the entire life of this company, I’ve been interested in positive reinforcement.

This is Psychology 101 — you are more likely to repeat behaviors that are reinforced and less likely to repeat behaviors that are punished.

Of course, for people, this story gets more complicated. We tend to overanalyze. Some of us even manage to convert a reinforcement into a non-event, i.e. we’re the people who can’t take a complement. 

So, one of the things we learned early on was that the reinforcement needed to mean something.

In the hierarchy of reinforcers that we’ve deployed props from a stranger beat points from our app, props from a friend beat props from a stranger, and a meaningful message from your coach beats any sort of props. In other words, the power of the reinforcer is tied to how meaningfully it is perceived. 

Today’s milestone release revisits reinforcements that are generated by our app. The first version of this app (only seen by my close friends) would give out points. Invariably, people would ask, “Why did I just get 50 points?”

So, I had to admit that points were meaningless. When we went back to the drawing board for milestones, we looked at the path of our most successful users. They all got addicted to making consistent progress.

The milestones feature is about calling out steps along that path. We’ve chosen important markers that show that you’re making progress.

Your first check-in is the most important. A three day streak is a great start. Your 50th check-in means you’re beating 95% of the world. (And, it should be noted that two of our users passed 1000 day streaks and didn’t hear anything from us.)

So, if you do get the milestone celebration from us, I hope you’ll agree that we’ve chosen an important marker of your progress and that you’ll envision the reinforcement doing physically reinforcing the neurons that are responsible for your goal.

 * * * * *

Also, if this version of the app doesn’t crash on you, please add or update your reviews in the app store. They get wiped out with each new release, so we rely on you to re-add them. It’s just a few taps if you’re on your iPhone.

In service,

Tony & Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Terrie

In this update, we’ve upgraded the coaching chat feature so that you can share photos with your coach.

When we first decided to add photos to the coaching chats we were thinking of diet coaches. It’s so tedious to log your food, wouldn’t it be better to just share a photo of your food with your coach?

But then I started using the photos with my productivity coach. Instead of telling him about my day, I just snapped a photo of my todo list. 

When I first hired a coach for productivity, I told him that I was completely non-responsive to external accountability. I was wrong.

We had run an experiment with personality quizzes recently. Gretchen Rubin, a NYT best selling author on happiness and habits, had categorized people into four categories based on how they react to internal and external expectations. 

Roughly the categories were as follows:

Upholders: annoying do-gooders (my words) who react well to any expectations set by other people and to expectations they set for themselves. Their lives just seem so easy. I mean, at least they get stuff done.

Obligers: very responsive to external expectations, i.e. accountability. Not responsive to internal expectations, i.e. they probably don’t make their beds. 

Questioners: non-responsive to any expectations unless they know and believe in the underlying reasons. Subject to paralysis by analysis. I’m a questioner.

Rebels: know what people think they should do, think they should try something else instead.

Taking it back to accountability, more than half of people who hired a coach turned out to be obligers. Our coaches were amazing accountability partners. The obligers used their coaches as motivational hacks that that created external accountability for an internal goals

I thought that I was immune to this. But as soon as I started sending photos to my coach, I realized I was trying to impress him. And I’d work extra hard (not that I was lazy) to get even more done so that I could have a better picture to share.

All that’s just to say, have fun sending pictures to your coach.

In service,

Tony & Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Terrie

The essence of Coach.me is to reimagine productivity by placing a coach with you at all times. This release takes two enormous steps in that direction.

* We’ve placed the best features of Coach.me onto the Apple Watch.

* We’ve upgraded Coach.me so that you never lose a chance to record your progress. If you're offline, we'll save every record of your progress until you're back online. In other words, we’ve added one of our most requested features: offline check-in.

Coaching provides steroids for your productivity. It’s an opportunity for you to augment your motivation and expertise.

Coaching is almost illicit in it’s power. And it’s the top performers in the world, people who will do anything to achieve their goals, who are most likely to work with a coach.

Steve Jobs had a coach. The Williams sisters, Tiger Woods and Mozart had great coaching from birth: their father. Tom Brady has a team of coaches provided by the Patriots and then another team of coaches he hired on his own to watch over his diet, recovery, flexibility, strength, and psychology. 

In coaching, more is better. 

Originally, coaching was something you did in person, once per week.

Then we built the first version of Coach.me for the web. This was coaching for when you’re at your desk.

We built the second version of Coach.me for your phone. This is coaching that was always with you, but not always visible.

Today's version of Coach.me achieves something that’s never been done before: a coach, that’s always on, always available, always visible.

This release is the most coaching, and therefore the biggest augmentation of productivity, that’s ever been available. 

We’ve realized a dream today and I want to walk you through how Coach.me works on the new Apple Watch.

*** Glances ***

The first place you’ll see your goals are on the Glance feature of Apple Watch. This lets you see “at-a-glance” what your next goal for the day is.

We’ve left all of the managing of your goals for the Coach.me iPhone app. That’s where you can go to order your goals in the order you want to do them each day.

Once you’ve created a roadmap for your day, we’ll use Glances to always show you your next action. You’ll check in to that goal and then the Glance will update to show you the goal after that one. 

One more thing, we’ve added “Not today” to the Apple Watch version of Coach.me. Just long press on the check-in screen. 

*** Smart Notifications ***

In habit design we sometimes talk about triggering and anchoring.

Triggering is about making sure you never forget. Anchoring is about making a goal automatic. 

Imagine a reminder to Set Priorities comes in at 8:35am, just as you’ve sat down at your desk. This triggers you to stop browsing emails and take action. Eventually this action becomes a habit, automatically anchored to your Coach.me reminder.

This triggering and prompting works the exact same way with a coach, with the added benefit of getting personalized instructions. 

These notifications are incredibly powerful pieces of your productivity gains. 

And now they’re even more powerful.

Messages from your coach and reminders will both show up on the Apple Watch. This means you’ll see them immediately without having to dig into your pocket.

The really cool part is that we’ve added the ability to record your progress directly from the notification. You don’t need to open the app at all. 

On the iPhone, you swipe left on a notification to bring up a check-in button.

On the watch, you’ll see a check-in button as part of the notification.

*** An App on your Wrist ***

Last, you’ll be able to use the entire Coach.me app directly on the AppleWatch.

That means you’ll be able to see all of your goals.

If your goals have instructions, for a workout, you’ll see those instructions as well.

You’ll also be able to check in to your goal and celebrate your progress, all from your wrist.

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To our future selves!

Tony and Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Terrie

This release is just a bug fix. Our app was crashing for users of iOS7.

Read on for a little bit about continuous deployment (total inside baseball).

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We’ve released 15 versions of Coach.me in the last 12 months. That’s a pretty rapid pace — some app developers don’t release more than once or twice a year.

Developers call this style of development and releasing: continuous deployment.

The idea behind continuous deployment is that every change we make to the app during development gets released to customers as soon as we’re done. Ideally, that would mean our app is getting updated multiple times each day.

In practice, Apple forces a delay. Every release we make goes through an Apple review process. On average, Apple has taken eight days to review and approve our releases (although our last two releases both got approved within two days). 

The main reason to practice continuous deployment is to give our customers as much value as possible. Each feature is an improvement (usually) and we don’t see the point of keeping those improvements from you.

The main reason not to practice continuous deployment is fear around bugs. The cost of a major bug can be very high. If our app stopped working, our users could experience more than a week of downtime while we made a fix and then waited for Apple to approve that fix.

But, we’ve mostly found this fear to be unfounded.

We’ve been practicing continuous deployment since we launched and this is the first time we’ve had to rush out a fix. 

Anyway, that’s just some background on how we think about development and where bugs come from. 

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Also, please update your reviews. Each new release starts with an empty set of reviews. It’s just a few taps on the iPhone in order to add your old review to this release.

In Service,

Tony & Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Terrie

Coached plans are step-by-step instructions for achieving your goals. They work just like every other goal on Coach.me with one addition: daily instructions. This release upgrades our plans feature so that it’s easier for you to navigate between those instructions.

Our first version of plans asked you to take a linear progression through the plan. You could skip forward, but you could never move backward or repeat instructions. 

Today’s new version allows you to switch to any instruction on the plan at any time. That’s a lot more flexibility that will make our existing plans much more enjoyable. For example, in meditation plans, you should be able to replay guided meditations based on your mood. 

Also in this release, we’ve made coaches more visible in the Q&A and on the goal check-in screen. 

Read on for more on plans.

 * * * * *

We have a lot of great plans including brain training, fitness, yoga, and strength training. 

But I’m most partial to our meditation plans.

The Coach.me community has adopted more than 200,000 different goals. So, I often feel out of place recommending any one goal in particular.

But if I did recommend a single goal, it would be meditation.

Building a meditation practice is like doing pushups for your mind. And everything you do, from work, to relationships, and even to athletics, benefits from a stronger mind.

We’ve helped 85,000 people build a meditation practice and we’ve seen many of those people fail or struggle with this practice. 

Why do people struggle? Erin, on the Coach.me team, used our data to find the answer.

There’s a secret to meditation. If you don’t know the secret, then meditation is an impossible struggle. If you do know the secret, then it’s impossible to fail.

We added a category of plans that offer guided, audio meditation sessions in order to teach you the secret.

In each plan, a coach guides you through a series of meditation sessions. All you have to do is press play and do what you’re told.

The secret you’ll learn is this: it is normal, expected and universal for your mind to wander. People who believe this secret find that there’s no wrong way to meditate. People who believe meditation is about having a perfectly calm mind sit for a single 30 minute session of self-loathing and then never try meditation again.

But you can’t just read this secret and believe it. (Or at least I’ve never seen anyone learn this way). You need a guide walking you through your meditation session, teaching you how to become aware of where your mind is wandering to, and then reinforcing that each instance of your mind wandering is normal.

We have several meditation plans ranging from meditation companies like Calm.com, to academics at UCLA, to authors like Jeena Cho. Each plan features a coach’s voice guiding you through a session that might be as short as a single minute and might be as long as 30 minutes.

With today’s upgrade, you can go through these guides at your own pace. If you liked today’s session, you can do that same session again tomorrow. If you’ve been through the entire plan, then you can circle back to your favorite sessions. Basically, we want you to be in control of your experience.

In service,

Tony & Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Terrie

This release updates coach rankings and includes several bug fixes.

Read on for the state of coaching

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Most Coach.me users know that we were called Lift as recently as December 30th. The name change reflects a change in philosophy: everything we do is a form of coaching.

Reminders are coaching. Tracking is accountability, which is coaching. Props are motivational coaching.

At the top of that coaching hierarchy sits actual human coaches that will coach you in (almost) any goal for $14.99 per week.

And the first week is free. So, the price is right.

But, to tell you if it's a good value I need to see if the coaching is any good.

Before we launched, we were hearing tons of anecdotal success stories.

"I finished my dissertation because my coach helped me kill my procrastination habit and just focus on writing my first sentence of the day. After that, I was in a flow state."

"I lost ten pounds because my coach held me accountable to eating more vegetables and less sugar."

Etc. We get a lot of these sorts of anecdotes.

But I also want to be able to measure something. So today's release includes new rankings based on a first pass on measuring coaching quality.

The amazing thing about online coaching is that we can measure which coaches actually help people. Do their clients check in? That's a coach you want. The new rankings reflect that.

* * * * *

Also, please update your reviews. They disappear with each new release of the app, but can be refreshed with just a couple of taps on your iPhone. Your reviews make a big difference for people who are seeing the app for the first time.

In service,

Tony & Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Esther, Terrie

We've changed our name from Lift to Coach.me. Plus we've fixed some bugs. But mostly, this release has a new name, new icon, and a new logo.

Read on if you'd like to know more about why we chose Coach.me.

* * * * *

A superficial benefit to the name change is that it removes some confusion around the name Lift. Multiple companies have adopted this name (great name!). We get support email for three of these other Lifts. But that's just a superficial reason to change our name.

The deeper reason is that we are a different company than we were when we started. We've kept our original mission, to help you become super human, but we've pivoted wildly from our initial product idea. The name, Coach.me, reflects that pivot.

Coach.me isn't even our first name change. When I started coding, I called the project Lifepoints. Then, for almost a year, I called it Mibbles (just a goofy name for points). Then we were Lift. And now we are Coach.me.

Those name changes track the product pivots. Our initial concept was to build an all powerful motivational robot that doled out points. That didn't work very well.

Launching a product and getting feedback reveals truths that you can't see beforehand (or at least, I couldn't see them).

Now that we've been public for awhile, it's blatantly obvious that the power of the app comes from the community.

So, along with renaming ourselves to Coach.me, we've pivoted into a very broad definition of coaching. The name change is fast-following our prior product changes.

Coach.me is a coaching platform and all of you are the coaches. You start by giving props, then by answering questions, and then (if you want), you can mentor other people as their personal coach.

* * * * *

There aren't any feature changes in this release. The first version of Coach.me works the same way the last version of Lift worked:

1. Choose a goal. In fact, choose as many as you want.

2. Setup free or paid coaching in the form of props, reminders, Q&A, and/or a personal coach.

3. Track your progress while we coach you.

* * * * *

Does change make you sad? I'm a nostalgic person, even though all I do is work on personal change. I loved the name Lift and I'm sad to retire it.

The old Lift logo was a work of art. The logo designers, Pacific Helm, are logo masters responsible for many famous icons, including iTunes and Square.

Lift's abstract elevator button looked good everywhere: in the app store in both flat and 3D versions, on shirts, and even on Yoga mats.

One of my favorite team photos is of Herzog, a sub 3:00 marathoner, cruising around San Francisco's Polo Fields at six minute mile pace wearing aviators and a Lift running shirt (and shorts). The Lift logo made him look like a professional runner.

All of that is just to acknowledge that Lift was a great name.

* * * * *

But Coach.me, though! We're all really excited for this name. Several members of the team screamed (good screams) when I told them that I was able to buy it.

We're pronouncing it Coach Dot Me, spelling it Coach.me (big C, little m), and using CoachDotMe as our username on sites like Twitter (follow us on Twitter).

I'm sure there will be some hiccups as we change the name. It's really hard to make this happen instantaneously across our site, the app store, and tons of third party apps.

That's the story of our new name. Hit us up on Twitter if you have questions. We're @CoachDotMe.

* * * * *

One last thing. Please leave a rating in the App Store. If you're on your phone already, you just have to give a couple of taps. Your ratings help tremendously with our rankings.

To 2015! Let's make this the best year ever!

Tony and the Coach.me team: Erin, Alicia, Herzog, Esther, Terrie