Comments are now enabled again on Genuine Curiosity

Just a quick note to let you know that I had a configuration problem on the site that somehow disabled comments.  This has been resolved, and you can now leave comments on posts here at Genuine Curiosity.

This was all part of a migration to an updated blog platform within SquareSpace, which is my blog provider - they made quite a few changes on their new platform (SquareSpace 6) and I'm in the middle of the learning curve.

I moved to this version because it has better mobile support, easier content "voting," and a number of other usability enhancements.  Let me know what you think of it vs. the old site, if you have an opinion.

Reflect on the old year, plan the new year

Last week, I wrote about Beeminder, to help motivate you to keep your New Year's resolutions, and a few weeks ago, I reviewed the book "Your Best Just Got Better," which is a great book to read to figure out how to set meaningful goals.

This week I want to share some tools and methods to get past the "writer's block" that often stalls people when they sit down to write their goals and resolutions.

Getting your goals out of your head

It's pretty common for people to carve out a few cycles this time of year to make plans, new year's resolutions, and such.  I'm a very visual person, so I find that using a mind map helps me organize my thoughts and stimulates my thinking.  My tool of choice is MindManager from Mindjet, but you can find lots of other mind mapping alternatives on the other end of Google (FreeMind, for example, is free and Open Source).

I organized my map into three main "zones" (which you can see in the diagram below):

1. A review of last year, where I identify highlights, lowlights, and missed opportunities
2. A look ahead to help me frame my main areas of focus (more thematic or directional in nature)
3. Making more concrete commitments I want to achieve (specific commitments and projects I want to focus on)

I've included my blank map below, and you can download my "New Year Reflection" mind map here.  You can also launch an interactive (but not editable) version of the "New Year Reflection" mind map via this link (give it a bit of time - it has to download a Flash-based player).

View fullsize

Feel free to customize it so the prompts are more meaningful to you.  And, if you use this approach, please let me know how it works out for you.

Still stuck? Try thinking about it another way...

If you'd rather think about your goals in terms of the roles and "categories" in your life, I have another template that may be useful, as well.

View fullsize

You can download my "2013 Success Planning" mind map here.  And, if you don't have MindManager or a compatible alternative, the interactive (but not editable version of 2013 Success Planning can be accessed via this link (give it a bit of time - it has to download a Flash-based player).  In this map, the "writing prompts" are in the Notes attached to each of the major categories - click on the little notepad icons and you'll see the prompts over in the notes pane on the right.

Improve the odds of keeping your New Year's resolution

It's that time of year - the time for New Year's resolutions, new promises, and fresh starts.  If you're like me, some of them work out and others don't.  What's the problem when they don't work?  For me, it can be easy to just let things slide because there aren't any consequences for being a slacker.  When they do work out, it's usually because I feel a sense of obligation or accountability, so I don't end up letting myself off the hook.

This past year, I discovered a resource that can make a big difference in your chances of success in 2013.  The tool?  Beeminder.  I've written about Beeminder before, but wanted to revisit it in the context of New Year's resolutions - I think Beeminder is one of the best tools around to maintain individual accountability.

Accountability - and consequences - matter in New Year's Resolutions

The concept behind Beeminder is pretty simple: you set a goal, you pledge some money, you use the Beeminder site to track your progress, and if you don't meet your commitment you pay up.

My commitment, as reflected in my Beeminder project this year, was to post to this blog at least 4 times per month.  There was something very motivating about having the pressure of my commitment hanging over me - Beeminder helped me establish a new set of consistent habits for writing blog posts, even if my initial pledge was $5.

Even reinforcements are not silver bullets

Even with the commitment and penalty in place, I fell off my path once along the way.  What did I do?  I got back on the horse, paid my penalty, and set a new commitment amount of $10.  That pricier commitment has been a big help - I have been consistent about posting here at least 4 times per month and, with this post, I will satisfy my 2012 goal - pretty cool.

Time to set a new goal

Now, as we move into 2013, I will be setting a new goal to keep my momentum here on the blog.  I'm planning to set a goal of at least 52 blog posts in 2013, and will maintain my current financial commitment of $10 and, of course, I'll be using Beeminder to track my progress.

If you want to learn more, there are some great examples at the Beeminder site, such as losing weight, exercising more, quitting smoking, becoming more productive, achieving financial goals, learning new languages, and a lot more.  By the way - during this year, I've interacted with the Beeminder team quite a bit.  If you have questions about how to best represent a goal on Beeminder, reach out to them - they have been extremely helpful in getting my goals to work the way I expect them to within the Beeminder system.

If you want to see what goal tracking looks like, you can see my status graph for my 2012 goal at this link.  Going forward, you can follow my 2013 goal at this link.

And stay tuned - I'm going to share some other resources to help with resolutions and productivity in my first post in 2013.

Jawbone UP Wristband (2012 version) - A Hands-on Review

Chances are you know at least one person that has a pedometer, a Nike Fuel Band, or some other kind of exercise / activity tracking device.  A few weeks ago, I got a "Jawbone UP" wristband and I'm really enjoying it.

What is the Jawbone UP?

This multi-function device tracks steps and your general activity level, and syncs with your iOS device (no other smartphone platforms yet, unfortunately).  But the UP also tracks your sleep, which is one of the main reasons I've been waiting for it to be released.

The Jawbone UP is $139 which seems like a good price for the functionality it offers.

For what it's worth, this is the second version of the UP - the first version was released a year ago and discontinued because they kept failing.  The new version seems solid based on my experience so far.

My impressions of the Jawbone UP

Comfort: The UP band is very comfortable.  I wear the Large size, and it fits very well (I used Jawbone's sizing guide on their website to figure out what size to order).  The band is flexible and coated in a soft rubbery finish, so I barely notice it's there, and I wear it all the time except when showering (it's water resistant, but I'd rather avoid getting it wet when I can).

Battery life is very good; you charge it using a special USB adapter provided with the UP and it takes about 80 minutes to reach a full charge.  Once it's fully charged, the UP lasts for about 8-10 days before it begins giving you the "low battery" warning.

Accuracy is decent, when it comes to exercise tracking.  I've done some testing of the band by counting my steps and comparing the steps it has recorded, and it is typically a bit low (conservative).  However, in the few tests I've done, its number is 95-98% accurate (I notice it is less accurate when I'm carrying something with my left hand, as I have the UP band on my left wrist).  I'd much rather have it under-count my steps than over-count them.  Sleep tracking, by the way, seems spot-on.

Syncing is pretty easy.  You start the app on your phone, remove the plug cover and plug the UP band into your phone's headphone jack.  It takes a few seconds to load the data into your phone, then you can unplug the band, replace the cover and put the UP back on your wrist.

The App not only gathers your data, it also uploads your stats to the cloud to maintain a historical record of your activity.

Minimal, easy controls make the UP a snap to use.  There is only one button on the UP - a silver push-button on one end of the strap.  If you tap the button, you can tell whether the band is in "Sleep mode" or "Awake mode," through a small LED display on the edge of the band - you see a moon in Sleep mode, and a Sun in awake mode.

To toggle the modes, you "long press" the button, and it will vibrate to let you know it is changing modes.  You'll also see the LED indicator toggle the Sun and Moon indicators when you long-press the button.

Sleep Tracking

I'll talk about sleep tracking in a bit more depth, since it was the main feature that put me over the edge when I picked the UP.

As I mentioned above, you signal to the UP band that you're going to sleep by long-pressing the button on the end of the band.  You'll see the crescent moon indicator come on briefly to signal Sleep mode, and you'll feel a brief vibration from the band.  That's all there is to it - put it in Sleep mode, and you can go to sleep.

While you sleep, the UP band will track your sleep activity based on your movements and does a good job differentiating between you being awake, being in deep sleep, or in light sleep.

When you wake up, you simply toggle the band back into Awake mode and go about your day.

Smart Alarms

To help you wake up, you can use one of my favorite features:  the Smart Alarm.  You can set a Smart Alarm using the UP App and the band will try to find a time when you seem to be in light sleep and wake you up gently, so you feel more alert when you first wake up. 

The UP band begins "watching" for the right time 30 minutes before your target time and gently vibrates when it is time to wake up (you just press the button to get it to stop).  If you haven't begun to come out of deeper sleep when your target time comes around, it just wakes you up then so you won't be late.

I love this feature, and hope Jawbone continues to improve it to make it less limited.  For example, now you can set only one alarm at a time and you have to re-dock the band to change it.  You can set it to work on weekdays only, or 7 days a week but that is about as granular as it gets right now.  I'd like to have different weekend and weekday schedules.

By the way - if you travel, once you dock the band it will adjust to whatever time your phone is set for.  That means if you allow your phone to automatically set your time to the local time, you'll wake up at the same time in your new time zone - in my case, I set it for 5am and it wakes me at 5am for my current time zone, wherever I happen to be.

Other odds & ends

There are a lot of other features, as well:

• The metal button on the end of the band rubs on my laptop and bothers me, so I've taken to flipping the band "upside down" when I am typing - that makes things much more comfortable (see picture at right).

• The iOS app for the Jawbone UP is very easy to use.  It has a lot of trending reports, "at a glance" analysis of your day, and makes some smart recommendations for sleep and activity - all tailored based on what you actually do.
• The app not only gives you suggestions based on how much you move, how much you sleep, etc; it also gives you comparison information so you know how you compare to the rest of the UP community, and introduces a challenge every now and again to motivate you to be more active.
  
• You can set targets / goals for both steps and sleep, and you get a score each day to track how you're doing.  If you track food, it can also comment on how you don't sleep as well after a heavy day of caffeine or alcohol, and things like that.
  
• Speaking of tracking food, the app makes it easy to log your food and drink intake so you can compare calories burned vs. calories consumed.  I'm not consistent about this, but it's there if you want it.
  

In short, I am very happy with the UP band and think it is a great way to track fitness and sleep.

Hands-on Review: iPad Mini vs. Normal iPad 3

I've been an iPad user for a long time.  In the past, I've written here about how I use my iPad to be more productive with a Zagg keyboard and Evernote.  I've had the original iPad, the iPad 2, and the iPad 3;  the the iPad 3 is the main basis for my comparison here.

A few weeks a go, I received my iPad Mini (it took a couple of weeks for Apple to ship it - well worth the wait) and have been using it regularly long enough to share my experiences.

By the way, I have the iPad Mini with AT&T LTE broadband, and 64GB of memory - I went with the larger memory because I download a lot of movies to watch on business trips, and they take a lot of room.  I chose the broadband because I am often in high-security buildings where I cannot get on WiFi and I need another option.

Summary of my experience

Size

I wasn't sure what to expect from the iPad Mini, but I must say that I was very surprised at how much smaller, lighter and thinner it feels when you carry it.  It is comparable in size and weight to my Kindle Touch e-Reader, which means I don't have to think twice about whether to bring it with me or not (I sometimes left my iPad 3 at home on long trips to save weight and/or free up space in my laptop bag.  

Not only does the iPad Mini fit well in my laptop bag, it is small enough to fit in the pocket of my jacket - I love that.  Since I use the iPad for so much of my note taking, list making, etc. for my productivity habits, it is a huge benefit when I can take a device almost anywhere.

Screen and on-screen keyboard

The screen has a much lower resolution than my iPad 3, but the lower resolution works well due to the smaller dimensions of the iPad Mini. The screen is plenty bright when you turn it up, and I end up turning it down pretty far for normal use (which also saves battery life).

I didn't have trouble using apps normally, and haven't yet found any apps that don't adjust correctly to the iPad Mini screen.

One thing that required adjustment:  The on-screen keyboard.  in Landscape mode, the screen is now too narrow for me to try to mimic touch-typing (I have big hands) but in Portrait mode, I can now thumb-type very well.  As a side effect, for quick notes using the on-screen keyboard, I rotate it to portrait mode and jot things down in email or Evernote.

After a week or so of thumb-typing I ended up ordering Zagg's keyboard case for the iPad Mini, (right) as well.  This is the little brother of the keyboard I reviewed previously.  Zagg makes a 7-inch keyboard case that is the same width as the iPad Mini, but I went for the slightly larger 9-inch keyboard because I have larger hands.  Even the 9-inch version is plenty small to pack or carry, and I have been very glad that I bought the Zagg keyboard.

Battery life

In spite of its much smaller size, the battery life is comparable to my larger iPad and meets the claimed 10-hour battery life Apple claims.  This means I can use it to take notes  and check email all day, I can watch movies on flights, and I can look things up online without having to worry much about when I'll be near a power outlet.  

Miscellaneous

• I have the Apple Smart Cover for the iPad Mini but I don't like it nearly as much as I like the Smart Cover for the iPad3.  The smaller size isn't as stable when using the cover as a stand, and the new magnet mechanism doesn't hold on as firmly as on the larger iPads (Apple covered the magnets in rubber rather than leaving them exposed, which I think leads to a weaker connection).  Therefore, I rarely use the Smart Cover, and tend to use the Zagg case most of the time.
• The iPad Mini is another one of those devices that uses the new Lightning connector.  This is fine for me, since I already have an iPhone 5 and had to go through the pain of getting extra cables and adapters for my old docks and accessories to work with the new connector.  If you already have a sprawling ecosystem of chargers, cables, and docks from your older iPad, factor this into the transition process.  
  • I highly recommend getting a short adapter to convert your older, 30-pin connections to Lightning.  I prefer the kind with the short cable rather than the all-in-one adapter that is a solid block of plastic - I find the short length of cable makes it far more useful.

Net-net:

Pros of the iPad Mini:

• The size is perfect for everyday use, and much more practical than my larger iPad.
• The battery life is great.
• Cameras (front an rear) are very good (and you don't look quite so foolish taking a picture with this one, like you do with the larger iPad.
• Screen is bright and very usable for email, reading, note taking, movies, and games.
• Huge ecosystem of existing apps works great with the iPad mini.

Cons of the iPad Mini:

• On-screen keyboard is not great for extensive text entry.
• Smart Cover not as useful as on the larger iPads.
• Accessory ecosystem still limited (but this will improve once this device has been around longer).
• Pricey.

The bottom line?  I really like the iPad Mini.  If I were buying today, or I could only have one iPad, I'd choose the iPad Mini.