MJ's New Goal Setting/Achievement App

[BlackLands]

A Power Task is the most important thing you can accomplish for the day.

You can only have ONE.

If your Power Task is a repeating daily habit, then technically, you cannot add any.

@MJ DeMarco Your app is incredible! I'm the guy who interview Dean in his podcast and I'd like to have you as guest too. In Italy there are a lot of my customers who need an app like GoalSumo.com.

You and Dean are doing an incredible work!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

@MJ DeMarco Your app is incredible! I'm the guy who interview Dean in his podcast and I'd like to have you as guest too. In Italy there are a lot of my customers who need an app like GoalSumo.com.

You and Dean are doing an incredible work!

Nice! Glad you think so considering we've only just scratched the surface of what we're trying to accomplish. Lots more in the pipeline (including AI, goal templates, more.)

As for an interview, thanks for the invite, however I stopped doing interviews last year and don't expect to resume until probably next year.

 

[Peter Abrahamian]

Hi MJ. First off, just wanted to say that this product is incredible, and hats off to all of the developers working on it with you!
I just wanted to ask if there is a section somewhere that shows when you created a monthly/mid/short term goal. I just want to know when I created the goal, so I have an idea of where I am at. For example, this is how I started to write my goals, since I kinda lost track of when they were created.


If there isn't a place where you can see when these goals were created, maybe you can the date it was created in the "edit" section, and also create a "history" section in the "edit" section, which shows how many times you have edited this goal and the dates in which they were created or edited.

Anyways, I hope this was helpful. Good work on GoalSumo.com and I can't wait to see future features!

 

[Dean Irwin]

I am using GoalSumo.com since two days and I like it (like, possibly subscribe like it).

Love to hear it! We'd love to have you join as one of our 25% off for life beta members! This is available with the code "beta-discount".

2. I have trouble in formulating "numerical" dream goals. Most of them are lifestyle goals.

This has been an interesting observation we have made in training experimental AI models and working with GPT prompts. I have found (and others can feel free to disagree with me!) that there are different mixtures of what a good goal is based off of what the category is....

Without giving too many details, an example of this is a financial vs a romantic goal. I have found that a good financial goal is specific in long-term levels of the chain (Dream, mid-term, possibly short-term). A good romantic goal is going to be less specific in long-term levels, but more specific in short-term levels.

For example, a solid financial goal is (again, this is an example) 5 million net worth, a far-reaching target for myself and most likely others here, and it is a good big-idea goal. A good romantic long-term goal, might be "Marry my soulmate" (broad), and then you can work it down to something more specific, such as "Go on 15 dates".

All that being said, don't worry if you have to sometimes be a bit broad in your goals. In practice, we don't always know all details of a situation, and the goals can be modified to fit a different purpose later on. This is why our goals do not have ridgid time-frames, but rather a set-and-complete model (We are adding target dates to goals in the near future though for those who have requested it ).

As general advice, the weekly goal category should always have pretty measurable and completable goals, so use that section (and the monthly if it fits your workflow) to set the nitty-gritty and detail-oriented goals, and you can use more flexibility and judgement going higher up the chain. We're going to be implementing some AI suggestions as well in the near future to help people set more specific goals!

3. Do you think the product will go in the direction that will allow to replace other task / project management apps (like Todoist or Nozbe)? I would love it personally

I feel that we're heading in the direction of being an alternative system to Todoist or Trello for some folks, but our software is tackling somewhat different problems than they are, or rather, framing them from a different perspective.

Our goal insofar has been to stay human-focused, wheras some of the productivity tools I've used seem to be process-focused. Todo tools of the current are very good at helping people organize the known-details of their work life and MAYBE some of the known details of their personal life as well.

They are not good (in my opinion) at describing more abstract ideas such as bucket lists, Kaizen values, personal goals, personal thoughts, etc. Before bucket lists came out on GoalSumo.com, I used Trello for tracking my personal bucket list, and the process didn't feel fun or exciting. These are enchanting life experiences, they should be motivating! We want to keep solving problems that take a similar form to this in the near-term roadmap.

This being said, I use GoalSumo.com (and so does MJ) daily as a productivity tool, and we feel that it has been able to replace most of our usage of these other tools. I still use a daily calendar too where I can set more specific known details of my month or year. I also keep project-related todo items in Things3, and I think it's pretty good for that. I use GoalSumo as a more broad todo-list on top of it. We have had some people mention that they have moved from tools similar to Todoist and Trello to GoalSumo, and that's awesome to hear.

We are considering ways to bring in tools that will help for work projects, and more of the ridgid processes of life, but we've not settled on anything yet and have not put anything on the immediate roadmap in that space at the moment.

Right now, our priority is in making a more exciting goal system, which should be coming in the next major release. If you have any ideas on what you would like to see as far as productivity features, please leave some notes on our public idea center: ideas.goalsumo.com !


Thank you so much everyone for your feedback!

 

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[Dean Irwin]

First off, just wanted to say that this product is incredible, and hats off to all of the developers working on it with you!

It's just the two of us, guided by awesome feedback from everyone here on the forum helping us to improve it! I'm glad you're finding value in our offering, and I'd like to let you know that we have new goal-setting tools on the way to look forward to! Thank you for your feedback as well!

I just wanted to ask if there is a section somewhere that shows when you created a monthly/mid/short term goal

I will make sure that the creation time is located somewhere in the new goal-setting pages, thank you for the suggestion

which shows how many times you have edited this goal and the dates in which they were created or edited.

I think it would be better to set multiple smaller goals and track your acheivement dates for them. However, we will be implementing "Target Dates" from the bucket lists functionality into goals as well so that you can set a specific date you would like to have that goal completed.

We might also consider some kind of indicator that shows up if a goal takes longer than the designated time frame as a gentle nudge, like what we did to tasks on the DailySumo. If you have any ideas in this realm, feel free to leave them on ideas.goalsumo.com , a place where other can comment, upvote, and expand on your ideas!

I can't wait to see future features!

Our current dev cycle has been a longer one, but we have new stuff on the way!

Goal setting and chaining changes are our current priority, as this has been something we've wanted to reimagine for a pretty long time, but we were unsure of the best way to accomplish certain aspects of this goal-setting process.

With the DailySumo system, we were able to pull the ideas we liked from the massive amount of todo list tools out there, but with the goal-setting system, it is unique to our software so it's more of a trial-and-error experience figuring out what works and what doesn't.

If you have any feedback regarding how you think a new goals page could look (the display of them, as we have the forms pretty much redesigned at this point), feel free to DM me and let me know!

Once again, thank you for the feedback!

 

[Peter Abrahamian]

It's just the two of us, guided by awesome feedback from everyone here on the forum helping us to improve it! I'm glad you're finding value in our offering, and I'd like to let you know that we have new goal-setting tools on the way to look forward to! Thank you for your feedback as well!


I will make sure that the creation time is located somewhere in the new goal-setting pages, thank you for the suggestion


I think it would be better to set multiple smaller goals and track your acheivement dates for them. However, we will be implementing "Target Dates" from the bucket lists functionality into goals as well so that you can set a specific date you would like to have that goal completed.

We might also consider some kind of indicator that shows up if a goal takes longer than the designated time frame as a gentle nudge, like what we did to tasks on the DailySumo. If you have any ideas in this realm, feel free to leave them on ideas.goalsumo.com , a place where other can comment, upvote, and expand on your ideas!



Our current dev cycle has been a longer one, but we have new stuff on the way!

Goal setting and chaining changes are our current priority, as this has been something we've wanted to reimagine for a pretty long time, but we were unsure of the best way to accomplish certain aspects of this goal-setting process.

With the DailySumo system, we were able to pull the ideas we liked from the massive amount of todo list tools out there, but with the goal-setting system, it is unique to our software so it's more of a trial-and-error experience figuring out what works and what doesn't.

If you have any feedback regarding how you think a new goals page could look (the display of them, as we have the forms pretty much redesigned at this point), feel free to DM me and let me know!

Once again, thank you for the feedback!

Oh wow! I had no idea that it was just you and MJ working on this project. Very impressive for a team of 2 to create this app!
Thank you for listening to my suggestion. I hope it was helpful and I cannot wait to see what else you and MJ have planned in the future!

 

[Bence Ur]

@Dean Irwin a dedicated forum thread just for GoalSumo would be helpful, or is this the official thread for GoalSumo? I mean a thread with the title like "Official GoalSumo.com Discussion Thread" where members could discuss features, ask for help etc.

I just wanted to ask if there is a section somewhere that shows when you created a monthly/mid/short term goal. I just want to know when I created the goal, so I have an idea of where I am at. For example, this is how I started to write my goals, since I kinda lost track of when they were created.

I am also confused by this. So let's say you create a goal which a monthly goal: "Monthly Goals - Build goals achievable within the next 1-6 months!"

Let's say I create a new monthly goal today, but then 5 months from now this will still remain in this "Build goals achievable within the next 1-6 months" category.

I think an exact date attached to goals would be better. So don't say "next 1-6 months" but let me add an exact date to a goal, like "I need to achieve this goal by November 1st, 2023". And I think adding a deadline to each goal should be mandatory (except in case of daily tasks).

So let's say I am creating all these goals today:
Set goals you would like to reach in the next 1-3 weeks.
Set goals you would like to reach in the next 1-6 months.
Set goals you would like to reach in the next 6-24 months.
Set goals you would like to reach in the next 2-6 years.

It makes sense today, because I know today's date.

But fast forward a few weeks, months or years, I will lose track of these deadlines because the labels are static, these labels mentioned above will stay the same even 1 month from now, 6 months now, 1 year from now etc.

So maybe instead of these "Set goals you would like to reach in the next X weeks." labels you should display exact deadlines like "Set goals you would like to reach by November 1st, 2023"?

So what I miss is the exact deadlines attached to the long-term goals.

P.S. this is a great app and has a great potential, keep up the good work!

 

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[Dean Irwin]

@Dean Irwin a dedicated forum thread just for GoalSumo.com would be helpful, or is this the official thread for GoalSumo.com? I mean a thread with the title like "Official GoalSumo.com.com Discussion Thread" where members could discuss features, ask for help etc.

Right now GoalSumo is still in beta, so we don't have an official thread for it yet. There are two or three different threads centered around it though. For now, this is a great place to talk about it!

So maybe instead of these "Set goals you would like to reach in the next X weeks." labels you should display exact deadlines like "Set goals you would like to reach by November 1st, 2023"?

So this is an interesting point, and one that we have been addressing in support tickets since launch. I think what we have is a slightly different paradigm for goals... I think it is better to think of goals in our system as being fluid. The time frames aren't meant to attach to a specific point in time. The time frames are really answering the question of "How long does this goal take to complete?", not "When does this goal need to be completed".

This being said, we could make significant improvements in explaining this concept in our UI. In the new goal system that is currently in a development branch right now, we will be adding "Target Dates" where you can set a specific date you would like a particular goal to be completed to help folks out with setting and meeting deadlines. So, the functionality you want is actually already implemented on our end, and will be coming with the release of the new goal system.

P.S. this is a great app and has a great potential, keep up the good work!

Thank you! We have a lot of cool stuff coming to goals soon!

 

[Dean Irwin]

To anyone using GoalSumo the last 2 weeks, you might have had a slow experience using the app.
Our apologies, as we've onboarded a lot of people recently, and we didn't have infrastructure to scale immediately.

We are testing a round-robin load balancing system between 4 servers, so ideally, things should be much faster than they've ever been on the app. This is an experimental rollout, so any feedback or strange behavior, please let us know!


Thank you folks!

 

[DCG]

Appreciate the support, I hope we can deliver some value, and more importantly, deliver some real life-change for a lot of people! When I moved some years ago, I actually found my old 1/5/10 (I included pics) which pretty much is the story behind GoalSumo --it was really refreshing to see that everything I wrote 25+ years ago came true. Freaking EVERYTHING!

Even if you tried to write a bad book it would still be an absolute banger

 

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[Peter Abrahamian]

To anyone using GoalSumo the last 2 weeks, you might have had a slow experience using the app.
Our apologies, as we've onboarded a lot of people recently, and we didn't have infrastructure to scale immediately.

We are testing a round-robin load balancing system between 4 servers, so ideally, things should be much faster than they've ever been on the app. This is an experimental rollout, so any feedback or strange behavior, please let us know!


Thank you folks!

Hi Dean. Just out of curiosity, but when do you expect to roll out the new revised Dream Goal system update?

 

[Dean Irwin]

Hi Dean. Just out of curiosity, but when do you expect to roll out the new revised Dream Goal system update?

This is currently our 1st priority feature update. As of today, most of this code has been implemented, but it needs a good bit of polishing. This is our next step for the goal update. We are also introducing templates as well, and those might take a bit of time to put together.

This is a pretty big update, so a lot of work is going into this rollout. I know this isn't a direct answer to your question, but I can't answer with a specific date yet. As soon as we feel comfortable on the specifics of this system, we will update this thread with a release date

 

[Peter Abrahamian]

This is currently our 1st priority feature update. As of today, most of this code has been implemented, but it needs a good bit of polishing. This is our next step for the goal update. We are also introducing templates as well, and those might take a bit of time to put together.

This is a pretty big update, so a lot goes into ensuring that it will be stable and beneficial before rollout. I know this isn't a direct answer to your question, but I can't answer with a specific date yet. As soon as we feel comfortable on the specifics of this system, we will update this thread with a release date

Sounds good! Hope everything goes smoothly.

 

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[Bence Ur]

I've just subscribed to the paid version of GoalSumo.com, yearly billing!

GoalSumo is a simple app, it can do one thing but it does it well: setting and achieving goals.

You don't need to cram a gazillion number of features into your SaaS to make it successful, GoalSumo is an example of this. You need to make an app which does one thing but it does it perfectly.

So I like the simplicity of this app. Because I've paid for it, now I have extra motivation to use it. Create some recurring tasks and this software will remind you every day to complete your to-do list.

The gamification feature is great, it gives me a sense of satisfaction when I complete a task and I get rewarded with those sound effects, animations and points.

Sure there are a lot of other project management and to-do list apps out there, but they are bloated with a lot of features you won't use. But in GoalSumo you will use every feature. It is easy to learn and easy to use.

Keep up the good work @Dean Irwin @MJ DeMarco !

 

[Dean Irwin]

I've just subscribed to the paid version of GoalSumo.com, yearly billing!

GoalSumo is a simple app, it can do one thing but it does it well: setting and achieving goals.

You don't need to cram a gazillion number of features into your SaaS to make it successful, GoalSumo is an example of this. You need to make an app which does one thing but it does it perfectly.

So I like the simplicity of this app. Because I've paid for it, now I have extra motivation to use it. Create some recurring tasks and this software will remind you every day to complete your to-do list.

The gamification feature is great, it gives me a sense of satisfaction when I complete a task and I get rewarded with those sound effects, animations and points.

Sure there are a lot of other project management and to-do list apps out there, but they are bloated with a lot of features you won't use. But in GoalSumo you will use every feature. It is easy to learn and easy to use.

Keep up the good work @Dean Irwin @MJ DeMarco !

Thank you for the positive feedback!

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I've just subscribed to the paid version of GoalSumo.com, yearly billing!

GoalSumo is a simple app, it can do one thing but it does it well: setting and achieving goals.

You don't need to cram a gazillion number of features into your SaaS to make it successful, GoalSumo is an example of this. You need to make an app which does one thing but it does it perfectly.

So I like the simplicity of this app. Because I've paid for it, now I have extra motivation to use it. Create some recurring tasks and this software will remind you every day to complete your to-do list.

The gamification feature is great, it gives me a sense of satisfaction when I complete a task and I get rewarded with those sound effects, animations and points.

Sure there are a lot of other project management and to-do list apps out there, but they are bloated with a lot of features you won't use. But in GoalSumo you will use every feature. It is easy to learn and easy to use.

Keep up the good work @Dean Irwin @MJ DeMarco !

Thanks a lot, happy to see that we're achieving our objective of not being bloated, but being a simple, yet powerful solution to setting and achieving goals. We're a bit behind on the development as Dean is also a full time student, but we have a lot of improvements and value-adds on the roadmap. Appreciating your feedback, and patience.

 

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[KiwiEC]

I decided to give it a try, I just spent one hour setting up my goals for the coming week.

I easily built 3 goal chains (wealth, business, and health/sports), loved it.

It was also easy to set up DailySumos for the week ahead. Overall the interface is clear and simple, I quickly felt comfortable browsing the website. Good job!

For the moment I noticed only two issues:
- A minor one with some text in my local language (french). I would be happy to give a hand for translating if you plan to grow to the international, but I assume it's far to be your top priority.
- A major one, habits are not working properly on my side. I have set a couple of them as primary tasks (eg. one every monday and another one every friday), but they appear every day. Same with an habit I would like to be my Sunday Power task, in the end it's my Power task for every day.

It makes it a bit painful to plan your week, nothing too annoying for the moment. I know it's beta and I don't mind deleting habits the days they should not occur. Maybe did I miss something?

Happy to provide more info/feedback or to send screenshots if needed. Keep it up guys!

​

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I decided to give it a try, I just spent one hour setting up my goals for the coming week.

I easily built 3 goal chains (wealth, business, and health/sports), loved it.

It was also easy to set up DailySumos for the week ahead. Overall the interface is clear and simple, I quickly felt comfortable browsing the website. Good job!

For the moment I noticed only two issues:
- A minor one with some text in my local language (french). I would be happy to give a hand for translating if you plan to grow to the international, but I assume it's far to be your top priority.
- A major one, habits are not working properly on my side. I have set a couple of them as primary tasks (eg. one every monday and another one every friday), but they appear every day. Same with an habit I would like to be my Sunday Power task, in the end it's my Power task for every day.

It makes it a bit painful to plan your week, nothing too annoying for the moment. I know it's beta and I don't mind deleting habits the days they should not occur. Maybe did I miss something?

Happy to provide more info/feedback or to send screenshots if needed. Keep it up guys!

​

That’s not a bug, the habit appears daily because it is presuming you didn’t complete it, so it rolls to the next day on future calendar dates.

In other words, a habit that appears only on Sunday will appear everyday if you fail to complete it.

 

[KiwiEC]

Thanks for the clarification! I'm still learning and I guess I need a couple of days to be fully confident on it.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Thanks for the clarification! I'm still learning and I guess I need a couple of days to be fully confident on it.

No worries, The habit function can feel a bit complicated or buggy because tasks you fail to complete on the current day auto roll over to the next day.

This rollover can be disabled in settings.

 

[Dean Irwin]

@KiwiEC . This is a common question we get, and we are going to create a better answer in an FAQ section soon. In the meantime, I have quickly created a larger and cleaner version of one of the engineering papers behind this design of the habit task functionality. Let me know if you have any questions!



(Yes, this is the neatest my handwriting can get, sorry)

 

[KiwiEC]

This is totally clear (and your handwritting is way better than mine), thanks again to both of you.

It makes sense to work this way for most of the tasks one can schedule.

However, it could be interesting to configure some individual tasks/habits not rolling over.

Let's say I take salsa courses and I want to track this on the app to improve my consistency.
The dance school provides a course to beginners every Monday evening (and that day only). If I miss it one week, it doesn't make sense to have this task to roll over the rest of the week.

For sure it's not a big deal to delete it. But there could be a box to tick or not when creating the task/habit to determine if this single one should roll over. It could be a small quality of life improvement. If I understood well, you can disable rollover only for all the tasks/habits in the settings.

I don't know if this makes sense to you, maybe did I miss the purpose of this feature. Anyway the app is great from what I've seen. I will give a more complete feedback in two weeks at the end of the trial period!

 

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[Dean Irwin]

This is totally clear (and your handwritting is way better than mine), thanks again to both of you.

It makes sense to work this way for most of the tasks one can schedule.

However, it could be interesting to configure some individual tasks/habits not rolling over.

Let's say I take salsa courses and I want to track this on the app to improve my consistency.
The dance school provides a course to beginners every Monday evening (and that day only). If I miss it one week, it doesn't make sense to have this task to roll over the rest of the week.

For sure it's not a big deal to delete it. But there could be a box to tick or not when creating the task/habit to determine if this single one should roll over. It could be a small quality of life improvement. If I understood well, you can disable rollover only for all the tasks/habits in the settings.

I don't know if this makes sense to you, maybe did I miss the purpose of this feature. Anyway the app is great from what I've seen. I will give a more complete feedback in two weeks at the end of the trial period!

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions. We will revisit this functionality and see what we can do to help improve it!

 

[andyhaus44]

Really liking GoalSumo and this is just a suggestion - on the far upper right corner where it says Tasks, Goals and Backlog, why not have a separate link to each one? Such as: https://goalsumo.com/app/st/daily-sumo/tasks

https://goalsumo.com/app/st/daily-sumo/goals

https://goalsumo.com/app/st/daily-sumo/backlog

 

[KiwiEC]

I just realized I completely forget to send a feedback after the free trial period. Apologies for it, I have been quite busy working on my business which is about to go live by the end of the year.

I'm very satisfied with how GoalSumo works and the value it brings. It only took me a few days to get confident with it.
It is really useful to stay accountant to my objectives and to make regular progress. Gamification helps a lot on this.

My main struggle was not related to the tool iself, but more to my way to use it. My first power tasks were way too ambitious. It works better with more realistic small tasks.

A simple UX issue that can quickly be fixed:



I would set the calendar as open by default on the desktop version. There is plenty of room below it and no need to have it closed.

I took a monthly subscription using a beta voucher. I can't wait for a mobile app with a dedicated interface and notifications/alarms. I know it's on your roadmap (even if not the top priority) so keep up the good work guys!

 

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[BlackLands]

Nice! Glad you think so considering we've only just scratched the surface of what we're trying to accomplish. Lots more in the pipeline (including AI, goal templates, more.)

As for an interview, thanks for the invite, however I stopped doing interviews last year and don't expect to resume until probably next year.

Hey MJ I've seen the last two videos you published about Goalsumo and the new UI and the new features are incredible.

I'd really like to have you as guest of my podcast since other than been a pleasure for me, I'm quite sure that my viewers are quite in target.

Let me know in the DM in case and congratulations for what you're doing