Please roast my app: Missioncontrol.me - To-do and personal data tracking app focused on personal development (Beta)

[NowOrNever]

Hi everyone,

First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY. I hope you all are doing well and are having a great time. And most importantly, I hope you and your families are healthy! I am writing this from Thailand! Despite COVID, we decided to get out for some time and so I am taking a mini-sabbatical and will be traveling as much as possible (under the circumstances) for the next 4 months together with my wife and our 18 month young daughter. Its not easy to keep grinding on my side projects but I do what I can in the mornings and when the ladies are sleeping...

So without boring you any longer with my personal story: I am looking for feedback to one of the apps that I am currently building as a side project. Would love to hear what you have to say...

missioncontrol.me

missioncontrol.me

Missioncontrol is a to-do and personal data tracking app focused on personal development. Personally, I am not using it for projects or work tasks but ONLY around personal development / taking care of myself.

For a long time, I have been struggling with discipline, procrastination and basically being honest to myself. Making big plans and then telling myself all kinds of excuses why "today is not the right day to do X", "I will start with X in a couple of minutes. But first let me quickly watch this video. Oh oops, it is so late now. I will do it tomorrow".

Don't get me wrong. I have not found the magic pill. I am not selling some BS course on how you can get super productive within 24 hours...

But I will say, missioncontrol.me is helping me tremendously. It is still a very early version but I would like to share the app (PROTOTYPE / BETA) with you.

It is build around a quote that I found before starting to build missioncontrol.me : "The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine, successful people do daily what unsuccessful people do occasionally."

It is FREE forever for all beta users. Here is the BETA Code you will need when signing up: BETA2021TESTER

Please note I may be closing the Beta if I reach a certain number of users to be able to focus on the feedback or if performance issues occur.

Again, please note it is an early Beta so expect bugs, issues, slow performance and most importantly weird language, as English is not my mother language unfortunately. In return, I would only ask for your honest feedback. Feel free to „roast“ my app and tell me what you hate (or love?) about it! Either publicly (here) or via PM. Currently, the app is a starting point to lern and collect feedback from you so that I can improve the app.

(PS. I am currently working on iOS and Android versions. In the meantime, missioncontrol.me is „mobile-friendly“. The way I personally use missioncontrol.me is that I set up most things on the Desktop version. Only when I am on the go, I use the mobile version (e.g. to check off to-dos)

You would help me so much by letting me know what you like / don’t like, if you would use this or if you think you know somebody who could benefit from this? Any partnerships I could seek (e.g. coaches could use this with their clients?)

PPS. The biggest issue I currently have is to give clear instructions / guidance to users. E.g. How to create a Mission, how to create Tasks. I am starting to work on that…there are a couple of short gifs on the mobile version if you click on "Tutorial"

 

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[NowOrNever]

More details, in case you want to know more before clicking any links...

With missioncontrol I am essentially trying to build a set of tools to scratch my own itch:

• Help me understand better what my goals REALLY are.
  • We all think we know what we want and why we want it. Until we try to write it down. Because then we really have to think about it. By writing down some of my goals learned a lot about the WHY behind my goals. Also, just seeing my goals on a daily basis helps me tremendously when I am not motivated.
    
• Create a framework and structure around each of my goals.
  • Most of the time we don’t have this ONE specific goal but rather a collection of different things that we want to achieve. I collect and structure all of them under something that I have called so far (for lack of a better word) „Mission Base“.
    Conceptually, a Mission Base is a structure around a certain area of issues or challenges. For example, I would create a Mission Base for „Health & Fitness“ and under that umbrella I would set up Mission Objectives such as „Loose 10 pounds“, „Exercise daily for 30 days straight“.
  • Why call it a „Mission Base“? Because I feel like I want to have this base or „command center“ (think of a command center on a military base) from which I set up my goals, my strategy, the tasks that I need to perform and from which I monitor whether I am making progress.
    
• Help me fight procrastination and give me a kick in the a… when I need it it.
  • Traditional todo apps let you set up 100s of todos. For next week, next month, next year. They always gave me the feeling that I was busy and moving towards my goal. But what if you don't finish your to-do? Nothing happens. Each to-do continues to just sit there and wait for you to get to it when "you feel like it". I would always look at (unpleasant) tasks and just say „ah, I will do it tomorrow“ ….So, on the one hand you feel busy and like you are doing something and on the other hand you are not really making progress (where it counts). missiocontrol.me will not only let you mark a task as finished but also as NOT finished (i.e. I did not do it). Of course, all of this requires a certain amount of honesty and accountability.
  • With Missioncontrol I tried to create a sense of "pressure" with the following mechanisms (and please know that these are my first attempts at tackling these huge issues. I am more than happy to improve and build something powerful with your help & feedback). Btw, all of this can be deactivated too.
    • If you don't finish a task on a certain date one HP (Health Point) will be removed from your Mission. The Task vanishes and you have to set it up again (if you really want to do it in the first place). When the Mission reaches 0 HP it will be marked as failed.
    • If you want to move a task to another day (e.g. procrastinate), that's OK. However, you only have a certain "budget" (i.e. how often can you move a task). When the budget reaches 0, you cannot move tasks anymore. I am thinking about changing those virtual coins to real money at some point. Every coin lost would get donated (100%) to charity.
    • I am working on other ways that could be a kick in the b... for people. For example: Sending an e-mail to one of your friends, family etc. letting them know that you are behind schedule, not doing the tasks you had planned to do etc.
    • I know there are tools out there that have similar features (e.g. Habitica) but still they are very different.
    • Is there anything you think would work / help you better?
      
  • Help me collect data about myself and what impact certain changes I made, have.
    • Even just the act of tracking certain things had a huge impact on my life. Knowing that I will log at the end of the day how much water I drank, whether I worked out or not, how much I worked out, if I meditated, took my supplements etc. is making me much more conscious and present. I am much more focused and deliberate in my actions. I can’t tell myself at the end of the day or the end of the day „oops, I forgot to do XYZ. I REALLY wanted to do it. But I just FORGOT. Too bad!“)
    • Collecting the right data helps me run „Self-experiments“. Did taking magnesium have any effects on my sleep? How did my mood change after taking XYZ for 4 weeks? How many hours did I work on my app last month? How much did I meditate? How much did I work out? How much money did I earn or spend?
    • Missioncontrol combines Tasks with Data Collection. What does that mean? Let’s say you have a daily Morning Routine where you work out for 15 minutes, meditate for 10 minutes and where you take a Protein Shake at the end. You can now create a (recurring) Task called, for example, „Morning Rountine“ as well as the respective Trackers such as „Minutes Worked out“, „Minutes Meditated“, „Grams of Protein“, „Milligrams of Vitamin C“, Milligrams of Zinc“, Milligrams of Selen“ etc. etc. Now, as soon as you mark the Task „Morning Routine“ as done, these trackers will be updated with the amounts defined previosuly in the settings (e.g. 15 minutes training, 25 mg Zinc etc.,)
      
• Help me "brainwash" myself and keep me away from useless social media content.
  • Basically what I do is, I create (recurring) Tasks that contain YouTube videos, quotes or parts from my favorite books. There are YouTube videos that I want to watch everyday. I have watched certain videos more than 200 times now because I watch them every morning. Any you know what? This had the most profound effect on my mindset. Why do we know we have to go to the gym 3 times a week if we want to grow our muscles? Repeating the same exercise hundreds of times? But when it comes to our mindset we think it is enough to read a book once or watch a video one time. Now, instead of scrolling social media our YouTube mindlessly, I will watch videos that make me feel better, that install the right thoughts into my mind. Will I stop watching some of these videos at some point? Absolutely. As soon as I feel certain things have become a part of me and there is no more use in watching them. But as soon as that happens I will put new videos on my „playlist“.

FAQ
Is Mission Control for FREE? At the moment, missioncontrol is completely free. If you sign up now as a Beta user, it will be free forever for you.

Will Missioncontrol be free forever for everyone? As soon as I have a stable product I would like to introduce some kind of compensation. I am spending my own money on infrastructure and tools. Second, I am working on this for a very long time now and I have invested an incredible amount of hours, sweat, tears and sleepless nights…Third, I am a young father, I work a 9-5, I have family responsibilities and I have a small daughter of 16 month. That means I’m spending time on the development of this and not spending time with my daughter or with friends or just playing video games.

What will you do with my data? Easy: Nothing. Missioncontrol focuses 100% on privacy. That means, your data is encrypted, we only need your email address for the login, nothing else, no in-app analytics, no tracking, no selling of any sort of data.

Do you plan on integrating with other tools and devices such as Fitbit, Apple Watch? No. There are many excellent tools out there that already do a great job in this regard. Plus, I strongly believe in manually updating your data. That way you actually get a „feel“ for the data. Personally, I feel it is more about the act of COLLECTING and not so much about the analysis part. When using automated data collection that runs in the background I ended up not looking at it at all and I just keep „hoarding“ it.

I don’t understand how this works. This sucks, you suck (etc.) This is my first shot at building something that helps people like myself. I understand the product, I know how to use it. But I completely understand if some of the features do not make sense to you. I will try to create a documentation at some point. For now, I am spending the little time that I have on improving the product. But let me know if you want to join me on my adventure and help me improve this. I could definitely use a partner.

Thank you so much and please feel free to ask questions

 

[OverByte]

Merry Christmas and thanks for sharing.

My 1 min impression and initial thoughts (which I think are most important for getting users/revenue)
* I like the landing page layout and your styling, I didn't read the copy so can't comment on that
* It looks complicated to use, too many options, too much stuff (graphs, some sort of checkin that uses terms like drop down, etc). It looks like an app built by a programmer without a thought for how non-programmers use and view software. Personally I would try to simplify, this looks like I'd have to invest too much time into learning how to use the app and wouldn't give it a try for that reason.

Good luck!

 

[NowOrNever]

Merry Christmas and thanks for sharing.

My 1 min impression and initial thoughts (which I think are most important for getting users/revenue)
* I like the landing page layout and your styling, I didn't read the copy so can't comment on that
* It looks complicated to use, too many options, too much stuff (graphs, some sort of checkin that uses terms like drop down, etc). It looks like an app built by a programmer without a thought for how non-programmers use and view software. Personally I would try to simplify, this looks like I'd have to invest too much time into learning how to use the app and wouldn't give it a try for that reason.

Good luck!

Thank you for taking the time and checking out the landing page! Appreciate the feedback which I absolutely understand. I have been stripping down the app more and more and I think I will have to continue to do that until I have something which strikes the balance between easy-to-use, less
complex vs. meaningful and better than existing solutions. In fact, the landing page still contains some of the old features. Will need to update that one asap.

Would love to engage with more users on what’s necessary, what’s too complicated and what the core features are that people find useful!

Thanks again and keep it coming

 

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[missinfinity98]

Happy Holidays to you and to your family
FYI I entered the link from my computer, so I see a non-mobile phone version of the app.

Generally - a great thing to support being a productive creator of your own, thriving life.

Do you assume that the "perfect client" comes to this app with burning motivation to work on him/herself already, or has still many questions and is unsure why are those practices actually important? These are different stages of mindset and need different calls to action.

The manually updating is great. It is the basics of therapy (and this is what here is actually going on) to have a conversation with parts of yourself, that is usually very quiet. While manually updating we get a perspective, are more aware of our impact on the whole process, we look at it through a more distanced lense... A lot of benefits.

I agree with OverByte - it does seem complicated to use. The message is simple and is well-balanced. I would keep the written content; it brings valuable messages. It is just about the visual component - somehow it is not appealing to our senses, is somehow overwhelming - it doesn't have to.


Regarding partnerships you could seek :

generally, people exiting toxic relationships (romantic, family, work...) and claiming their own life, would greatly benefit from this app. Often the mental damage keeps people in learned helplessness and stuck in un-empowered states. What this app gives, is exactly what therapists and coaches suggest at the initial stages of claiming back sovereignty and becoming powerful, self-motivated.


The collecting data is great - users can look back after some time, see what worked best, what could need some improvement, what didn't work at all. Question is - will it be stored in the app or for example deleted after let's say a week?

The repetition aspect is powerful, I see that - and what is great, is that it is self-customized - users can pick what resonates with them at the stage of life they are currently in. This is very important, as we intuitively know what is best for us.


And the last thing for now - the fact that it requires honesty and accountability - this is actually crucial to move forward - so... 100 points for Gryffindor! Great app

Perhaps I will start using it

 

[NowOrNever]

Happy Holidays to you and to your family
FYI I entered the link from my computer, so I see a non-mobile phone version of the app.

Generally - a great thing to support being a productive creator of your own, thriving life.

Do you assume that the "perfect client" comes to this app with burning motivation to work on him/herself already, or has still many questions and is unsure why are those practices actually important? These are different stages of mindset and need different calls to action.

The manually updating is great. It is the basics of therapy (and this is what here is actually going on) to have a conversation with parts of yourself, that is usually very quiet. While manually updating we get a perspective, are more aware of our impact on the whole process, we look at it through a more distanced lense... A lot of benefits.

I agree with OverByte - it does seem complicated to use. The message is simple and is well-balanced. I would keep the written content; it brings valuable messages. It is just about the visual component - somehow it is not appealing to our senses, is somehow overwhelming - it doesn't have to.


Regarding partnerships you could seek :

generally, people exiting toxic relationships (romantic, family, work...) and claiming their own life, would greatly benefit from this app. Often the mental damage keeps people in learned helplessness and stuck in un-empowered states. What this app gives, is exactly what therapists and coaches suggest at the initial stages of claiming back sovereignty and becoming powerful, self-motivated.


The collecting data is great - users can look back after some time, see what worked best, what could need some improvement, what didn't work at all. Question is - will it be stored in the app or for example deleted after let's say a week?

The repetition aspect is powerful, I see that - and what is great, is that it is self-customized - users can pick what resonates with them at the stage of life they are currently in. This is very important, as we intuitively know what is best for us.


And the last thing for now - the fact that it requires honesty and accountability - this is actually crucial to move forward - so... 100 points for Gryffindor! Great app

Perhaps I will start using it

Happy Holidays to you and to your family
FYI I entered the link from my computer, so I see a non-mobile phone version of the app.

Generally - a great thing to support being a productive creator of your own, thriving life.

Do you assume that the "perfect client" comes to this app with burning motivation to work on him/herself already, or has still many questions and is unsure why are those practices actually important? These are different stages of mindset and need different calls to action.

The manually updating is great. It is the basics of therapy (and this is what here is actually going on) to have a conversation with parts of yourself, that is usually very quiet. While manually updating we get a perspective, are more aware of our impact on the whole process, we look at it through a more distanced lense... A lot of benefits.

I agree with OverByte - it does seem complicated to use. The message is simple and is well-balanced. I would keep the written content; it brings valuable messages. It is just about the visual component - somehow it is not appealing to our senses, is somehow overwhelming - it doesn't have to.


Regarding partnerships you could seek :

generally, people exiting toxic relationships (romantic, family, work...) and claiming their own life, would greatly benefit from this app. Often the mental damage keeps people in learned helplessness and stuck in un-empowered states. What this app gives, is exactly what therapists and coaches suggest at the initial stages of claiming back sovereignty and becoming powerful, self-motivated.


The collecting data is great - users can look back after some time, see what worked best, what could need some improvement, what didn't work at all. Question is - will it be stored in the app or for example deleted after let's say a week?

The repetition aspect is powerful, I see that - and what is great, is that it is self-customized - users can pick what resonates with them at the stage of life they are currently in. This is very important, as we intuitively know what is best for us.


And the last thing for now - the fact that it requires honesty and accountability - this is actually crucial to move forward - so... 100 points for Gryffindor! Great app

Perhaps I will start using it

Hey,
Thank you so much. Was not expecting such a well thought out feedback! Have to copy some of your statements too.... Definitely hit the nail on the head.

I agree that the mindset and stage a person is in will greatly influence whether this would be useful for that person (as well as how I should craft the landing page - Not easy for me, as it is pretty hard to write in a nuanced way as a non-native speaker). Regarding your question, the data is not automatically deleted. You can delete data manually though.

So far, I am receiving good feedback. Especially from people in the biohacking scene. However, I will have to focus on making the app easier to use and understand. My main goals for the next could of days will be to

- Update the landing page
- Fix a couple of bugs
- Play with the design and remove some of the functions and features or look for ways to make things more straightforward.

Again, thank you for the feedback and please feel free to play around with it and let me know what else you think needs improvement!

 

[Hitch-hiker]

Thanks for sharing the app. Could you please tell what technology did you use for this project?

 

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[Hitch-hiker]

Few points from me :
- "Next" button in tutorial is not so intuitive,
- paddings/marrgins for menu need some corrections,
- I didn't know where to enter name of the mission while creating it,
I used redmi note 8 pro for the test.

So far so good! I can't wait for final version!

 

[Private Witt]

Not a big app person but got my attention, even though not a fan of anything not a .com, I do like the name. Still stuck on the landing page and not ready to jump on the app but I am curious as this is something I could see using as I fall off task a lot. Do you have it so can share with others in the app like in a community or accountability partner? That would be something I could see make me want to be more active as would motivate me.