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To help people who value their time get more of the right things done.
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What does that even mean?
Let’s start with valuing time. Most people are happy to waste it by waiting, sedating, procrastinating, distracting. Many teams are even careless with their time, spending it in endless meetings and on projects that don’t help their customers.
A minority of individuals, however, really care about their time. They recognize that it’s the most precious resource, and they want to make the most of it.
These are our people.
We build software that saves them time. We do this in the obvious way: by making our software fast and intuitive, so they spend a few milliseconds less waiting around. But we also do this in more subtle ways, like how we nudge them to prioritize and focus on one task at a time.
This is what we mean by getting the “right things” done. We don’t know what exactly our customers should work on. But they do. Deep down, everyone knows what they ought to be doing. We design our tools around helping them identify what that is for themselves, and then making time for it.
So you just want everyone to be more efficient robots?
We want our people to be more productive. But not for its own sake. We want people to get what they want, whether it’s a better job, more time with family, getting out of debt, or even IPO-ing their startup. When people get good at getting what they want, they get more opportunities to decide for themselves which things are worth wanting.
This is where the magic happens.
The more people who are good at both wanting the right things and getting them, the better off this world will be.
OK, Plato. But what does all this have to do with a planner app?
Every company that starts with a productivity tool has one of the following journeys: