Where to From Here?
I hope the few minutes a day you spend updating BubbleTimer are proving helpful in seeing where your time is going and getting on track with where you want to spend your time. I've been overwhelmed with positive feedback and with great ideas for how to make BubbleTimer better. I think that now is a good time to let you know what my immediate priorities are:
- Keep BubbleTimer up, responsive and bug free - I'd say BubbleTimer gets a C+ grade on this so far, there's been one outage of a few hours and the number of bugs has been way too high for my liking. This will absolutely get better. I won't stand for it staying at the level it's at now.
- More flexible goals - I need it, you need it, we all need it. BubbleTimer is about achieving your time management goals and you can't do that if the goal is not accurately represented. I'm working on goals for different days of the week and on weekly goals
- Notes - you don't always need notes, and not all activities benefit from them, but sometimes a quick note about what you did can really help when you when you are looking back on your time and trying to learn from where your time was spent.
Let me know what you think about these priorities. I'm always eager for feedback. You can leave a comment here on the blog, you can contact me directly, or you can join the conversation on the Get Satisfaction forum.
My main goal when adding in any new capabilities to BubbleTimer is to keep the system simple and fast to use. I promise that I am going to look long and hard at anything that gets added and I'll make sure it stays out of the way of those that don't need it and that it works as smoothly as possible for those that do need it. I want everyone spending less than 5 minutes a day futzing with BubbleTimer. BubbleTimer is just a means to an end and not important in its own right. If you are spending more than 5 minutes a day, please let me know so we can talk about ways to make it easier and faster for you.
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Sounds like some good priorities. I've got no complaints about that. As for the 5 minutes thing... I'm spending way more than 5 minutes a day on Bubble Timer, but that's because I'm also reading your blog posts, and the topics on the Get Satisfaction forum ;). I'm quite sure I spend less than 5 minutes on the actual bubbling.
Note: I wonder when 'to bubble' will become an official word in the English dictionary for managing your time with Bubble Timer ;).
@ Tijl: The verb "to bubble" has existed since the 15th century, according to [Webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bubble[2]) and it's probably a case of expansion of the term to mean written bubbles.
@Sean: Your priorities sound good to me. For the record, I've never experienced any down time or bugs with BubbleTimer. I like the idea of flexible goals; something like ToodleDo has might be worth studying for good ideas. I guess I would stress not to make it too complex because part of its charm and part of the reason I use it frequently is that it's so simple. Just my two cents.
@Natalie: ah, thank you for the information! Nevertheless, 'to twitter' has been present since the 14th century according to the same dictionary, but nowadays I'm sure you'll agree that 'twittering' also has a more technological meaning ;).
@Natalie I'm happy you haven't seen any bugs or down time. That's actually the case for the majority of BubbleTimer users. Its the minority that have seen some issues based on their browser or operating system type or bad luck in trying to use BubbleTimer during the short window it was done that I give myself the C+. I'm a tough grader!
@everyone I love neologisms, especially verbs. "to google" being one that has become firmly fixed into my vocabulary, probably for life.
@ Tijl: I think I'm just having bad flashbacks to my college days when we had to "bubble in" standardized tests... Ugh! :)