Audrey – A smart personal assistant app that helps you to get things done
getaudrey.com
getaudrey.com
I'm still using GTD stuff, but just to "better forget", to unload working memory.
Exactly. This is a really, really difficult and essential observation to make. Humans are built to procrastinate because it conserves energy.
Do an experiment: Sit down and start doing what you are supposed to do. If you're not able to work or start, don't find excuses. Don't go looking for physical reasons like "Hungry", "Cold", "Tired". Don't procrastinate. Don't walk around. Don't work around the issue. Don't change the project. Those are all excuses. Just accept that you are not able to start and keep sitting there until you start.
When you stop finding excuses or looking elsewhere, you will realise the immense stress that's building up inside you. That is the mountain you have to scale to stop procrastinating. A kind of stress that's not always there, luckily, but it's definitely built into humans.
To get things done, I often have to take a step back and make a list of things that need to get done. This is the top-down brainstorming, that gets me more in the mood. I can do this when I'm not working, to get me thinking about the problem.
Then when the time comes for working, you choose the easiest or shortest task and start on it. The "McDonalds theory" as stated on phpjs is that you can do a shitty job on your first iteration as long as you get it done. When you did it, or usually even as you are working, you have the urge to improve it. And that's where the excitement and emotional investment comes.
Russians have an expression for this: Appetite comes when you start eating.
Regarding the "McDonalds theory": I call that "Don't mix production and criticism of your work." Either produce something or improve on you've already done. Otherwise these two modes of operation interfere with each other.
> just accept that you won't lift it, until you tried
> if you try, you will feel a stress that might just crush you, but there is no other solution, you are absolutely expected to lift the weight
Don't tell yourself the weight is light, you just never got around to lift it for reasons X, Y and Z, when really the weight is heavy.
Were you doing the different reviews to make sure the direction you are headed is bringing you closer to your goals? Working towards your goals is a pretty key part of the system.
For me, the biggest thing I took away from that book was the 2-minute rule. If I see something that needs to be taken care of and it will only take a few minutes to do, just do it. That made a big difference to me because I'm the kind of person that will see a burned out light bulb and then make a mental note to replace the bulb when really I should just do it.
To combat this, I always shoot a lot higher so that 90% is a lot more than what 100% would have been of the original. My GitHub issues are _always_ filled with todos and future projects because it makes me feel like I'm building towards something great, instead of just finishing up a project that I'll be done with and not work on again.
It's a mindset that's worked really well for me so far.
* There are several small typos on the page ("How does it works?") that distract from its content.
* The testimonials strike me as all having the same writer's voice.
* What appears to set "Audrey" aside from, say, Alexa is the promise that you can take a moment to train the AI when it misunderstands you. That's a great feature; I can tell Alexa that she was wrong (via the app), but that's tedious and may take months to see my feedback enacted. Immediately linking what I said to the desired outcome for future use would be ideal. I'd like to see an example of what that looks like for this app, even if it's just a mock-up.
*Bow apologetically
How am I supposed to trust that you are capable of building an AI when you can't get basic grammar correct? Don't build a marketing page when you're bad at marketing :)
Edit:
Just to clarify - I mean that the poor grammar is likely due to that fact that English probably isn't your first language and has no relationship to your abilities writing software. But, for consumer facing products such as yours, it's probably important that you get these small things right.
Instead of saying 'merrier', as in more merry, it says 'marrier'.
Someone needs to come up with a service that generates authentic-sounding testimonials, complete with convincing headshots.
I don't see the benefit of adding another layer between me and my desired action. This is especially the case when the smart personal assistant doesn't understand my request, in which case I'll usually just abandon the whole thing. Only took a few times trying to get Siri to do something and I haven't used it for anything besides timers in years.
For example, "play Skrillex on Spotify" Manually I would have to find Spotify, go to the search, type in Skrillex, etc.
As a side note, I'm curious to how/why you named it Audrey. I think it's very interesting that these 'personal assistants' have traditionally feminine names.
P.S. At the bottom, "Here's are some" is not grammatically correct.
That said, this does seem like a great opportunity for Ask to bring Jeeves back.
Wonder if there's some interaction that causes a "Feed me, Seymour" response.
https://qz.com/911681/we-tested-apples-siri-amazon-echos-ale...
Another quote to think about (warning: explicit sexual language):
> "The fact that Apple writers selected “I’d blush if I could” as Siri’s response to any verbal sexual harassment quite literally flirts with abuse. Coy, evasive responses like Alexa’s “Let’s change the topic” in response to “You are a slut” or Cortana’s “I don’t think I can help you with that” in response to “Suck my dick” reinforce stereotypes of unassertive, subservient women in service positions. We should also not overlook the puny jokes that Cortana and Google Home occasionally employed. These actions intensify rape culture by presenting indirect ambiguity as a valid response to harassment."
For a natural language processor, they sure could benefit from better proofreading.
Good luck with yours!
However... I welcome 3rd party, independent applications of this type, because I find it dull that all the existing solutions from big companies are just trying to upsell their own services by forcing you to have an account with them, listen to their music or shop from their shop... Some independent thinking is due in this space.
So yet another Siri.
Apparently "Vernax" is behind it: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vernax#/entity
Website is down: http://www.vernax.com/
They really need a native English speaker to clean up the text on the homepage though. Lot's of sub-optimal phrasing.
When I saw that it was missing from the website I considered for a second that companies are just foregoing the Privacy Policy with the assumption that everyone just knows they soak up everything about you and keep it forever.
Putting out an app like this seems like a great idea, if only to have a platform to start collecting and cleaning data (for your MTurkers, relatives, and bored employees). Speaking of which the privacy policy link goes nowhere...
On a related note, does anyone have details on the penalties for not having a privacy policy on a Google Play app? They seem to be a little more insistent on having one than Apple.
My 5 cents: Please make the small x (close button) to something else, like swipe to up to close the dialog. Small x is not good gui for mobile phone apps.
What is wrong with talking to real people ? It is a sad world where this is perceived as a beneficial feature.
Is it really that hard to come up with a name?