I found a new social network that I think can be huge

Hey!

Good week? As always I want to share with you the most valuable stuff I’ve found over the week and today I want to talk about a new app that I’ve been using (not sponsored). The app is also 100% free, no ads, made by a non-profit.

It’s called How We Feel.

At it’s core, it’s an app that you use by yourself to track your mood. But before you say that’s boring, that’s what I thought too, before I started using it.

It sends you a reminder (you can set this as many times as you want a day) to check-in to see how you feel. You don’t need to type anything, you choose one of the four quadrants, then you find the emotion that most describes how you feel. You can take a photo or record a voice memo or write a note. This takes roughly 10 seconds.

Then over time, the app analyzes all this data including your sleep, exercise, and even weather and tells you correlations between how you felt and different variables. So you can see what times of day you typically feel the best, how much exercise you had on that day, and who you were with.

It’s developed by a non-profit organization with scientific help from Yale’s University Center for Emotional Intelligence. There are no ads, it does not sell your data, and it runs from donations. The UI is also beautiful and runs super smoothly.

As for the social network aspect, you can add friends and share your check-ins. There is no feed, no likes, no way to look at a history of your friends’ check-ins. Unlike other social-media apps, there is no immediate feedback loop that leads to compulsively checking the app, it is just a very unique way to stay in touch with your closest friends and family.

I never paid much attention to how I feel normally, but using this app has made me more aware of how certain activities and times of the day affect how I feel. It’s helped me optimize my routine even more. Should I make a video about this?

📖 What I’m Reading

I just finished Elon Musk’s new biography written by Walter Isaacson. He also wrote the Steve Jobs biography which is one of my favorites. It’s a beast, like 700 pages long but I somehow finished in 3 days. I’ve taken lots of notes and I think I’ll also make a video about this and what I learned (selfishly so I can re-watch it and remind myself), but I encourage you to check out the book too.

🍿 Update of the week:

Whenever I see something on Amazon that I think can improve my life, I buy it. Whether that’s like a tape dispenser, massage tool or toilet paper holder. So I made a video talking about the 7 things under $100 that have had the greatest tangible improvement in my life and that I continue to use every day. Check it out if you haven’t already.

Btw, if you have video ideas of things you want me to research, try, and make videos on, just reply to this e-mail. See ya next Sunday!