AskMeEvery is simple tool to help bring you daily accountability for whatever task you need. You simply setup a question, and it emails you that question every day. It’s as simple as replying to an email. All of your replies are stored and graphed to show your progress.

I’ve been using it for nearly a year, and it’s been incredibly helpful for me to stay focused during Loose Leaf development. Every evening I ask myself two questions: “What did you accomplish today?” and “What do you want to accomplish tomorrow?” Two narrow questions focused on getting things done and moving forward. It’s helped me immensely to focus on small completable tasks that move me toward my goal of launching Loose Leaf.

Indie dev can be a lonely road, and it’s encouraging to look back through the month and read my responses for what I was able to accomplish. It’s admittedly not always what I’d planned to accomplish, but I do see how I moved through the surprise obstacles and stayed focused, which is rewarding and encouraging.

The Transition

Quite a few weeks ago, the current owners of AskMeEvery posted that they’d need to shut down the service – it was simply draining more money than it pulled in and couldn’t survive any longer. I immediately started talking to them to try and find a way to keep the service running. In the end, we all decided that I should take over the service and keep moving it forward. I just got all of the server keys and passwords last week, and am starting to move through the code and plan out next steps.

User registration is back open, all of the services are reviewed and up and running, and I’m working out a long term plan to keep AskMeEvery open for the foreseeable future.

Goals

Right now, the service is spending quite a bit more than it’s taking in through the paid SMS upgrade, and priority one will be to find ways to both cut costs and increase revenue. More than anything I want this to be a site that can survive on its own weight.

I also will be talking with other current users to find out how they use AskMeEvery and how its helped them form new habits and break bad ones. One thing that I appreciated immediately about AskMeEvery is broad appeal. The fuzziness affording with simple text replies to questions lets it solve ‘self-tracking’ in an approachable way. I want to double down on making it easy for anyone to track and stay accountable to their own goals, without needing to spreadsheet 4 different trackers’ data.

Thanks

I want to send a huge thanks to Mark and Eugene who have run the site for the past few years, and a thanks to all of the people who’ve helped them as well. It’s a fantastic service that has helped me and I know has helped many others accomplish their goals and stay focused. And a huge thanks to the AskMeEvery community who’s stayed on board with the service through the transition – I’m excited about where Mark and Eugene have brought us, and where we can take AskMeEvery in the coming months and years!