Ironically, I’m posting this, anything really, because I accidentally found my website active a few days ago and then in a luckily timed need, wanted to demonstrate Microsoft Clarity on a blog. But that got me to thinking, in addition to adding a page to my blog.
The next frontier for effective personal productivity is accessible integration. I’ve dabbled in home automation and workflows, but I’ll use a working example that makes a difference in my life of chaining together apps and tools in my Apple personal ecosystem. I switched to iPhone recently from a few years of running with Android. Possibly I might not have had to do this if my Pixel 4a had IP67 protection, but mussel broth spilled into the phone’s charging port will start a chain reaction that leads to getting a new phone that let’s you not get excluded from family chats. The iPhone led to an apple watch which replaced my Suunto Baro 9 (battery life was the starting point, but the app integration is the focus of the balance of this post). So to optimize my meager training leading up to distance rides, and ensuring I’m recovering well from said training, I tried to recreate what was pretty great in the Suunto ecosystem. Suunto watches and the app connects to training peaks and give great recovery metrics and optimal training curves. So I ended up getting an app called Sync Health Metrics, it connects with the Suunto App still (though I wear that watch seldom, but it’s still better for XC skiing because that tracks GPS trails, c’,mon Apple - doesn’t anyone XC ski at Apple?) with the Suunto App being still better than anything else I’ve found. I also integrate with intervals.icu (which i promise to getting around to supporting soon, becuase it’s great). So all this works great, oh and I use Training Today and Athlytic (SIC) to give me some additional recovery curves to track how I’m feeling (those are based on HRV). But all this to work around the fact that Apple Watches and their flexible ecosystem don’t make as good a seamless training workflow as an opinionated product and it’s ecosystem like Suunto. The smartwatch is a better more flexible everyday tool for me (one glance to see my next meeting on an always on face has helped my time management immensely).
Oh and back to Microsoft Clarity - it’s pretty neat and free and integrates with Google Analytics, which I haven’t used in years, but remember Urchin fondly for those days when I did A/B website testing on a startup idea.
If you happen to run across this blog, please comment and it will spur me to write more.