New Year New Me
Welcome to the Rangr Basecamp: the weekly newsletter where the Rangr team provides our perspective of creating a startup, tricks and tips we use, and the things that inspire us.
Hello There 👋
Big News at Rangr! 🗞️
We have launched our 1.0 version of the Rangr platform on Rangr.org. The platform allows creators and hobbyists to create and host online video sessions for their audience! We will be launching weekly sessions based on the recommendations from our awesome community so please input your suggestions here!
The Lesson of the Week 👏
Replacing Goals with Process
As the clock ticks down to midnight, and Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” starts playing the annual tune signaling the new year, I’m sure all of us had a moment where we thought about all the new goals scribbled down somewhere. Ranging from hitting the gym every day at 5 am to backpacking to Japan, we all thought about doing something “better” for us. Unfortunately, goals are often very hard to accomplish. Not just because they are often large and intimidating, but because they are hard to scale down to the everyday view. In this lesson of the week, we are going to explore James' Clear’s Atomic Habits and how to accomplish your big goal with small tasks.
The goal of becoming healthy could be broken down into many smaller tasks such as having your gym clothes ready every night, meal prepping meals for automatically healthy meals, placing your vitamins right next to your phone. The goal is to remove friction and intentional thoughts between you and your small actions so that goals automatically happen.
The Four Stages of Habit
Cue - These triggers can be seen in our everyday environments with the common mobile phone notification to tying our gym shoes on in the morning. The action gets our biological brain in the mood in search of a reward.
Craving - Have you ever had the feeling of dying for a certain snack like ice cream at 1 am. The emotions and thoughts initiated by a proper cue intensify the initial want into something real such as stress, anxiety, or pain that pushes. you to find a form of relief quickly. A great example is when you’re tired and all you want is that hot steaming cup of coffee nestled in your chilly hands.
Response - The third step is the actual action that is performed such as in the previous example brewing a cup of coffee in the morning. This action must be easy enough to accomplish based on the craving or we will lose our interests and not pursue it any further.
Reward - This is the final step which could be broken down into two purposes: “the action teaches us something or the action satisfy us.” In the example of the cup of coffee, the coffee is the item that delivers relief and comfort back into our cold and tired lives.
Team Recommendations 🙌 !
Design of Everyday Things -by Don Norman- Reviewed by Gabriel Lobl
“A short while ago I was reading ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ by Don Norman and came across an idea that opened my eyes to a reality I hadn’t considered before. When we make a mistake for which we are to blame, we are quick to blame external factors and other people. Yet, very curiously, when a badly designed appliance, tool, or website causes us to make an error we often jump to blame ourselves.
Think of the last time you encountered a situation where you couldn’t get an electronic device to work or where you repeatedly clicked the wrong button on a website. Was your reaction “oh! stupid me!” or something along these lines? Although this is oftentimes our default reaction, it is generally wrong, as the fault is not in us but on the bad design. When designing any technology that is to be used by humans, one always has to consider that their users are, well, only human; and that as a designer or builder, it is your responsibility to do your very best to minimize unintended interactions and maximize the intuitiveness of whatever it is you’re building.
This is crucial to understand when seeking feedback to improve a design. Say 90% of your users are clicking the wrong button on your site, but undeservingly blaming themselves instead of reporting it as a bug. In such a situation, which is extremely common, the design flaw might never be discovered.
We can talk about how to solve this issue on another day. For now, if you're a builder, remember to keep in mind that your users’ feedback is not as reliable as you might’ve thought and that, if you want to improve your product, you’ll have to dig a little deeper. And if you're a user, remember to take it easy on you, it is a technology that should adapt to you, not the other way around!