After months of vague allusions and subtle hints, I’m excited to be able to toss out the first tangible form of the idea we’ve been working on:
43 Things, Twinkler
This is a stripped-down version of the site we’re building. As a former creative writing major and failed novelist, I love paring things down to their bare minimum and then building them back up. It helps you find the essence of what you’re trying to do. So, upon Jason Fried’s suggestion, we reduced our big idea into a 3-page site. We can throw this out there and learn from it in our favored prototype quickly, iterate often, fail (and learn) early fashion.
Over the next 43 days, we’ll be unveiling a little more about what we’re building, give screenshots, explain our motivations, reveal our hopes, invite people to the beta, and talk about our new favorite lunch-time game, Credit Card Roulette.
The basic idea of 43 Things is this: it’s a well known fact that by writing down your goals you greatly increase the chances of actually completing them. Part of it is just knowing what your goals are. Another is being able to hold yourself accountable. Here’s a place to write down some things you want to do with this life, look at what other people want to do, and generally think about what makes life exciting for you.
When the full site launches, you’ll be able to export your information if you so desire. So, I challenge you to add a few things to your list, save it, and take a look at what everyone else is adding to their lists. If you have any feedback, comments, or suggestions about good places to go for lunch in the Seattle area (or about Twinkler), we’d love to hear them.
I should mention that we’ll be releasing a lot of this data out there for people to play with if they’re into that (I know I am). Things like number of people who have a particular thing on their list, similarities, etc. So if you want me to let you know when this stuff is available, send me an email (erik at this domain).
