Working hard is hard

For some of us, our work is more than just a job. It’s a deep source of fulfilment in life, it’s how we push the world forwards. As founders, we’re part of that lucky few for whom this is true.

Because of this I try to do my best work every day, and to really work hard. But even with the privilege of loving what I do, some days I struggle to sit down and work as hard as I’d like.

Some days I can get into flow for hours. Other days I wouldn’t even give myself a 5/10 on productivity! On those days my executive function seems totally shot - I struggle to even get started working and I feel a deep urge to scroll Twitter on the couch. What the hell is going on? How is my ability to work hard so variable?

Figuring out what affects your productivity is impossible

I wanted to figure out what causes my ability to work hard to vary so much. I could see vague patterns for what messed with my productivity and energy levels, but I couldn’t make sense of the full picture, because so many things seemed to matter - here’s a non-exhaustive list:

• Social media usage
• Sleep
• Exercise
• Nutrition
• Caffeine and alcohol
• Sunlight
• Time with friends and family
• Location

Humans are good at seeing vague patterns, but when it comes down to it, our processing ability is limited. We just can’t keep track of 10s let alone 100s of potential causes for what’s affecting our productivity or happiness or energy levels, let alone identify how they affect us, and figure out what we need to do to fix them.

But we live in interesting and exciting times. We have computers now, and tracking devices, so we finally live in a world where we should no longer need to rely on our own analog processing to figure out what makes us able to work hard.

The future is here, but it’s not connected

Today, you can track your sleep, exercise levels, phone usage, and work, but nothing exists to give you the full picture. Within each domain, these trackers are useful to understand how you’re doing, but humans are complex and each part of our lives affects the others. Sleep affects our productivity, and our work lives affect our sleep. We need a tool to make sense of all of this data.

We built Magicflow to make it easy

We decided to build that tool, focusing initially on productivity, because after trying the tools in the space, we felt like none of the time-trackers did a good job of focusing on what we cared about.

So Magicflow is three things:

• Time and productivity tracker
• Coach
• Hub for combining your data and turning it into insights

We built Magicflow because we believe that everyone deserves to be productive. We all have our moments when we could use a little help staying on track. That’s where Magicflow comes in – your personal productivity coach. We help you get things done, and we help you stay focused.

How Magicflow is different

There are already other time trackers out there, but Magicflow is a better alternative to Rescuetime and the others out there. Rather than just tracking your time, Magicflow helps you to track your focus, deep work, context-switches and productivity. Magicflow also helps you to improve your work habits, by giving you personalized real-time feedback, and a daily report of your productivity.

It gets even better. Your work doesn't occur in a vacuum - when you're tired less gets done. Your energy levels are the hidden input to how productive you can be. Magicflow can even integrate with Apple Health, and Google Calendar. That means you can get a complete overview of your day, and see how your work habits are affecting your health and sleep, and vice versa.

Magicflow is a tool to help you achieve your goals by connecting productivity and health. We're building Magicflow to help you become the best version of you.

If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, we'd love to have you join us on our journey. We're currently in private beta with a few paying users (we're still grinding towards ramen profitability), so if you'd like to be a part of Magicflow's story, book an onboarding call here.