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The Morning Routine: Forming The Most Important Keystone Habit

(Note: This article is based on my previous post from my previous (now defunct blog): The Morning Ritual: Injecting Routine In Your Day To Boost Productivity.

It’s amazing what a little bit of routine can do for your productivity.

For the last month, I’ve been formulating and following a morning routine from the moment I get up. I’ve learned, from tracking my experience over the last few days, that the simple activity of doing an action every morning allows you to get into the mindset you’ll need for a successful day.

Ask yourself: What did you do this morning? And what did you do yesterday? Was it the same?

We all wake up with a blank slate every morning, a chance to have an awesome, productive, successful day. A morning routine will help set the path for an awesome day to follow.

In the video below, you’ll see my morning routine. It’s a simple process.

Continue reading The Morning Routine: Forming The Most Important Keystone Habit

How Jack S. used Zipties to Never Sleep In Again

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Jack has always had incredible struggles with waking up in the morning. No matter what, he would never arrive on time for morning meetings…until he tried a Pavlok.

While Pavlok is extremely effective for waking up, every once in a while (extremely rarely) severely heavy-sleepers will somehow take the device off in their sleep. Jack was one of the few, so he invented a Macgyverd method to never sleep in again. Our CEO Maneesh Sethi had the pleasure of interviewing Jack. Read below to see the details…

Maneesh: Tell me about your sleeping habits before Pavlok.

Jack: I’ve suffered with struggling to get out of bed in the mornings since I was a kid

I’ve previously tried many things. The world’s loudest alarm clock; an alarm clock I made that would spray you with water.

At my previous startup, We had a morning meeting every week. I’d actually have to sleep on the couch in the office to ensure I’d be in the office on time for it

I didn’t have trouble waking up the sound of the alarms. Just trouble getting out of bed. I would always hit the snooze button.

Pavlok (+zip tie) is the only alarm that I’ve ever used which works. Pretty life changing

Maneesh: How long have you been using Pavlok?

Jack: Since I came up the the zip tie hack that I shared in the group. I think like 3 months

Maneesh: How often do you use it? and always w/ the zip tie?

Jack: I use it about 4 times a week (not on weekends). Yes, always with the zip tie.

Before I was embarrassed! l was always late to everything, no matter what it was, if it happened in the morning.

Maneesh: What time do you wake up now? how much time does it take for you to get out of bed?

Jack: it depends when I want to wake up, depending on meetings etc. I now give myself about 10-15 minutes to wake up.

Say I want to wake up at 9am. I’ll set an alarm at 8:45am and another at 8:55am. With pavlok set for 9am

So the 8:45am one basically tells me I’ve got 15 mins till the pavlok goes off. The 8:55am one is to remind me to get out of bed and take off the pavlok before it goes off at 9am.

So 8:55am I’ll run out of my room to kitchen to get scissors to cut it off. Like sprint out of my room.

Maneesh: Hahaha, oh man. I want to make a movie of this.

Jack: My roommate finds it quite entertaining

Maneesh: Any features you’d like us to add?

Jack: Something I’d hacked around with before with my phone – but would likely need a hardware change to add – would be NFC. Ie need to touch it to an NFC sticker in the shower to shut it off

Maneesh: Hell yes

Jack: Potentially could be achieved with bluetooth. But bt is a bit annoying in pairing

Maneesh: Agreed — NFC is something I intend to add onto a future generation of Pavlok. Who would you recommend pavlok for?

Jack: For users of the Alarm: anyone that struggles to get out of bed in the mornings / is late for work

For users of Pavlok: ocd sufferers, smokers, hair pullers, sugar addicts, binge eaters

Maneesh: Any last words?

Jack: Everyone using the alarm should check my zip tie method before I patent it

Maneesh: Hahahahaha yessss

Thanks for your story Jack!

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We’re Big in Japan

So on Monday night, after I sent the previous email, I downloaded the Google Analytics app and was instantly hooked by the realtime visitor feature. Like, I couldn’t look away. “Oh man, someone in California is on our web site! Which blog post is he gonna read?”

After like, an hour of this, suddenly, the number suddenly shot up. “Hey someone from Japan! Hey, another person from Japan! Wait, what’s going on?”

Then my friend Andy Morgan posted this:

We were featured on a Japanese Talk Show/Game Show — for 10 minutes, they were testing the zap on different people while sleeping. I wish I had a clip I could share — I’ll send one if I can get access to one on Youtube.

The funny thing is, our original Pavlok wasn’t a big hit in Japan. However, when we released the Shock Clock on Indiegogo in April, Japan was by far the most popular non-US country of them all.

I think a lot of people in Japan aren’t getting enough sleep…And hey, we’re here to help!

So I’m extremely pleased to announce that we have successfully finalized the design, production, and (almost) software for our second product The Shock Clock. We are delivering the final thousand units (out of 2800 backers) in the next two weeks.

I don’t have an official date for the Shock Clock launch right now — it looks like it will be the first half of October — but we just listed it as a preorder on our store.

Preorder The Shock Clock ($99 + Free Shipping until Friday Night)

#MotivationMonday – How Kara Used Pavlok To Get In The Best Shape Of Her Life (even after having a child)

Happppppppy Monday!

I hope you had an exciting weekend. This week, I’ll be bringing you some cool posts, including some updates on some cool stuff we are launching in less than a month 🙂

But for now, I’m excited to bring you this week’s episode of #motivationmonday, where you meet people who have had success in changing their habits. Today, I’m excited to introduce Kara, who recently posted her story on our Official Pavlok Users Group.

I spoke with Kara this weekend about how she changed her habit, and below, you can find the interview I did with her.

Below is our full interview.

How Kara Got Back In Shape After Having A Child

Me: How long ago did you get a Pavlok, where did you hear about it, and what made you get it?

Kara: Ordered my Pavlok the night of your Shark Tank premiere, and received it June 21. I heard about Pavlok through a random sponsored ad on my newsfeed over a year ago. Then I read about it again on a tech newsletter I’m subscribed in.

I made the decision to get a Pavlok back in April. I started seeing a therapist and together we were able to identify my bad habits. The one thing I wanted to change was my bad habit of mindless eating. Whenever I would get stressed or feel a depressive episode coming on, I would grab whatever we had in the cabinet and just eat. I call it mindless eating though because I was not even aware. I would just eat and eat, and then when I finished the bag/box/carton I’d suddenly snap out of it and feel even worse. It just became a horrible cycle. Long story short, after being able to identify the problem, I realized Pavlok is a device I needed to help break me of my mindless eating. Funnily enough, I bought my Pavlok after I saw you guys on Shark Tank. I am so grateful you didn’t partner with him!

Lastly, Pavlok has also helped me with my depression. After I broke my mindless eating habit, I have never felt better about myself. Everyone says I’ve been so cheerful lately and they can definitely see a change in my demeanor and how I carry myself.

Me: WOW!! How did you use Pavlok to help with mindless eating? I’m interested in knowing what was your process – and did you say it helped you on your depression as well? That is amazing!

Kara: After going to talk to my therapist and starting the Pavlok app (day 1 and 2), the first step to breaking my habit is AWARENESS. Once I put the cycle together, awareness became easy. The first two days I went about my day as normal. Now that I was aware, when I reached for the food and started eating, I would shock myself. And then for every few handfuls later. Now that the zap was associated with the bad habit, I was able to snap out of it even before I even reached for the food. I’d still have lapses a few days after that, but eventually I realized “You’re not hungry! You’re just upset and you want food to fill that void”. So instead of reaching for food, I would focus on something fun or productive. I started reading more (one book a week up from a book a month), tidying up more around the house, going places on my own, EXERCISING, and getting more organized. Because my Pavlok helped me break my bad habit, in turn I was able to work on other barriers in my life. Two months ago my therapist asked me on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the worst) and I said a 7. This week I had my follow up and she asked me the same question and I said a 5! That’s huge!

Me: How long ago did you get a Pavlok, where did you hear about it, and what made you get it?

Kara: Ordered my Pavlok the night of your Shark Tank premiere, and received it June 21. I heard about Pavlok through a random sponsored ad on my newsfeed over a year ago. Then I read about it again on a tech newsletter I’m subscribed in.

I made the decision to get a Pavlok back in April. I started seeing a therapist and together we were able to identify my bad habits. The one thing I wanted to change was my bad habit of mindless eating. Whenever I would get stressed or feel a depressive episode coming on, I would grab whatever we had in the cabinet and just eat. I call it mindless eating though because I was not even aware. I would just eat and eat, and then when I finished the bag/box/carton I’d suddenly snap out of it and feel even worse. It just became a horrible cycle. Long story short, after being able to identify the problem, I realized Pavlok is a device I needed to help break me of my mindless eating. Funnily enough, I bought my Pavlok after I saw you guys on Shark Tank. I am so grateful you didn’t partner with him!

Lastly, Pavlok has also helped me with my depression. After I broke my mindless eating habit, I have never felt better about myself. Everyone says I’ve been so cheerful lately and they can definitely see a change in my demeanor and how I carry myself.

Me: WOW!! [I say that a lot]. How did you use Pavlok to help with mindless eating? I’m interested in knowing what was your process – and did you say it helped you on your depression as well? That is amazing!

Kara: After going to talk to my therapist and starting the Pavlok app (day 1 and 2), the first step to breaking my habit is AWARENESS. Once I put the cycle together, awareness became easy. The first two days I went about my day as normal. Now that I was aware, when I reached for the food and started eating, I would shock myself. And then for every few handfuls later. Now that the zap was associated with the bad habit, I was able to snap out of it even before I even reached for the food. I’d still have lapses a few days after that, but eventually I realized “You’re not hungry! You’re just upset and you want food to fill that void”. So instead of reaching for food, I would focus on something fun or productive. I started reading more (one book a week up from a book a month), tidying up more around the house, going places on my own, EXERCISING, and getting more organized. Because my Pavlok helped me break my bad habit, in turn I was able to work on other barriers in my life. Two months ago my therapist asked me on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the worst) and I said a 7. This week I had my follow up and she asked me the same question and I said a 5! That’s huge!

Thank you so much to Kara — your story was amazing to hear.

Want to have your own success story? Order a Pavlok — use code MOTIVATIONSHIPPING for free shipping (valid for the next 2 days).

Enjoy the beautiful weather,

-Maneesh Sethi
Founder/CEO of Pavlok
Boston, MA

P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for some pretty cool announcements coming this week---we are going to change the way that you sleep and exercise. Or you can click here for a super secret screenshot preview...

Slack Integration with Pavlok

What the Pavlok/Slack integration can do

Slack is the hot new tool to communicate with teams quickly and efficiently. Many companies already use Slack to communicate with team members both as groups and individually. It is a great way to keep everyone in the loop!

Though there are apps for our phones and desktop notifications to alert users when called out by team members. Important convo you’d like someone to give input on, but they aren’t answering their messages? Send them a vibrate, beep, or even zap them to get their attention!

Pretty cool, right?

Click here to complete step 1: Login with Pavlok.

You will use the same login as you are currently using on the Pavlok app on your phone. The wristband connects to the app, which connects to slack. The first portion allows Slack to access your Pavlok.

Once you sign in, you will need to authorize Slack to integrate with your Pavlok account.

A confirmation will show that the integration was successful.

The second portion installs the integration into Slack.

Click here to complete step 2: Connect Slack.

Click the button to add the Pavlok Stimuli to Slack.

Slack will ask you to verify that you would like to allow Pavlok Stimuli to Slack (Pavlok is the Slack team name in this example).

Once the authorization is complete, you will receive the following message:

You’re all set! The integration is complete.

To send a stimuli to someone on your Slack team, they will need to follow the same directions above. Once they do, you can send stimuli! In Slack, type: /pavlok, the stimuli, @ the person you’d like to stimulate. If you do not choose a %, the stimuli will automatically be sent at 50%.

You can increase or decrease the % of the stimuli by adding the % to the end of the command.

Pavlok Results from Real Users

At Pavlok, we love hearing from real Pavlok users about the habits they are breaking. Users are the key to knowing our product is effective! We recently sent a survey to Pavlok users who bought a device between September 2015 and April 2016. The survey was short and asked questions about if a habit had been broken, what habit was broken, and the amount of time it took to break.

A total of 195 users were surveyed and habits broken into 12 categories. The categories included:

Alcohol
Nail biting/Skin picking/Hair pulling
Negative thoughts
Obsessions/Compulsions
Pornography/Gaming
Procrastination
Shopping
Smoking
Time wasting websites
Unhealthy eating
Unidentified
Other

Pavlok is worn around the wrist and uses a small electric zap by either pushing the button on the wristband, or using the remote control on the app. Some habits can automatically be set through the app, such giving a zap to wake up or when wasting time on certain websites or apps.

The two most popular groups of bad habits that Pavlok users have been combatting with the help of Pavlok are:
(1) Body-focused repetitive behaviors (26%), of which nail biting is the most popular, followed by hair pulling, skin picking and other similar habits.
(2) Unhealthy eating (21%), mostly focused on excessive sugar consumption.

The remaining half of Pavlok users target a wide range of habits, however, one should pay attention that:
– 12% of respondents use Pavlok for fighting psychological disorders like obsessions/compulsions (8%) and negative thinking (4%)
– 11% of respondents use it for dealing with potentially serious dependencies like smoking (8%) and alcohol (3%)
– only 9% of Pavlok users mention technology related habits as their main target: web browsing (6%) and pornography and gaming (combined 3%)
– only 4% focus directly on professional goals (procrastination), although web browsing (6%) could be work related problem as well.

The most successful habits broken by those surveyed were procrastination and shopping, with 100% of users breaking these habits being successful. The least successful habits to be broken were classified as unidentified at 79% not succeeding, and pornography/gaming with 50% being unsuccessful.

Out of the 195 users, 145 successfully broke their habits. Another 12 had not been using their Pavlok long enough, but felt confident they were on the track to success.

What is astounding is that of the successful users, 93% broke their habit in under two weeks! 74% were able to break their habits in under 7 days, and another 19% between 8 to 14 days.

Can you imagine a life without the habits you hate the most? Are you ready to break your bad habits? Purchase a Pavlok today with no risk! If you are not 100% satisfied with your purchase, we DON’T want your money! It’s as simple as that. If you do not break your bad habit or get the results you want, we want you to contact us for a full refund of your purchase price. For that reason, we offer a 6 month money back guarantee with no questions asked.