Over 4th of July weekend, my friend Jimelle and I took off on a bit of an adventure. Or maybe it was more of anti-adventure. We hopped in her car and drove 10 hours up to the tippy top of Maine on a mission: to detox our internet/phone addictions. A real vacation.

We had 3 criteria for our vacation and set 2 rules for once we got there:

• It had to be a cabin
• It had to be on a lake
• It had to be in Maine (we still don’t know how we ended up making Maine a requirement, but it worked out!)

• No computers, phones, or any electronic devices that would connect us to the outside world
• Hide any forms of time-keeping (clocks, watches, iPad clocks, etc)

For anyone who knows me, the idea of going for any period of time without my phone within arm’s reach and without any sort of internet connection is basically laughable. But I was determined. I knew I needed a bit of a detox. And detox I did.

We spent 6 days and 5 nights at the cabin and it was glorious. There really wasn’t anyone in sight, except for the fish, birds and other creatures that lurked around the cabin. It was quiet. Peaceful. Relaxing. And not plopping in front of the TV in your PJs on a Saturday morning relaxing. REAL relaxing. The kind where you’re so de-stressed that you mind literally goes blank for periods of time and you’re perfectly content just staring out at the water. I didn’t realize this kind of calm even existed.

I read books. Ok not REAL paper books, but I managed to finish 1.5 books on my Kindle and a few magazines that I brought along. I stared at the water. I stared at the trees. We did a lot of talking – about high school, about work, about college, about what we were going to eat for dinner, about how peaceful this whole thing was. To someone who uses a computer to mediate nearly every form of communication, communicating exclusively in-person, face-to-face for 6 days was actually a bit strange but also strangely refreshing! I didn’t have to juggle 3 conversations and reading my Twitter stream all at once.

Sure there were some points that drove me NUTS. I really just wanted to send a text message. JUST ONE. Or sometimes the quiet would drive me up a wall. There were times where Jimelle was sleeping in or taking a nap or something and I would run out ways to keep myself entertained and would contemplate sneaking a peek at my iPad, but I was determined to actually make it the whole time.

And I did! Over 100 hours, in fact!

The trip really made me realize a few things. Mostly that I’m far too dependent upon having constant internet access. There were times where Jimelle and I would be talking about something and a certain fact slipped our minds or we were curious about the answer to something and normally I would have hopped on my phone right in the middle of that conversation and would have found out the answer once and for all. With our self-imposed rules, we had to accept not knowing the answer and look it up in a few days. Not easy for 2 pretty smart gals who have to know the answer to everything.

It also highlighted how many grammar school-level facts I’d forgotten now that I have Google on my phone as a crutch. Things as simple as the capital of New Hampshire. It also got us curious about how parents handled questions from their kids back in the day when they couldn’t simply look up the answer without going to a library or having a set of encyclopedias in their house. Did they just make it up? On the one hand I’m glad not to have to rely on a library to answer simple questions, but on the flip side I’ve really got to fill in the potholes in my memory!

One of the more valuable side effects of this whole experience, though, has been resetting my minimum daily internet usage and giving me that reality check that I so needed. Since I’ve gotten back I actually take more time to read books and do offline things. I rarely check Twitter and when I do I check maybe the last hour’s worth. I don’t feel as anxious when I get behind on the feed. I find myself wanting to reconnect with some of the things that used to make me love the internet – the real people aspect and the infinite amounts of information there for the learning. I realize I’ve gotten far too caught up in the whole internet as an industry and I’ve lost sight of the fact that REAL PEOPLE use the internet, not just web geeks like myself. I used to love being a part of blogging networks or just reading about everyday people’s lives. I used to love using the web as a learning tool instead of just as an information receiving platform. Outside of school I used to spend hours online teaching myself new things from web development to random facts about linguistics, to childhood diseases (I really wanted to be a doctor when I was younger). I don’t do any of that anymore.

Needless to say this whole trip and disconnect was a necessary evil that I would recommend to anyone who feels like their patience level nearly at capacity all the time or who is painfully attached to their phone or the constant information influx of being connected 24/7. It’s probably one of the best things you can do for yourself, for your sanity, and for your inevitable carpal tunnel.

At the end of the day it’s about what makes you happy. And I needed to disconnect to remind me of that. Now that I’ve had time to think and relax, though, I’ve found can more easily deal frustration that comes with stress or annoyances, and the freedom from the that frustration has opened up my brain space to go back to basics and to take the steps that I think will make me happiest.

Step one of that will be a combination of the blogging and learning that I mentioned above. Then it’s time to fry the bigger fish. Baby steps first. I’d like to keep at least some level of calm in my life!

Getting to 10,000 was not easy. It’s been a lot of trial and error and thankfully our ever-patient users have stuck with me as I used them as my guinea pigs for experiments in motivation, community, and social design. I thought I’d take a step back to really think about what I’ve learned getting to goal #10,000 and perhaps ponder some possible changes to the site to hopefully get that next 10,000. Or even better: 100,000. Here goes:

101 goals is a LOT to come up with

Yes. So I’ve heard. Over and over again. 101 goals is a lot. I totally get that. It even takes me a few days to come up with my own list. I’ve been very stubborn on this point up until now, but reaching this milestone has also made me realize that isn’t just MY site anymore. There are real people out there using this and they’re not all as obsessive about lists as I am. Who am I to prescribe the number of goals a person should have in a given year? Not saying I’m ready to ditch the 101 concept just yet, but I’m certainly more open to exploring other possibilities. Dare I say pivot? Perhaps.

Lesson learned: Know when to let go and let your users help define the future of the product rather than imposing your ideas. (But know when to stand your ground!) Everyone will be much happer in the long run.

101in365 is not the easiest name to remember

I’ve gotten mixed feedback on this one. Some say to keep it. It describes the site perfectly and is different from all of the startup-y types of names. The flip side of that is that when I’m out and about talking to new people they say “oh you made that 1 oh..? 3 sixty…? thing right?” Not exactly good branding. Personally, I’m not too attached to the name. The numbers thing is tough and if I DO in fact pivot as I mentioned above, the 101 piece of it may not even be true for much longer. So I guess that means it’s time to start exploring a rebrand!

Lesson learned: If they can’t say it they probably won’t remember it. Or they’ll remember it for the wrong reasons. Branding, Branding, Branding!

People will use your tools in ways you never anticipated

This one is kind of a “duh” point, but it’s just one of those things that you have to experience to really understand. When I added comments to 101in365 they were slow to pick up. They weren’t integrated very well (and they still aren’t, to be truthful), but after a lot of prodding on my end and personally leaving a lot of comments around the site, they picked up and took on a life of their own. List owners now generally use the comments to keep track of their progress with their own goals and leave a note to explain when they check off a goal. This isn’t something I’d considered when I added comments, but our users have given comments a whole different life. Awesome! Now it’s time to figure out if there’s a better way for everyone to leave notes on their own goals or if they’re perfectly happy leaving notes in their comments.

Lesson learned: You can’t always predict what your users want but they’ll show you what they need. You’d better be ready to listen.

Designing for an always-morphing site is tough!

When I look back at the original design for 101in365 I shake my head in shame. That thing was pretty terrible. I’m not really sure what I was thinking there. This new design, while better aesthetically, is not at all better in terms of scaling. When I designed it the site was basically a list for each user, a goal page, and a list of most recently completed goals called Explore. It’s since grown to include various filters on Explore, a Dashboard, a Goodies section, and more to come. It’s not just the main pages that have pushed the design to the limits, but the new functionality such as the ability to Like goals or Pics Or It Didn’t Happen have pointed out design flaw upon design flaw.

Lesson learned: Keep scaling in mind when you’re designing a quickly-growing site and get it right the first (or second) time. Measure twice, cut once. Or something like that.

Beware the hazards of building in a vacuum

Right now I’m flying completely solo. Building, designing, marketing, maintaining, failing, succeeding – it’s all me. I don’t mind because I love it, but I do find that without someone to be a check and balance I end up in a situation like I mentioned up in #1: I’m stubborn about building it the way I would use it instead of the way people demand. It’s also lonely and tougher to recover from issues like not designing for scale the first time. Since I’m essentially a one gal show, time spent in Photoshop is time NOT spent interacting with the community or promoting the site or building a new feature. Everything is a tradeoff and mistakes are especially costly because it means something else has to be put on hold while you address it. Like the night I almost lost all of the data because I was trying to finish a feature and truncated the live database instead of the dev. Checks and balances and a second set of eyes are always helpful. User feedback is fantastic, but sometimes it’s nice to have feedback BEFORE you send something out into the world.

Not to mention the fact that working solo means that I’m limited to my knowledge set and a few other things I pick up along the way. Let’s face it, I’m nowhere near awesome at algorithms but goal suggestions and some clever people-connecting things are at the top of my to do list right now. I could probably teach myself how to do that sort of data analysis, but again, time spent reading a book on algorithms and data processing is time not spent doing more tangible work.

Lesson learned: It’s totally OK to build things by yourself. You get to learn every aspect of the process. But, it also means that you’re always focusing on one or two things at a time and the other things are likely suffering. If I had the opportunity, I’d love to bring some other people into the project to spread the load and to have the luxury of diverse perspectives.

At the end of the day, even with all of the tougher bits, building 101in365 and watching it grow has been an amazing experience. It’s been a crash course in many areas for me and I’m looking forward learning more, growing more, building more, and helping people accomplish more. There’s still a LOT of work to be done, but when I take a step back and look at what I’ve built over these last months, I’m pretty proud of how far it’s come! If you haven’t already, sign up and check it out! I’d love your feedback!

It was out of this that I wrote my first 101in365. A simple list that I put on my old blog. It’s still there and I still update it, but now that 2009 is coming to a close and it’s time for me to start working on my 101in365. I wanted something better for 2010. I wanted a way to automate it so I didn’t have to go through and add strikethroughs to each item and so I didn’t have to go into a blog post and scroll down to find my item. I wanted a way to keep track of the number of items I’ve marked as done, as in progress, and just as empty. I wanted to be able to manage my list more easily with a quick “heads up” view of my status. So I tried to automate it.

I started on Thursday night after a holiday party. I worked on it Friday night and all day Saturday. Some of Sunday and a teeny bit of Monday and here we are. A tiny weekend project to make my life easier that sort of snowballed into a multi-user site with a whole to-do list of features (not quite 101 of them, but close!) that I still have to add.

I’m really excited about this project and I hope you’ll join and start creating a list of your own. It’s most certainly still a work-in-progress, but I’m a firm believer that getting a site out into the wild and into the hands of users is the best way to learn what works and what doesn’t and go from there. So head on over to 101in365.com and sign up!