Trapper is on a mission

Well-Being Summit 2013

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:13:56 -0400

It is that time of year again! The annual Healthways Well-Being Summit is upon me. This year the summit is in New Mexico in Santa Ana Pueblo.

My talk this year is about a topic I have been exploring over the past few months as we look out into the next few years of behavior change software design:

The Next Frontier of Behavior Change - Identity

For the past three years, MeYou Health has been obsessed with small actions. Getting people to do new things and learn about themselves and their well-being in the process has been the cornerstone of our online health interventions.

Small actions have become the darling of behavior change, but are they really changing anyone? MeYou Health has repeatedly seen that although it’s possible to get someone to try something, whether or not that person turns it into a long-term habit depends on a variety of emotional and environmental factors. In the past, MeYou Health used the term “epiphany moment” to refer to the time when change does occur. Now we have a new idea of what this could be: It isn’t so much an epiphany as a change in identity.

I’ve used a variety of sources to pull this together. If you want some insight into where the talk will be headed, check out some of these links! They are listed in no particular order.

I will post the full presentation and prezi after the conference is over!

On Living With Kids

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:52:26 -0400

My wife Maureen sent me this snippet from a blog she reads that has a Living With Kids feature. This is from Karey Mackin:

Q: How would you describe your aesthetic? Did it change when you added kids to the mix?

A: If our girls had never happened, Pat and I would live in a sleek contemporary with zero clutter. All white. If you came over to our house, you’d gasp at all the cutting-edge gadgets we’d have. We would both drive shiny cars to and from our shiny jobs. We would have all the time in the world to do everything we wanted to do after work and on weekends, and would plan romantic getaways at least twice a month. Our conversations! Oh, they would be epic and uninterrupted. And it would be the emptiest life and I wouldn’t even know the joy I was missing, which makes it all the more tragic.

So. Very. True.

"Part of knowing how to think is knowing how the laws of nature shape the world around us. Without..."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:22:37 -0400

““Part of knowing how to think is knowing how the laws of nature shape the world around us. Without that knowledge, without that capacity to think, you can easily become a victim of people who seek to take advantage of you””

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"When I was growing up, my dad would encourage my brother and I to fail. We would be sitting at the..."

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:29:05 -0400

““When I was growing up, my dad would encourage my brother and I to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, ‘So what did you guys fail at this week?’ If we didn’t have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he’d high-five me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn’t the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘I didn’t try that because I was scared,’ that is failure.””

- Sara Blakely – Founder of Spanx

(read more quotes on success)

Gamification is serious business, in Pharma Voice

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:34:00 -0500

A while back I gave a short interview to someone working on a gamification piece. As these things go, I often forget about them, only to be surprised later that they actually appear somewhere online!

The February 2013 issue of Pharma Voice has my picture in it along with some quotes.

I continue to see gamification as a strong set of patterns for encouraging social experiences. Gaming experience are fulfilling experiences because they provide clear prompts, feedback and incentives for mass participation. If you want to get a group of strangers to know each other, you make a game out of it. Social product designers are realizing that just because a product can be social doesn’t mean it will become so. Break out the games and you can bring people together, find common ground, and rally people through forms of exploration, achievement, storytelling cooperation and competition. - Markelz

The whole thing is behind a pay wall, so unfortunately you can’t see the entire article. But here is the link anyhow.

The Secret Door?

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:51:26 -0500

The Secret Door is presented by Safestyle UK

And then this happened… Here is the video over on...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:54:00 -0500

And then this happened…

Here is the video over on Bostinno!

My DartTalk - Can Insurance and employers drive product distribution?

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:48:00 -0500

Cort Johnson asked me to give a DartTalk tomorrow (Jan 22, 2013) about my experience running product development at MeYou Health and the challenges and successes we have had working with insurance companies and employers to distribute health and wellness programs.

The main reasons I took the Head of Product job at MeYou Health was because it was an opportunity to 1) Build a team and product totally from scratch and 2) use the existing contracts and relationships of Healthways to distribute the product to millions of people.

For the past couple years we have built the product Daily Challenge into an engaging and proven health intervention. This past year we have been deploying it into the market via health plans and employers. The results have been nothing short of educational and I hope the talk reflects that.

It is an exciting time to be in the health industry. I wouldn’t pick to be anywhere else. Here is a set of links that I have pulled together than can help convey the excitement and the opportunity.

Healthcare’s Trillion-Dollar Disruption
A great summary of the massive changes facing the industry. A must read!

The Volume-to-Value Revolution
This document is referenced in the Forbes article linked above. It clearly describes how the entire industry is facing a shift away from the volume-based model of doing as many procedures as possible and into creating measurable long-term incremental value for consumers.

How Wal-Mart May Have Just Changes the Game on Health Care
Their “centers of excellence” program creates a competitive market for procedures at a national level, possibly changing the entire system of referrals.

Xboxification of Healthcare
It covers the challenges of innovating while shackled to old models, and touches on the changes that are coming with the new reimbursement models. It also has the word “Xbox” in it which, as a gamer, I appreciate. :)

Health Plans: Start your engines and welcome to 2013
A six part blog series about the changing system and how health plans can evolve into consumer-driven businesses.

I plan to update this post after the talk and with other resources as I find them.

"People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no..."

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:43:09 -0500

“People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.”

- Marilynne Robinson

Be mindful of the entire spectrum and the cycles of it in your life.

Best of 2012, a set on Flickr.Maureen and I said 2012 would be...

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 11:51:54 -0500

Best of 2012, a set on Flickr.

Maureen and I said 2012 would be the best year yet, and it was!

What is a product manager?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:16:00 -0500

Jeff Bussgang as put together the best slide I have seen that defines my universe:

(Taken from Jeff Bussgang’s talk on Product-Market Fit)

Out of all of those… I will say that I am weakest on the process/detail-oriented part. I think it is a Poet v Librarian issue…

I completed the 2012 Fenway Spartan Sprint. 20 Obstacles over 3...

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 00:03:57 -0500

I completed the 2012 Fenway Spartan Sprint. 20 Obstacles over 3 miles. Some of the obstacles included:

Carrying 40lbs of water down and back up a flight of stairs
500 m Row in 2 minutes
100lb stone carry
Running through the many rows of seats or up and down stairs of the Fenway bleachers
Scaling 40 ft. high cargo nets and 16ft ladders
Rope Climb
Heavy Jump Rope
85lb heavy stone hoist
Horizontal wall climb
Javelin throw into hay bales
Baseball throw into a bucket
60lb sand bag carry through the stairs of the bleachers
LOTS of Burpees
Box Jumps
…and you finishing at the “Gladiator Pit” where they smash you with foam jousting weapons (I got a bloody lip!)

For any obstacle you cannot complete you are penalized 30 burpees. The only obstacle I was not able to complete was the Javelin throw… so I was really happy with how I did. Doing the rope climb was what I wanted to beat the most and I just barely pulled it out. So I was happy. I will totally do more of these!

A family chalk drawing

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:00:12 -0500

A family chalk drawing

A family of zombies! Shot with an IR camera by Jeff Paradiso

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 07:40:44 -0500

A family of zombies!

Shot with an IR camera by Jeff Paradiso

I completed a metric century ride (100k)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:11:48 -0500

100k ride complete! Here I am in the cold weather get-up.

I have always liked biking. This fall I stepped it up a notch and started doing quite a bit more riding to work during the week with some longer rides on the weekend. Since I started my riding late in the season, I wanted to accomplish something big before the snow set in. I originally thought that I would try and conquer 100 miles… but then I learned about the concept of a “metric century” which is 100k (62 miles). That seemed doable.

On November 6th, I headed out in 28 degree F weather and accomplished my goal. I used the Garmin site to map out a route that took me just over the New Hampshire border and back. It is cool to say that you road to another state and back! The ride was not that difficult. It took four and a half hours, and I sure was sore afterwards, but it was a ton of fun. The roads were quiet… the weather was sunny and crisp. The whole experience was somewhat meditative.

I never started road biking to do crazy amounts of miles. I started so that I had an excuse to get more active and to enjoy exploring the roads and hills around my house. I am still planning to do a 100 mile ride, but that will have to wait until next year. The weather is getting cold around here!

ME and the DUDE

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:59:00 -0500

ME and the DUDE

Ruckus run complete!

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:00:11 -0500

Last week I participated in a Ruckus Run! It was a three mile obstacle course held at the Marshfield Fair Grounds outside of Boston. The photo above is me along with David Larrabee who I ran with.

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and I was happy to find out I am in pretty good shape after all the biking and running I have been doing lately. My favorite obstacles were right at the beginning where there were huge pits of mud and water that you have to thrash through. Some people were taking it easy, but David and I just rallied it hard, coming away muddy and soaked head to toe.

My kids also got in on the action doing the Ruckus Mini! Anyone 2 and over could participate so even my son Jack did a little bit of mud running!

Being active is fun! I am signing everyone up for the next event this summer.

Reading Future Perfect by Steven Johnson

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:42:59 -0500

What is Future Perfect about?

Steven Johnson’s Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to classrooms, from protest movements to health care. Johnson paints a compelling portrait of this new political worldview — influenced by the success and interconnectedness of the Internet, but not dependent on high-tech solutions — that breaks with the conventional categories of liberal or conservative thinking.

This new political movement Steven is calling “Peer Progressive”. I understand where he is headed with it. I’m not sure I quite understand why we need to call it a new political party of sorts.

This book is a decent collection of stories and ideas about how our world is changing (or has changed?). No longer are the only organizational structures top-down or bottom-up, but now we can also communicate side-to-side in a peer-to-peer fashion that opens up all kinds of new models of sharing and innovation. The standard examples are here like Wikipedia, but also newer (and I think more exciting) examples like Kickstarter.

Truth be told, I had to force myself to finish this book. I would have liked it to focus less on the examples of peer networks and more on how the tenets of peer progressivism fuse into a new political ideology that can shape policy in a meaningful way.

2012 - Family status. There are lots of ‘em!

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:30:14 -0500

2012 - Family status. There are lots of ‘em!

Reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 23:03:00 -0400

This has been on my reading list for quite some time. I tend to move back and forth between fiction and non-fiction. After finishing Cloud Atlas (which I also need to post about!) I was due for some non-fiction… so here we are.

In short this book can be summed up in two words: Work Hard

Gladwell works to convince the reader that when it comes to nature vs. nurture, forget your genes… they don’t matter… what instead matters is the opportunities we are given, when we are given them, and how hard we work to take full advantage. His belief is that we are not engineered for success, but are the product of success built on the shoulders of our ancestors, our luck, our circumstance, and our work ethic.

Like any Gladwell book I found it to be anecdotal yet compelling and thought provoking. The book caused me to examine my own parenting and the opportunities I am making available to my children. It caused me to examine my own work ethic and the opportunities I have been given. And it caused me to reflect deeply on my own success and the circumstances that brought me to it. Maybe it will do that for you too.