I come across a lot of interesting technology things. When something spurs my interest, I usually give it a shot. Usually that shot lasts about two weeks to see if anything interesting will come from the trial. Most services completely crash and burn, but some stick.
For example, I tried Jott and I use it almost every day for something. The service actually makes things more convenient for me.
Other services didn’t fare so well. For example, Mint. I don’t want to have to go in and categorize everything or relabel everything. I just want to enter receipts and track my accounts. And since I don’t enter receipts in Mint, rather I wait until they show up in the online banking, I don’t actually get a clear view of my finances. I’m sure that if I used Mint for several months, I might find more value in the service, but the first two weeks were painful and not particularly useful. Even worse, my weekly summary from Mint rarely shows up. So I stopped trusting it. Honestly, it seemed like they were more interested in trying to convince me to sign up for a Capital One card rather than help track my finances.
The idea behind the two weeks is that the trial might turn into a habit. And if it is something that is actually worth the effort, two weeks is about the right amount of time to use the service at least a few times to see if I actually like it.
I’ve got a couple currently in the middle of a trial period right now. I’ll report back on how they do…