Recently, I downloaded AgileEra’s Personal Motivation Calendar and tested it during their 30-day free trial.
Bottom-Line: I rated this product a Don’t Buy / Don’t Download.
The home page seemed intriguing — the company promotes itself as “Your Expert in Time and Productivity Management.” The program looked to be simple enough, and I thought it might fill a real need I have which is to set up a simple counter that shows me how many days I have left in the year.
Instead, what this program offers is a compilation of information that I can’t imagine anyone finding motivating, especially when it’s presented in an unchanged format, floating above other windows on the desktop.
The first set of numbers is permanently displayed for 12 months — it counts down the number of years that I have left to live, based on an estimate of 80 years. (It’s good to learn and then to be reminded that I’m likely to die in 2046… I suppose…)
In the months and days section, it shows me today’s date… dramatized by the crossing out of the months of the year, and days of the month that have already been consumed in my unrelenting death-march to 2046.
It offers another count-down in the next window of how much of the day has been consumed. At 10:01pm I have used some 91% of the day.
Then, it allows the user to display the tasks that he or she has to perform in the famous 4 quadrants popularized by Stephen Covey. While I think this particular piece of analysis is sometimes interesting, it’s little like my horoscope in my experience. Interesting, but hardly useful.
In the “Motivate Me” section there is some advice given on popular time management topics such as procrastination — “Procrastination is the most famous thief of time” — and Tiredness — “It is wrong to try to work until you get a headache.”
At a cost of US$30 I remain a bit underwhelmed, and have been clicking around the program to see if I am somehow missing the point.
Having searched around and satisfied myself that I have not missed a link, I think I understand that the program is attempting to push me and other users to act now by showing us that we are running out of hours in the day, days in the months, and years in the rest of our lives.
Hmmm…. I’d better hurry up and delete this program before I spend any more valuable time using it.
AgileEra’s Personal Motivation Calendar can be downloaded by clicking here.
Once again, my recommendation is “Don’t Buy / Don’t Download.”