Unit Expression, "kB"

Have you ever tried the Email CSV Data function? It's a new function and it's on the General Settings & Tools menu. When you create a csv file with this function, you will see a message like the one below.

During the design process, I saw this message and felt that there was something funny about the unit expression "kB". I thought it should be "KB" or "kb". So I asked one of our engineers who wrote that message.

His answer was that it should be "kB" according to "SI". He explained that SI stands for "Systeme International d'unites"(in English, "International System of Units"), and it's the world's most widely used system of measurement.

According to SI, the prefix for 1,000 is "k" and "K" is for Kelvin. In the same manner, "b" stands for bit and "B" is for byte. Therefore, "kilobytes" should be written "kB".

I understood what he said but he continued his explanation and asked me, "if most of the users would think that "kB" looks funny and should be "KB", should we go with "KB"?"

I replied that we should go with "kB" because he really wanted to be accurate about it and I liked it.

Though you might think that it's a tiny thing and it wouldn't really matter, I take this seriously and I am personally proud of it. Because I believe that this way of thinking makes the quality of application a lot better.

By the way, the engineer I talked about graduated school and joined us this Spring. Though he is fresh out of school, he already works like an experienced engineer. We have many engineers like him in our company, and I consider myself very lucky to work with them.

Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

WIKIPEDIA: International System of Units

A Self-Management Competition, "Master of Self-Management"

Now we are holding a self-management competition, called "Master of Self-Management" in Japan.

In this competition, contestants apply and tell us how they are managing themselves with MyStats. The judge committee will select four individuals as Masters of Self-Management. Those masters will be gathered at Apple Store Ginza in Tokyo this December. It's going to be a talk event. In this event, masters will display their methods and techniques for their own self-managements, and one of them will be selected as the Great Master of Self-Management.

The prize for the Great Master is a MacBook Air. The winner will also receive a chance to be in newspapers, magazines, news sites and so on.

To be a contestant, there are very little conditions. There are no conditions on nationality, gender, age, occupation, etc. Only if you can manage yourself with MyStats very well, you can be selected as the Master.

However, if you are selected, you have to come to Tokyo for the talk event on your own. Therefore, if you are not living in Japan, it could be difficult to participate in this competition.

In the future, although I don't know when it will be, I want to hold similar competitions not only in one country but in multiple countries throughout the world. In future competitions, we will pay travel expenses for selected masters and we will gather them in places like San Francisco, London, Cologne, Beijing, Mumbai, Cape Town, or Cayman Islands.

My dream is that one day, a ticket will be delivered to somebody who has been trying things very hard and is very good at self-management. He or she is not wealthy nor famous at all, but the ticket will open a door and that person will walk through it, take a chance, and make great achievements.

If you can come to Tokyo, be a contestant. If you cannot, but are still interested, tell us where you live and let's think about how we can hold the competition in your country.

Let's one day hold the International Self-Management Competition, together.

Kenji Komai

Executive Vice President

NEOREX Co., Ltd.

Master of Self-Management official page.

(Japanese Only)

Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

Maximum & Minimum Value for the Line Graph

Did you know that you can specify Maximum and Minimum value for each line graph?

On the line graph settings screen, there are "Maximum Value" and "Minimum Value" boxes. Your Auto settings might be "ON". You can turn Auto settings "OFF" and specify values.

Let's say you are managing your weight. Your current weight is about 160lb and your target is 150. After a party or something, your weight goes up but has yet to exceed 165lb. On a day with no breakfast or lunch due to a heavy hang over, your weight may go down to 157lb in the evening.

In this case, I would set the Max and Min Value as 165lb and 145lb. With this setting, I get a line for the goal of 150lb, as well as the maximum limit of 165lb. You can see how close you are to your goal, or how close you are to your limit.

Give it a try. Turn off the auto settings, and you can have better views.

Good luck!

Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

The Number of Downloads of MyStats Exceeds 50,000 on September 1st.

It's taken about four months to happen.

I heard that there is an app which was downloaded 100,000 times on its very first release date. There should be many apps which have been downloaded over one million times. But at the same time, I heard that 99% of iPhone apps' download numbers don't exceed over 10,000.

It seems that, so far, MyStats is not doing so badly.

This past spring, we had no idea how many users would download MyStats and we had very uneasy feelings about it. Thinking back then, it feels like a dream.

I'd like to express my deep gratitude to everybody who supported us to come this far and also to our 50,000 users.

When I think that this many people are using MyStats, I feel so happy and also feel a very big responsibility.

We will continue to improve MyStats more and more for our 50,000 valuable users and also for another 50,000 or one million future users.

Please look forward to seeing MyStats evolve into something even better;-)

Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

I Just Quit Recording Body Fat Percentage

I just quit it:)

The reason is very simple. I noticed that I don't need it.

I had been measuring my body fat percentage with my scale at home. But it is very inaccurate. I don't think I gained or lost 4% of body fat in a day.

A couple of days ago, I just asked myself "Do I really need to record body fat percentage?"

What I actually want to manage is my waist size. As long as my waist size is in my target range, I don't care how heavy I am and what my body fat percentage is.

I started recording body fat percentage casually. I thought that it's very easy to record, because I can measure it by just stepping on the scale, and I thought it would help me to manage my waist size somehow. But my scale didn't give accurate numbers, and it was not useful at all.

- Body fat percentage is not the main focus for me.

- Recording body fat percentage is not troublesome, but it is.

- It's inaccurate.

So, thinking about these three reasons, do I really need to record body fat percentage? NO!

Then I quit recording.

Of course I'm not saying that "recording and analyzing body fat percentage is unnecessary in general".

I'm saying that I don't need to record body fat percentage because it's not that important to my actual goal.

The point is that you can quit recording something if you don't need it.

Don't you have some activities which you don't need, but you just keep recording it in your Activity Set anyway?

To be honest, it took me a whole two months to notice this fact.

What we want is "better results with less recordings". Stay aware that recording is not the purpose. Have a great life with MyStats;-)

Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

Case: HR Specialist

I interviewed a MyStats user who is an HR specialist working as a leader of HR and General Affair team in an enterprise.

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- Records 24 hours including “Sleep”.

- Activity Set has 13 activity masters.

They are divided into 5 categories such as, Work, Amusement, Exercise, etc.

He named his activities like, “Work–Meeting”, “Work–Simple Tasks”, and so on.

- Reviews the pie chart every night, and he says something like these to him self:

“Oh, only Simple Tasks is filling my day! I got to do something with my brain!” or

“I need more sleep, but I’m sleeping too much on Sunday…”

- Records “schedules” on purpose.

MyStats is designed for handling the things that happened and not the things that will happen, but he sometimes inputs things that will happen which are schedules. For example, something like a promise to himself, he would record “Study” into the next day; in order to make sure if it gets done. “However,” he said, “Since MyStats is a real easy-to-operate app, it is easy for me to change what I scheduled into something more amusing.

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In the morning of April 26th, he was thinking that he should start time management based on Peter Druckers’ method. He looked at Nikkei Industrial Newspaper and found an article about MyStats. He thought “This is it!” and downloaded MyStats.

At the beginning, he didn’t think that he could record the entire 24 hours, but since it is so easy to operate, he was quickly able to record his entire day, after all.

As he used MyStats everyday, his technique of recording schedules came naturally.

“The best part of MyStats is the easy-operation. I love this!”

That’s a great compliment!

Thank you so much for using and loving MyStats! We will continue to develop more and more features but we promise not to forget about the simplicity of operation!

Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

(Original article was written on July 13rd.)

Country List

So far, the number of the countries in which MyStats has been downloaded is 54. The following is the Top 30 countries.

1. Japan

2. United States

3. Australia

4. United Kingdom

5. Taiwan

6. Canada

7. Germany

8. Korea

9. Singapore

10. China

11. Hong Kong

12. Russia

13. Thailand

14. Sweden

15. France

16. Netherlands

17. Mexico

18. Czech Republic

19. India

20. Turkey

21. Philippines

22. Norway

23. New Zealand

24. Brazil

25. Italy

26. Kuwait

27. Saudi Arabia

28. South Africa

29. Slovakia

30. Malaysia

We are very glad to see so many different people in so many different countries using MyStats. I believe that all of us are together making the world better little by little.

Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)