What timezone are you in? It was actually an unnecessary question.
To know one thing about Anand Sharma, the founder of the health data tracking and health improvement system Gyroscope, you must know for the past seven years a good part of his life has been open for everyone to witness including his timezone.
I was trying to schedule a chat with him to talk about the evolution of Gyroscope from a personal project into a full system to track and improve our lives. His timezone along with where he visited, when and where he last went for a run, as well as many other facets of his life are updated almost instantaneously on his website.
Unlike Sharma, I choose to keep my Gyroscope data private for only my friends. As we talk about, your Gyroscope sharing is fully under your control. I've been using the Gyroscope app on my phone since it was launched in 2015. The feedback of the data to help track my health and the continued improvement of their system has kept me a paying PRO user ever since.
Since it sits at the top of my list of recommendations of performance and wellbeing tools and technology, I was eager to speak to Sharma about the evolution of Gyroscope and how data and apps can help improve our health.
As a fellow entrepreneur, I was also interested in how he maintains his own wellbeing while balancing the demands of running and growing a business.
Since much of his life is available to the public, we also talk about his view on data privacy and the strong security around Gyroscope user's data.
You can listen to our conversation here, and I've included the full transcript below. I’ve also posted it on YouTube.
Interview Transcript
GLEN LUBBERT: Let's talk about living better with data. This is my favorite subject at the intersection of technology and wellbeing, and I couldn't think of a better person to speak with than Anand Sharma founder of the Gyrosco.pe app.
Thank you for taking some time with me Anand.
ANAND SHARMA: Yeah, thanks for having me Glen.
LUBBERT: We met a few years ago as we've talked about. It's gotta be some years ago now at a Quantified Self meetup conference where you presented what was called AprilZero, your personal project and now has become a really great app called Gyroscope. It's been so much fun to see the evolution of it over the years. I was curious how you described Gyroscope now.
SHARMA: Yeah, it's really changed a lot over the years. And it's cool that you've been using it since it started and came out. At first, it was just something I built for myself and it was a website. So one of the biggest changes was when we launched our app. And so now most people think of Gyroscope as this thing that lives on their phone and it does a lot of tracking.
The way we look at it, our main product isn't a website or an app that lives on your phone or a tracker, but really a better version of you, one that will live longer and feel better and be stronger. So that's really the end product that we're trying to create.
What I was trying to build first for myself and just make myself feel better, have more control of my health and now with other people.
Ideally what we want people to take away of what Gyroscope is this is the app that helped me lose 20 pounds or this is the app that I used to be happier every day and manage my mood or this is what helps me live longer.
So I think, we still have a little bit of ways to go to until that's really what the product really does and that's how everyone thinks about it. But that's what we aspire to.
But more concretely, we would right now describe it as a way to track your life. So that's something that a lot of us quantified self people are into. I think normal people are now just to getting very interested in tracking, whether they go out and buy an Apple Watch or a Fitbit, or were tracking things within apps and more digitally.
So we wanted to really streamline that process. I think everyone can kind of benefit from tracking, but it has to be really streamlined and smooth and something that fits into your life.
And then I think tracking is just the beginning. So the really cool part is once you have this stuff being tracked, how do you improve it? And that's where there's tons of room to create software and tools and new things to come out where, how do we help people improve their lives and their health.
Tracking and improving your life is our tagline of what Gyroscope does in one sentence.
LUBBERT: The exciting thing is you keep adding new features and functions to it. I see you're developing a new iPad app and the Apple Watch app keeps getting updated. I have my favorite feature of that is being able to input my mood right from my watch. I found myself, if I have a few moments like when I was waiting to get started with this call. Oh let me just see my mood right now and enter on my watch. It's super easy. And you have interesting features like the places where you go and the really nice, beautiful annual books that you publish. And I'm really curious how you prioritize and decide on which features you are going to create with Gyroscope.
SHARMA: We have a pretty small team so we have to be pretty focused and kind of just work on one thing at a time. So yeah, we're definitely try to pick the right things.
Well one of the obvious things is just like what's possible now, right? So as technologies evolve and new things come out that enables us to do new things that we might have wanted to do in the past, like the Apple Watch app for example. Now the Apple Watch is actually pretty good and apps can run on there. So we were able to do that now whereas two, three years ago that might've not been as practical. New data types like HRV and stuff coming out from the Apple Watch let’s us build new tools on top of that. Whereas a few years ago, that was an obscure thing that no one had access to.
So that's kind of part of it. And the other big determiner is what are tools that could help people be more healthy or track this data better.
Part of it is in inputting data and having enough of it to analyze. So that was sort of the impetus for Places and building our Apple Watch, like workout tracking and some of these other tracking features. If we think this is valuable data that helps us make the Health Score more accurate or helps us warn you if you're going to get sick and that's the core part of the product.
Then the other important thing is just having all this data sitting around in your hard drive is not at all beneficial. We have to really keep people aware of it, so being everywhere and easy to look up, whether it's on your wrist or in our Chrome extension, whenever you open your computer or on your phone. We need people to actually look at their Health Score and check it and make decisions based on it. So we're trying to be on all these platforms and support as many people as possible. That was sort of part of also the iPad app experience, which is a side project that we're working on.
The core of it is just making your data more accurate and more detailed and then finding new ways to change your behavior. So we keep making people more healthy and more aware of what they are doing.
LUBBERT: You're even sending a weekly email, I find that useful there. I'm like okay. I can see up or down from last week.
SHARMA: Yeah. It's interesting. You would think people would know this stuff because it's what you did this week, but it's really easy to just forget what happened or not really be aware of how things are changing. So I think that's like, you can't really understate how useful these tools can be and just constantly needing to be aware of them and check them.
I think you've experienced that and other people are like just doing it, and incorporating that into their lives.
LUBBERT: My partner, when I said I would interview you, asked about being able to enter sleep going back to more than two days. I was reading in an article, I think that one of the articles when I was preparing for this is that you said that you get so many ideas and requests that you wouldn't be able to... you can't even keep up. You said you'd need an army of developers with all the requests you have.
SHARMA: Yeah. There's definitely a lot of stuff that people want to, once they start, once you kind of start doing it, then it gets kind of addictive and people just want to track everything about their lives. There's some stuff that we're still not tracking yet, so that's like a common, common demand. But I think we have pretty good coverage now of the things that are really most important and impact your health are now all showing up in the app.
LUBBERT: Does it work completely on Android and on iOS, full featured?
SHARMA: Yeah, pretty much, at least on our end. I mean, I think there's, you know, certain devices are just better and higher quality. So the main one we recommend is the Apple Watch. But on Android people, a lot of our users use a Fitbit or a Garmin or an Oura ring and those also work well.
My top recommendation is if you're getting everything from scratch then an iPhone and an Apple Watch is gonna be what we use and what is gonna give the most data and the most proper Gyroscope experience. But at this point, yeah, anyone would just a computer or an Android phone or an iPhone, you can just install the app and, and get started. So that's gotten much easier over the years. But a lot of the more advanced features like analyzing your heart rate variability and warning you if you're going to get sick, that kind of requires certain devices and stuff that are mostly available on iOS right now.
LUBBERT: I've done a lot of research over the past few years on behavior science. I done a lot of work with Dr. BJ Fogg at Stanford for his behavior science work. I'm curious then how you view the data part to the actual behavior change, and how you're trying to think about marrying those two.
SHARMA: Yeah, I think they're both important. I mean, until now there's so much work in engineering and stuff just to get the data. So that's taken up a lot of our attention. And now that that's working pretty well for people at scale, we're spending more of our time on the behavior side of it and kind of creating more of these feedback loops.
I think, around human behavior and using data to improve that is something that we've started on and we have some good tools for and there's just many more years of work to keep improving that and building that better up until everyone's actually healthy.
LUBBERT: The one thing that I get when I talk about Gyroscope is about data metricizing of our lives. I think someone in the Guardian I read in an article recently seeing a neurologist saying how people who have trouble sleeping that it's making it harder for them to sleep when using sleep apps. So I'm curious about how you view data and app based health improvement. You and I have been in the data collection / quantified self space before this, which is more natural, easier. And then for others maybe something is not so that helpful. I'm not sure really how to reconcile that when I'm talking to somebody.
SHARMA: Yeah, I read that article too and I thought it was interesting. I mean I think the important thing here is there's a lot of nuance to it, right? And so just tracking it or having some basic experience may or may not right off fix things or could make things worse. It's not an easy problem to build the app properly on top of the data. I don't think just tracking the data is going to be a negative impact, especially if it's passive. You might as well be recording these things about yourself.
I think figuring out what's the right software to build and how do you create that right interface, that's the right balance of motivating but not like too demotivating if it's not good stats and stuff. That is full time, you know, that's a whole company that needs to be focused on that and improving that and that's what Gyroscope is.
I think for the most part people you should be spending an order or magnitude more time thinking and worrying about their health than they do. And so I think apps and things that get people to realize that are necessary, and I think there is going to be a little, some of this discomfort, as there's a big disconnect with how healthy people think they are, how well they think they're eating or sleeping. And then when you actually measure it, if it's very bad, there's no way to really sugarcoat that too much.
So that's something we've had a little bit of trouble with too when we added the health score and if it's like someone's just extremely unhealthy, how do you tell them that? There's a lot of psychology and nuance there. I don't think the solution is just to not do it and pretend that the problem isn't there. That's not a great option. So how do we do that better and more compassionately and more tailored to that person and how they see things.
One of the things we've been experimenting with is mixing people into the equation. Having an actual person to talk to you and do some of these things that are harder right now to automate with an algorithm where some of that nuance can get lost. I think in 10 years this will all be figured it out. But this is all like brand new stuff, right? So these are good discussions to have. I don't think that means we should just not try to improve health because it's a hard thing to do.
LUBBERT: Right. It's great to hear you ask how you build a compassionate tool. That's an interesting term to hear from someone who is engineering a data tool. How do you build compassion in the data?
SHARMA: Yeah, I think that's where the interesting challenges were. You have the data and the science and the medical part of it and those are the engineering and the product stuff and then the human stuff and all of these; it gets really messy when all of these things overlap and you have to bridge these different areas to actually create the right experience.
If it was just like a medical problem that a doctor could solve, then it would be much simpler. I think that part of it's kind of already figured out. Everyone knows, oh yeah, you need to eat more or eat better and walk more and exercise more and sleep properly. That I think isn't a big revelation. Actually incorporating that into people's lives is a lot more complicated. Right? So I think that's where that impacts people's behavior and if it's a habit that you don't have, how to change that. That's not always going to be comfortable.
LUBBERT: I think it's interesting that you're then wanting to incorporate actual humans into the puzzle. I remember reading about having an "X" program. Is that what it is about?
SHARMA: Yeah. That's something we've been working for about a year now. We haven't really announced it yet. I think it's still not quite ready, but we have a bunch of people who have been trying to get out and giving us feedback. And the early signs had been really good. That kind of came about because originally, we were just like, hey, we should just build an AI that tells people what to do and it's going to be great. And I think that's probably still a big part of what the future will be. But we realized a big part of that responsibilities is having humans and experts to look over this stuff before we actually start telling people what to do or eat or change their lives. So that was sort of how we ended up with that concept of having like expert guides and coaches in the app as part of Gyroscope X. But a big part of it is still very data driven and based on the trends we're seeing. If someone has a low health score, there's something really wrong with the stats right now, we can detect it, which is a good first step and warn you. But then how to actually make sure people change it and guide them through that. That's a really hard problem. So that's the interesting thing now that we're spending more of our time on and working on. And Gyroscope X is a big part of that solution.
LUBBERT: I think that the human element is interesting. I found it curious that at like DNA testing companies that their customer service people had to have a bit of a therapist mindset because they were having people call it and saying I'm seeing this data and it's not what I thought my life was all about. Now how do I deal with that? I could imagine that, like you said, if there's a disconnect between where they thought they were and what the health score said. That's kind of the same challenge there. So, jeez, now what do I do?
SHARMA: I think DNA stuff is interesting, especially around the disease risks and stuff that some of these services do. We don't really do any of that. I think the nice thing with Gyroscope is all these things are within your control and changeable. So if your stats for sleep or your body fat or something are bad then, it doesn't feel great, but you're also empowered to actually change it, which is really nice. With some of these other things where if it's like a genetic thing that you discover then you can't really quite change that. So that's really tricky.
I think the motivating part is the fact that you can now change these things and see them change in real time, even with one or two days of modifying your behavior. Seeing that these graphs aren't just a static reflection of you, but are totally manageable things that are like editable and controllable.
LUBBERT: I also wanted to ask you with all the data you’re collecting. One of the hot topics is around privacy. I mean, I know that you are, you're at The Archive co-living space right now. You were at Stonemill Matcha today and Ritual Coffee Roasters. Your last run was a five mile run. It looks like it was up to Twin Peaks.
SHARMA: Yeah.
LUBBERT: That's all the data I have on you just for today. How do you view privacy for yourself and then how do you view it for the Gyroscope users of the app?
SHARMA: I think first of all, there's difference between security and privacy. So we keep everyone's data very secure, and I think that's really important. But I think everyone has a right to choose how private they want things to be, which could be just extremely private and no one else should be able to see this stuff, which is our default. A lot of the power of this data comes from sharing it with people and being social with it and communicated to people that you love or the world or whatever. That's also an important behavior that we want to encourage or allow at least if you're interested in doing that. Because again, if you're just storing the stuff on your hard drive, no one can access it, even you. Then that's the most secure private version. But it also has no impact on your life. I don't think that's the right way to do it. That's what a lot of people just default to, especially in the medical world where everything has to be totally locked down just by law.
That's kind of a shame because then you're really losing out on a lot of impact and the visibility of these things where even something simple like just being able to see it on your iPad and on your watch and your computer are powerful.
We just added blood level tracking, which only you can see your own. I was just able to see my graph and my cholesterol. I saw that it was actually going up and that was like eyeopening because before that was actually available, I had no idea what was actually happening even though I had all this stuff flying around like in a secure pdf that was sent to me by somewhere.
So I think having things available at least to yourself is an important layer of privacy. You don't want things to be so private that you can't even access it yourself, first of all.
I've also been experimenting with making all my stuff public, which I don't think everyone should do or wants to do, but it's really interesting. I don't think it is as bad or scary as people might make it out to believe. It's one of those things you kind of have to try and see for yourself.
Most of my data now is public and, I'm okay with that and I want to sort of aspire to live my life where you could look at what I did yesterday and I'd be like proud of it or happy with it and not have something to hide.
If you're like a celebrity or our President or a public official or something there is no privacy already. Everyone will know everything you do and if it's bad, then that will get out.
I think there's sort of this illusion that you can do things privately, but that's not really even that much true, unless just nobody cares.
When I'm out on the street or at a restaurant like you mentioned or going running on Twin peaks, especially in SF, where it's such a small world. There's a chance that I'll run into someone that I know anyways. So it's really interesting. I think again, it's a really nuanced, interesting space and it's not a black or white answer, but I think it needs to be done properly in a way that fits in with people's lives.
At Gyroscope our approach here is different than a lot of companies and what the sort of “status quo is around health data”. I put that in quotes. You can't see that I'm doing that. There's certain stuff that's considered health and certain stuff is your life, but I think all of it sort of really fits together and there's not as hard of a line as people kind of think between your cholesterol levels and where I went today for my Monto or my run. Our thing is all of these are actually the same and interconnected.
A lot of our users enjoy adding people as friends, so at that's a really powerful thing.
So being able to choose which of your friends can see which of your stuff is a very natural thing that people expect to be able to do. So that's one of the things we really try to encourage and allow and make it easy.
One of the things we've figured out is having different levels of control for different types of data. So there's certain things that are more sensitive, like maybe your weight or like what apps you're using. You don't want people to see your location is an obvious one. So we make that really easy to hide with one click from everyone while still competing on let's say your running or your steps.
That's kind of our approach on privacy. We want things to be private enough where you feel totally safe but potentially sharing things and competing is where a lot of the actual health benefits will come from. So I don't think people should take the approach where it's just has to be locked down and it can't be shared because then you're leaving a lot of health improvements and powerful features off the table.
Adding photos to your data and sharing them helps with the accountability to drive behavior.
LUBBERT: Yeah, I agree. The accountability is a great way to motivate behavior change, and I love the competition tool you have in there so you can compete against someone. My partner and I often do that and it definitely is a motivator. I'm like, when did you go for that run that you got extra steps in that I didn't know about. And I liked that the competition is more than just going into your steps. There's the mindset piece of meditation and your nutrition and your sleep in there. They can all be used to help with your score.
SHARMA: Yeah. Yeah. That's a big part. We trying to encourage that people kind of think of being healthy is not just like who ran the most marathons, but other parts too, like your sleep and your meditation and stuff and balancing those.
LUBBERT: Circling back to the experiment of your own privacy and what have you learned from having that public? Is there anything that's been something that's given you pause?
SHARMA: It's been seven years now that I don't really even think about it. It just seems normal. And I imagine in the future... you know, so many people will just post everything they do on Instagram now or something. I think it is a very common human behavior, and people don't necessarily just think of it in terms of data.
Anytime you go out on the street in public, that's not private anymore and people know that that's where you are. I think for the most part it's been all positive. I haven't really had any negative experiences from that. There's been a lot of interesting serendipity kind of things where people see that I'm in a place or that I went and did something the other day and bring it up.
So I think sharing the stuff more freely and being more open and vulnerable with things, especially with your friends and people you care about, but even with strangers, for the most part, that's just had like a very positive influence in my life.
There's been people that I met, they're now close friends of mine who were just strangers who looked on the website and emailed me and were like, hey, you're nearby, let's get coffee. Or, um, hey, I saw you went on a run, do you want to go running tomorrow? And stuff like that, you know, being more open and less secret about things I think in general is good for the world and a good forcing function to live your life more deliberately and in a way that is worth putting in a book or on the website or something.
LUBBERT: Yeah. The serendipity. You can't really plan for that. That's great.
The other question I wanted to ask you about is the biggest challenge you see in health app development space. It's a competitive space. And I'm curious how you view your spot in it and the challenges you have in the space.
SHARMA: Yeah, there's a bunch of companies and other apps trying to do stuff. The health space has been around for long time before phones and stuff. I don't really worry much about competitors or other apps. I don't think there's that much of those. I think our biggest challenge is just against human nature. That's what all these other apps also struggle with. It's not easy. Where it's like almost every other company is pushing you to be unhealthy and not do that. Right? So I think there's a few small health apps that are sort of trying to compete against that, but it's not easy.
You just have years of habits, all of social pressure to like do things that are generally not as healthy, whether it's just not exercising or eating unhealthy foods and culture, you know, going to bars and drinking and stuff. Almost everything is the opposite of what a health app would tell you to do. So just for one app on your phone to like try to fight all of that is not easy.
We get a big spike of traffic on January 1st or you know, these times a year is when people are like really motivated to get healthy. But that quickly drops off, which, you know, is not just unique to us, but the whole industry and gym work out apps and stuff. Right? So I think that's kind of a lot of the tricky things and challenges that everyone has of how do you actually keep people motivated longterm once the excitement wears off? How do you really get across the magnitude of these health risks? If you don't manage them, what will actually happen. Those are a lot of things that I think we and everyone else sorta runs into right now. And I think whoever can sort of solve that first will just be very big company. But none of our competitors have really done that either.
So I'm less worried about that, and I'm more worried about just like... I think our biggest competitors are like Netflix and donuts and all these other things that are a lot easier to consume and get addicted to. Whereas no one's addicted to checking their Gyroscope. Oh, maybe they are, but it's a lot less likely to happen where you're addicted to working out or checking your Gyroscope reports and improving them. It's not that exciting of a human thing to do.
We're trying to make it more compelling and feel more like a video game or something that's fun rather than like work. We've even renamed workouts to play in the app and stuff. So I think there's a bunch of small things here that will eventually add up and start to solve these problems and change people's behavior. That's definitely the hard part.
Now with Gyroscope X, part of that is telling people what to eat to improve their diet and stuff. So that's, as you can imagine, often hard to do and you know, very easy to just fall off with that. So how to get that to happen and find balance in people's lives is just an ongoing challenge that we’re always going to be working on trying to do better.
LUBBERT: I think the interface, what you were saying before when you talked about trying to get that the interface between being useful and being motivating and have that compassion there and the novelty to come back. That's just a mix of challenges that you're continuing to have to address.
SHARMA: Yeah. One day, maybe in like a hundred years there will be like a brain implant version of Gyroscope where we can actually just get people to do things. But until then, you have to actually look at an app and that has to be how, you know, that's like the only interface into it. So that's a very weak connection and very unreliable way to get people to do things. So that's really our biggest challenge of how to overcome that.
LUBBERT: As an entrepreneur myself. I've spent almost my whole career as an entrepreneur and I know that to manage my wellbeing is super important to perform at my best. I know that when I haven't been managing it well, I haven't been the best for my team and it's easy to get neglected with all the work is involved with the job.
SHARMA: Yeah.
LUBBERT: How do you balance for yourself as an entrepreneur the demands of your wellbeing and getting your job done?
SHARMA: Yeah, it's hard. I wouldn't say I've figured it out. I think I've definitely gotten a lot better at it over the years. And then Gyroscope been a really useful tool for that. But you know, a lot of that's like just habits. So over time as you start to change those, those like help. But, yeah, especially when things are kind of stressful or there's a lot of stuff going it's really easy to not prioritize your workouts or your health.
One of the things that has been cool is we have a remote team now and everyone has the flexibility to work from where they want. So I found it really nice to be able to walk around more and go to coffee shops and just have that sort of freedom or be able to go for a workout when I need to.
So that's been, that's been good. And kind of a net default pause, like at least getting in 5,000 steps each day, just kinda walking to work and around and stuff. So like making these things a core party schedule.
I've been meditating and stuff like that more lately, especially now that our watch app tracks that. I think that's one of those things where I know it's really great and when I do it I'm like, yeah, this is good! I should do it more. And then it's really easy to go a week or a month without actually doing that. So that's something I'm trying to fix both for myself and all our users. It's just hard to keep that top of mind when there's more urgent stuff going on.
You know, the health score and stuff like that, it's actually been really useful too because you see where the balance is. That was part of the impetus behind this like continuous monitoring stuff.
I used to find often whenever we would do a big release, I would just get sick the next week cause there's that one week of not sleeping enough and go too hard, but just always sort of put me over the edge. That was a measurable thing that after tracking for awhile, I just realize, hey, this always happens. How do we stop that?
So now I still get sick once in a while, but I sort of don't push those limits as much now that there's actually a way to see that's happening and being more aware of that. So I get close to that and the immune system score goes down that I know, okay, I just need to sleep for a few days right now. So taking that a bit more seriously and having those tools to push limits without going over. It's been really good.
Then having friends and a support network and stuff like that too. I think a lot of this is mental stuff, especially like running a company and the stresses of that. So having other friends to talk to or doing some more things. I'm in this forum group where we discuss a lot of this stuff like every month, which has been really good.
A kind of a combination of that to try to stay sane and healthy. I think managing your health and stuff is an important part of the job. Otherwise you're not actually going to be productive or creative or think well. I see like running and working out as important part as like sitting on your computer and coding or something. So all sort of part of the same process.
LUBBERT: That's really great. There's just as much importance to being healthy as it is to being on your computer coding. Just not to prioritize one too much over the other.
SHARMA: I mean like most of my ideas come when I'm in the shower or running or something. It's like a balance there. We tried to encourage that more with a company dashboard and stuff.
One interesting thing here is like, well what if everyone in your company was perfectly healthy and working out and stuff? How much better off would you be? I think most companies aren't quite there yet. But that's something to strive for. That's something that we're trying to do internally better as well as well as help other companies like manage that.
LUBBERT: When I had my team at my company, one of the challenges I would was even if I can show up 100%, I'm managing a team of 50 people any one of them is going to have their own challenges that's coming into play. You gotta be able to manage all those people too as well and they were health. That's a complex dynamic and it was really one of the biggest challenge, I think I had with running my company.
SHARMA: What were some ways that you like try to handle that? I guess some places give gym memberships and stuff. Did you do anything like that or find anything useful?
LUBBERT: Yeah. Those types of things and talking about being more healthy and different programs. I think modeling well. What I'm doing, going on a meditation retreat, these types of programs. I wouldn't say I was wildly successful, and I think that's part of the reasons I've spent so much time since then researching behavior design. How can I not only build a good company but also one where I can raise the level of performance of everybody else in the company too as well from that standpoint.
SHARMA: Yeah. That makes sense. And I think as a leader it's what you do also impacts everyone else and they kind of model that.
LUBBERT: I was curious if you think as you're running a health app, you feel pressure to be a model health person.
SHARMA: Not that much. [Laughs] Anyone who's hung out with me will know I'm not always eating the healthiest food. You know, I think it is important, if our product actually works, I should be quite healthy. Otherwise, what are we doing? So I think there's, yeah, there's a bit of that.
I'm trying to experiment more and see two or three years ahead of what should everyone be doing. And like, does this thing work or not? Or is it over hyped? And kind of those decisions now let you know, trickled down to like millions of people a few years down the line. So it's a lot of responsibility. It's interesting.
I think there's a lot of undiscovered, unfigured out stuff people are doing not quite correctly. So it's exciting to be able to improve that both in my own life and then other people's.
LUBBERT: When you're talking about social aspects of living, which is so undervalue in our wellbeing. And you're out talking to those people about this. What do you tell them to get them to be interested in checking out Gyroscope?
SHARMA: It depends. I mean, I think some people sort of gravitate towards this kind of stuff and are excited to get access and use it and then other people maybe aren't quite ready for it or not quite interested.
I found certain things just get people a lot more excited. Like, we have this book [printed annual report of all your data]. And whenever someone looks through that, they're like, oh, cool, how do I get this? Like this stuff. So I think part of it's showing these end results that are exciting that everyone wants, whether it's a map of what you did and more social stuff or like health related things. Almost everyone here, I know here is starting to get an Oura ring and measured their sleep and track that more.
I think that's changing a lot where people who were like, I don't care about tracking a couple of years ago now they're like, oh, how much am I, how much am I sleeping? How do I see that? And that's starting to catch on. So as people do that more, I think they want ways to do that for all of their lives rather than just one or two segments.
LUBBERT: I think when someone gets on Apple Watch, that's the first thing I tell them. I'm like, if you want to get the most out of this Apple Watch you should download this app.
SHARMA: A lot of this is device drive too. When someone gets an Apple Watch or an Oura ring or something and then now it's like an obvious thing that this is how you use it properly.
LUBBERT: Well that's great. I thank you for spending time with me today. This sounds like a good place to wrap up. I just wanted to ask if you can tell a little bit about how people find out more about the Gyroscope and follow you.
SHARMA: Yeah, absolutely. So everything about us is on the website, http://gyroscope.pe. And then you can also do a search for us in the app store. That's probably the easiest way to just try it out. Get started. So it's just spelled g y r o s c o p e and we're in the app store and on the play store. So those are both kind of the quickest ways to just get the app and you can get set up within less than a minute and start to see your stats. So I think that's just like the easiest way for anyone to just start trying these things out and see how it fits into your life.
LUBBERT: And then you're active on Twitter too as well?
SHARMA: Yeah. And then we have a Twitter account, @gyroscope_app, and then I'm @AprilZero on Twitter, so that's just spelled out, AprilZero.
LUBBERT: Awesome. Thank you so much again, Anand. I really appreciate it.
SHARMA: Well, thank you, Glen. Have a good day.
LUBBERT: You too.