Gyroscope Personal Records
Cat Noone
Cat is the co-founder and CEO of Iris, a modern-day emergency alert app. In addition, she has a young daughter, Emma, and a dog, Dexter—who keep her doubly busy. She spends the weekdays tackling her startup’s top priorities while balancing the demands of being a full-time mom. She spends the weekends reading books, watching TV, and exploring outside.
Cat has figured out how to both a focused mom and productive founder. It’s enabled her to do all of what she loves, while finding a proper balance.
Gyroscope: What self-tracking tools do you use?
Cat: I use RescueTime to track productivity and my Apple Watch to track my workouts. I integrate these with Gyroscope to propagate the bulk of that info into one centralized place.
Gyroscope: What’s been your main goal and what did you do to reach it?
Cat: Previous to becoming a mom, I was (and still am) a full-time founder. One of the things I feared the most was getting so far behind I couldn’t catch up. I didn’t know what to expect or how I’d be able to really track everything.
My main goal has been to ensure that my physical health and overall productivity are at 100%.
To that end, Gyroscope has helped me manage my 40 hour work-weeks by visualizing the things that either increase or take-away from my overall efficiency. The result? Extreme productivity.
Before, 40 hours of work was consumed by a large amount of diversions. I would spend what seemed like forever perusing social media or populating my GIF collection.
These days, you never know how the day will go with an infant, so I truly make the most of my time—which includes knowing when I can be most zoned-in and when it’s alright to slack off a bit. This, in turn, benefits my offline life.
Gyroscope: Are there tools that have help you be more productive?
Cat: I use the to-do list app Wunderlist religiously. It works wonderfully for both work and personal life. That’s where my list of any and everything that I need to accomplish goes.
Be it professional or personal, I like to remove as many processes as possible. I’ve found that the best technique is to take bits of advice from everywhere and hack it so that it fits your scenario best.
For me, it quickly had to become: “Okay, I have these things, they need to get done every day. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.” That made me more productive than I’ve ever been.
Gyroscope: How has it been sharing your cards? How have people reacted?
Cat: Everyone loves them! I think it’s always interesting to get a deeper dive into what people are really up to. It sparked something in a lot of people, too, which is what I wanted. I’m lucky to have several people who are more understanding of this, rather than finger-pointing, which makes the entire experience a lot more fun — even when I’m vulnerable sharing these personal insights.
I actually found that on days where I’m most productive and powering through to the fullest, I forget to share. Mainly because when I’m done, I’m zonked!
I had one not long ago, where I worked for 7 hours or so. The team and I were prepping for the launch of the Iris blog — lots of writing, proofing and chatting. On top of that, I was working on some biz and design stuff. It was all around super productive and a load of fun. What’s more, Emma was super chill and cooperative that day. I love days like that.
Gyroscope: Have your friends or work colleagues been inspired and changed their own behavior, now that they’ve seen your progress?
Cat: Once my husband Benedikt saw how I was using Gyroscope, he hopped on, too. We have a rowing machine and the workouts on the Apple Watch app translate beautifully. My next mission is to get my grandmother using it, so she can be more conscious of her health in some form.
Gyroscope: Do you have advice for people balancing a career with taking care of children or parents? What are some best practices to get everything done?
I think the biggest help for me was prioritizing my top 3 items for the day.
There’s a lot we all want to do, but there’s a few that must be crossed off on a given day.
With a baby, work and/or elderly parents, some days can be super difficult, especially if you don’t have extra help. You need something to keep you going even on days of really low productivity.
“Understand that 100% productivity is a misconception, so celebrate the small wins.”
To catch the next chapter of Cat’s story, you can follow her on Twitter. You can get the Gyroscope app for free from the App Store & set up the RescueTime integration to start being more productive!
