How the Calm app slowly won me over
The Beginning
I’m sure you’ve used or at least heard about the Calm app for meditation. I had tried out various meditation apps like Headspace before Calm. When Calm came out I tried it out and it didn’t seem anything special. The Daily Calm was good but nothing that made me come back again and again.
The Breakthrough
Then I discovered sleep stories. They were an interesting novelty in the beginning but the stories were so boring that I didn’t give a second look.
My wife started liking the Daily calm before sleep and we started playing them daily before bed. As I started hearing them I got used to them and it felt like a good mental break.
Then one day I heard the story ‘Nordland Night Train’. It was very well produced and the narrator Erik Braa’s voice along with the gentle rattling sound of the train was a great wind down for sleep. It actually took me a few tries before I could get to the end of the story. Slowly I discovered a few more stories - Darjeeling Himalayan Railway by Bhavnisha Parmar, The Magic of Yurts by Candace Reardon - all of these stories started to grow on me. Slowly I started returning back to the app more and more.
The evolution
In the meantime they started adding more and more content. Started liking the daily trip with Jeff Warren. The Wisdom section also started having great gems. Now when I get up from sleep in the middle of the night, it is a reliable way to get me back to sleep.
The takeaway
I really liked the evolution of the app - how they started with minimum stuff and kept adding things that now the subscription seems valuable. It is a great lesson that any product developer can take. It is the slow way to success and if you care enough about a product, you can slowly iterate your way into adding enough value into it to make it successful.
And if you haven’t tried it already, I highly recommend trying it to both meditate and for helping you fall asleep. If you don’t meditate, learn why it is one of the best ways to improve your focus and attention.