What Odyssey does
The whole list, stated plainly, including the parts that are easy to overstate and the things it deliberately will not do. If you want the argument for coaching rather than the inventory, the category is explained separately.
The coaching
Frameworks a working coach would recognize
Odyssey runs established coaching methods rather than a chat that improvises. These are the conversational structures underneath a session.
GROW
Goal, reality, options, will.
OSCAR
Outcome, situation, choices, actions, review.
Appreciative Inquiry
Used specifically when someone is demoralised, so the session starts from what is already working rather than from what is broken.
Belief reframing
Your coach names a belief that is holding the goal still, challenges it, and helps you build a replacement in your own words. That sentence is saved to the goal and referred back to later, which is the part that separates it from anything that argues with you once and forgets.
Obstacles drafted before they arrive
A plan is written against the things likely to derail it rather than in spite of them, so the week it gets hard is a week you have already thought about.
Commitments that shrink
A commitment that keeps failing comes back smaller rather than repeated at you. This is the opposite of what most tracking software does, and it is deliberate.
A second coach's read
You can ask one of the other four coaches for their take on the same situation. They answer the first coach by name rather than starting over. This one is on the higher plan.
A session
Five stages, start to finish
Every session has a shape, which is what stops a coaching conversation becoming a chat that wanders.
- 01Check in
- 02Agree an agenda
- 03Do the work
- 04Land a commitment
- 05Close
The follow-through
Nine kinds of message, on a rhythm you set
Your coach reaches out rather than waiting to be opened. What arrives is written in advance out of your own plan, and when it arrives is a schedule you choose.
Check-in
At times the user sets. Daily, twice daily, three times daily, every other day, or weekly.
Evening reflection
Paired with the check-in, on the same rhythm.
Coach message
The coach's actual sentence on the lock screen, not a notice that a message exists.
What now
Twice a day, 9am and 7pm. The ranked suggestion and the reason for it.
Commitment due
At the time of a promise the user made.
Plan cue
When a plan item's cue arrives.
Streak at risk
Immediate.
Milestone approaching
Immediate.
Weekly review
Weekly, at the cue time the user set.
Check-ins
Fifteen seconds, on your cadence
Two scales, and your coach responds to what you entered rather than filing it.
- Mood: Rough, Low, Okay, Good, Amazing.
- Energy: Drained, Low, Moderate, Good, Charged.
- Cadence: Three times a day, Twice a day, Daily, Every other day, Weekly. You pick at the start and change it whenever.
Progress
What the app keeps hold of
Enough to make the weekly review real, and no scoreboard you have to defend.
Milestones
The four or five step spine of a goal. By the coach, when the goal is created., and you tick them off. This is how a goal too big to start becomes something with a first step.
Mood and energy over time
The check-in scores, charted over time. It feeds the weekly review, which is what makes the review about your actual weeks rather than a form.
A streak, with room to miss a day
Consecutive active days. Two, refilling weekly. A missed day does not necessarily break it. It is there if you like it and it is not the point of the product.
The weekly review
The one part where you do the thinking
Five minutes. Everywhere else your coach asks and you answer; here you answer three questions and your coach reads the week back to you.
Your numbers come first, so the questions are answered against something real rather than from memory: streak, milestones, check-ins, mood. Then:
- What went well
- What got in the way
- One focus for the coming week
Your coach reads the week back between the second question and the third, which is the point at which a pattern across three weeks becomes visible in a way it never is while you are living them. The three questions work on paper too, if you would rather try them before installing anything.
The limits
What it does not do
Worth being straight about, because a feature list that only goes one way is not information.
It is coaching, and coaching has a boundary
It works on goals you are trying to move. A season that calls for clinical care calls for a licensed professional instead, and a good coach says so rather than improvising. Where the boundary sits is worth knowing before choosing either. 18+.
It is not watching you
The messages are scheduled on your device, written in advance out of your plan. Your coach reaches out on the rhythm you set, with things it wrote earlier. Nothing here is watching, and nothing responds to a quiet week by itself.
Voice is not included
It is coming and it does not ship today, on either plan. What each plan includes is listed in full, and the App Store carries the current number.
It cannot supply the wanting
Every part of this assumes you arrive with something you are trying to do. The app can sharpen a goal, schedule it, and come back to it. It cannot pick one for you.
Start with the coach, not the feature list
Choosing who you want to think with is the part that matters, and it takes about a minute.