Reflecting on the Start of My Cannabis Journey and the Importance of Tracking
Looking back, I wish I had been more diligent about keeping track of my cannabis experiences when I first started. At that time, I didn’t fully grasp the variety of options and products, the diverse strains with their unique aromas and chemical compositions. Understanding the differences between indica and sativa strains was a challenge on its own, let alone comprehending concepts like chemotypes, terpenes, and how various consumption methods affect the body. I also didn’t realize the crucial role that tracking plays in making informed decisions when purchasing cannabis products.
Navigating the realm of cannabis can be overwhelming for any newcomer, and I found myself stumbling through the process. As my understanding grew about the types of products that suited my preferences, a new challenge arose – consistently finding products that aligned with my needs. Anyone who has ventured into the unregulated cannabis market understands the frustration of uncertain outcomes from unfamiliar products. On the other hand, the legal market presents a different issue – an abundance of products, each with vague general information that fails to address individual experiences.
Discovering Jointly: A Comprehensive Solution
Enter Jointly, an app that seamlessly integrates a digital cannabis tracker with an extensive cannabis marketplace. This innovative platform allows users to effortlessly monitor their cannabis usage, document their encounters, and leverage this data to discover the most suitable products.
Jointly simplifies the process of monitoring cannabis consumption, a practice that holds significant value for conscious cannabis users. Moreover, it offers a way to navigate through the multitude of products available, ensuring that individuals can find options tailored to their desired cannabis experience.
Using Jointly: Streamlined and Intuitive
What stood out to me the most about Jointly (aside from the fact that it resides on my phone and doesn’t demand extra mental effort) is its user-friendly interface. The simpler an app, the more likely I am to use it consistently. Jointly boasts an elegant interface featuring three buttons at the bottom of the screen, allowing easy navigation between profile information, the tracker, and the shop.
The consumption tracker within the app provided an engaging method for recording my experiences. What I found most appealing was how the app combines the information I share about products with the experiences of thousands of others to rank products in the shop on a compatibility scale of 0 to 100%.
Using the app to track my smoking sessions involved entering an experience, which kicks off by selecting a goal. Jointly offers 12 goals that users can choose from, adding a sense of purpose to the cannabis experience. You can opt for one goal or select multiple ones that resonate with you. Personally, I often find myself gravitating towards cannabis to alleviate daily stress, boost my energy, or enhance focus.
David Kooi, Co-Founder and CEO of Jointly, shared with me, “The goals were derived from our community of consumers, our personal experiences, and published surveys and studies. They’ve evolved quite a bit over the years, and we’ll always be looking to improve them based on feedback and the latest data.”
These same goals play a pivotal role in helping you browse through products in the shop. By informing Jointly of your desired outcomes with a cannabis product, the app sifts through extensive reports from numerous cannabis consumers to tailor your results. Rather than endlessly scrolling through a sea of options, the app presents you with products that are ranked as the best match for your preferences.
Jointly doesn’t limit your choices (you can still explore if you’re into variety), but it certainly simplifies the selection process based on your needs and past experiences.
Once I’ve chosen my goal, I proceed to select the specific product I used. Jointly boasts an extensive database of cannabis products from across the country, drawing from their own shops and the entries of users like me. While it might not cover everything, adding my flower strains and oil cartridges was a breeze – just input the type, brand name, and snap a quick photo.
For smoking products, Jointly even asks how many puffs you’ve taken, a feature I hadn’t come across before. Accurately measuring the dosage of smokable products can be challenging, but assessing by puff count simplifies the process. After indicating your method of consumption, it’s time to move on to the assessment.
Why Should You Track Cannabis Consumption?
The effects of cannabis can be diverse and surprising, even for experienced users. New products or stronger hits can catch us off guard. That’s why tracking your experiences is valuable. It helps you spot patterns, understand your preferences, and gain insight into how different products impact you. Jointly, with its 10-point experience rating system, offers a tool for this. My ratings mostly lean positive, but a couple of less enjoyable experiences balanced out to an overall score of 8.5 for me.
Once you’ve added the product to the app, Jointly guides you through brief questions to capture your experience. You evaluate how well the product aligns with your chosen goals and rate its flavor and aroma. While Jointly can’t capture terpenes yet, rating the aroma aids in familiarizing yourself with terpenes based on your preferences.
You can stop here or dig deeper by answering more questions. Jointly tracks 14 factors to help you understand how each product affects you:
- Specific product
- Product type
- Ingestion method
- Dosage
- Time between doses
- Time of day
- Hydration level
- Fullness
- Exercise before, during, or after consumption
- Sleep duration
- Diet quality
- Companion foods consumed
- Environment / setting
- Company
Jointly even inquires about common side effects like dry mouth, paranoia, red eyes, munchies, and drowsiness. While it’s easy to breeze past this question, days when adverse effects occur make tracking them worthwhile.
A particularly intriguing question revolves around companion foods. Jointly asks if you’ve consumed any of 13 foods that could influence your experience. These foods might be high in fats (like avocado or fish), terpenes (like Green or Black Tea), or have other effects (like a multivitamin). This query nudged me to be more mindful of what I eat before using cannabis and how it shapes my experience.
The reflections primarily benefit your personal understanding, but they also serve another purpose: enriching Jointly’s database of user experiences. This data helps you and countless others discover products that are likely to offer positive experiences. The more you share, the more personalized your shop selection becomes.
Understanding Your Endocannabinoid System for Better Product Choices
Jointly recognizes that a cannabis experience is much more than just strain names, which can vary between growers and state markets. The app was designed to guide people toward successful cannabis use.
Dave, from Jointly, emphasized, “Cannabis is a complex plant serving at least 12 different purposes. With thousands of products and various effects, along with at least 15 factors impacting experiences, there’s much to consider.”
Amid external influences, your endocannabinoid system (ECS) stands as the key player in your cannabis experience. Just like your unique fingerprint, your ECS is one-of-a-kind. However, it’s not easy to observe or comprehend. Hence, my reaction to an edible or a blunt differs from yours. This unpredictability can make finding the right cannabis routine feel like a frustrating trial-and-error journey.
Jointly aims to simplify this process. For newcomers, the abundance of options and potential experiences can be overwhelming. Using data-driven recommendations, Jointly streamlines understanding your ECS and assists in selecting products that enhance the likelihood of positive outcomes.
David explained, “Through our purposeful consumption platform, Jointly offers a framework that empowers people to explore how cannabis can improve their lives. This is fueled by meaningful data and uninhibited by stigma.”
Personalized Shopping Based on Your Preferences
The Jointly app’s marketplace is extensive. What I love most is that recommendations are genuinely tailored to me, incorporating my preferences and feedback from other users. Brands can’t pay to get higher visibility; my results are shaped by Jointly’s belief in what will suit me best, not by the highest bidder.
“The core principle driving Jointly is the desire to assist individuals in achieving their version of success with cannabis,” David emphasized.
If you find something you’re interested in, you can make a direct purchase through the app. While not all products in Jointly’s database can be shipped, there’s a wide selection of products available for immediate purchase. If a product isn’t currently accessible through the app (but might be in the future), you can create a list of saved products to reference during your next visit to a dispensary. Jointly can be downloaded from the App Store, Google Play, or accessed via the Jointly website.
