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I wish I had been better about tracking my cannabis experiences at the start of the cannabis journey.
I didn’t know then what I know now; the full array of options and products, different strains with different aromas and chemical makeups. I barely understood the difference between indica and sativa, let alone chemotypes, terpenes, and the ways different consumption types are processed through the body. Nor did I realize how important tracking is to buying the right cannabis products.
It’s a lot for any new cannabis consumer to take on, and I was stumbling blindly. Once I had a better understanding of what types of products I liked, I was faced with finding products that consistently fit my requirements. Every cannabis consumer who has faced the unregulated market knows the frustrations of unpredictable results from unknown products. But the legal market has a different problem – an overwhelming number of products, all with vague general information that doesn’t speak to the individual experience.
And then I found Jointly.
Jointly: cannabis tracking & shopping
Jointly is an app that combines a digital cannabis tracker and an expansive cannabis shop all in one place. It allows you to easily track your cannabis use, record your experiences, and then use that data to find the best products for you.
Jointly makes it simple to track your cannabis consumption (an important habit for any conscious cannabis consumer) and to sort through the hundreds of products available to find the ones tailored to your desired experience.
Using Jointly
What I appreciated most about Jointly (besides the fact that it lives on my phone and didn’t require any additional brainpower from me) is the simple interface. The more complicated an app is, the less I’ll use it. Jointly has a sleek interface, with three buttons at the bottom of the screen allowing you to navigate between your profile and information, the tracker, and the shop.
I found the consumption tracker to be a through-provoking way to record an experience. What I like about it most is the way the app uses the information you share about products, combines it with thousands of other people’s experiences, and uses it to rank products in the shop on a scale of 0 – 100% for compatibility.
To track my smoking sessions, I enter an experience, which starts by selecting a goal.
You can pick just one, or select multiple goals. Some will be more applicable to you than others. I noticed that I’m more apt to reach for cannabis to help me relieve everyday stress, energize and uplift, or focus.
“The goals were derived from our community of consumers, our personal experiences, and published surveys and studies.” David Kooi, Co-Founder and CEO of Jointly told me. “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 are used to help you sort through products in the shop. Tell Jointly what you want to accomplish with a cannabis product, and they sort through the reports from thousands of cannabis consumers to tailor your results. Instead of endlessly scrolling through pages of options, the products ranked as the best fit for you are displayed front and center.
Jointly doesn’t limit your options (you can still scroll if you like variety) but the app makes it easier to choose products based on what you’re looking for, and what you’ve experienced in the past.
After I’ve selected my goal, I can select the product I used. Jointly has an expansive database of cannabis products from across the country to choose from, pulling from products in their shops and products users like me have entered. It’s not comprehensive, I usually had to add my flower strains and oil cartridges. But that’s easy to do – just enter the type, brand name, and snap a photo of it.
If it’s a smoking product, Jointly will ask how many puffs you’ve taken, something I haven’t seen before. Trying to record the exact dose of smokable products is tricky, but measuring by puff is a good way to simplify it. Select your method of consumption, and move on to the assessment.
Why track cannabis consumption?
Cannabis can elicit a wide variety of different reactions, and even a practiced stoner like myself can be caught off guard by a new product or an extra-strength bong hit. Tracking your experience is a good way to watch for patterns in what you like and don’t like, and gain an understanding of how your products are making you feel overall. Jointly provides an experience rating on a scale of 10, and I usually record positive experiences, but a few less-than-positive experiences have resulted in an overall rating of 8.5 for me.
After you’ve entered your product, Jointly takes you through a few short questions to gauge your experience. You’ll assess how well the product achieved your selected goals and rate the flavor and aroma. Jointly doesn’t have the capability to record terpenes (yet!) but your nose knows, so rating the aroma is a great way to start to familiarize yourself with terpenes via the aromas you like and dislike.
You can stop here, or take a deeper dive and answer a few more questions. To get a better understanding of how each product affects you, Jointly tracks 14 factors:
- The specific product
- The type of product
- Your ingestion method
- Your dose
- The time you wait between doses
- The time of day
- How hydrated you are
- How full you are
- Whether you exercise before, during, or after cannabis
- How much sleep you got last night
- The quality of your diet
- Whether you ate any companion foods
- Your environment/physical surroundings
- The people you are with
Jointly also asks about common side effects, including cottonmouth, paranoia, red eyes, munchies, drowsiness, and a few others. While I can usually breeze past this question, the days when I do have adverse side effects to consumption makes me glad to track them.
The most interesting question was on companion foods. Jointly asks if you’ve eaten one of 13 foods that may affect your experience. These foods can be high in fats in avocado or fish, high in terpenes like Green or Black Tea, or affect your body in other ways like a multivitamin. It never occurred to me to track what I ate before I smoked, and this question has made me more mindful of what I’m putting into my body and how it affects my experience.
The reflections are most helpful for your own understanding, but they also serve another purpose – feeding Jointly’s database of user experiences which is used to help you and thousands of others pick the products most likely to produce a good experience. The more you share of your experiences, the more tailored your shop selection is.
Understanding your endocannabinoid system to find better products
Jointly knows there is so much more that goes into a cannabis experience than just the strain names (which are inconsistent between growers and state markets) and the app was created to help people find success with cannabis.
“Cannabis is a complex plant that can be used for at least 12 different purposes.” Dave said, “There are thousands upon thousands of available products with different effects and performance characteristics, and at least 15 factors that can impact an individual’s experience.”
Independent of outside factors, nothing has a bigger impact on your cannabis experience than your endocannabinoid system (ECS). Your ECS is like your fingerprint – unique to you. But unlike your fingerprint, your ECS is not easy to see or understand. That’s why my reaction to an edible or a blunt is different from yours. This uncertainty can make finding the right cannabis routine feel like a frustrating exercise of trial and error.
Jointly wants to simplify that process. New consumers are often overwhelmed by the number of options and the various possibilities in a given experience. Data-driven recommendations can make it easier to understand your endocannabinoid system and select products with a higher chance of a positive experience.
“Through our platform for purposeful consumption, Jointly provides a framework that we hope frees people to discover how cannabis can make their lives better, informed by meaningful data and unencumbered by the stigma.” David said.
Shop products based on your preferences
The marketplace in the Jointly app is huge. My favorite part is that the recommendations are 100% authentically curated, based on my preferences and the feedback of other consumers. Brands are not allowed to pay to be recommended more often; my results are based on what Jointly believes will work best for me, not the highest bidding brand.
“The ethos that underlies all of Jointly is a desire to help people find success with cannabis – whatever success means for them personally,” said David.
If you see something you like, you can order it directly from the app. Not every product in Jointly’s database is available for shipping, but they have hundreds of products you can buy right then and there. If the product isn’t available through the app (yet!) you can create a saved products list to bring with you on your next dispensary trip. Jointly is available for download in the App Store, Google Play, and for use through the Jointly website.
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