Zoom out and take a holistic approach on our product. Improve our awareness of what constitutes a well-functioning product, and to which extent our product is it. Inform where we prioritize our efforts in the upcoming weeks and months.
Avoid spending time on building and maintaining features which are not being used.
A virtuous cycle is anything that will make the product more valuable, or its disappearance more painful, the more a user engages with it.
Think of how Spotify gains value for you the more it knows about your taste. Likewise, think of how painful it would be to lose all your contacts, or all the appointments in your calendar, or all the recipes you’ve saved on a cooking app.
The former is an example of products accruing benefits (becoming better the more you use them). The latter are examples of mounting losses (the impact of the product becoming unavailable becoming more painful).