Show HN: My one month side-project, Lucid Tracker: a daily life tracking tool
lucidtracker.com
lucidtracker.com
I've been using a paper-and-pen-based life tracking system for some time and have benefited a lot from it, so I decided to take some time and build it into a web app that others can use too.
Life tracking, for those of you not familiar with it, is the process of tracking things going on in your life for both analysis and improvement. For example, each day I track things related to my health such as whether or not I exercised or ran, what I ate for each meal, and whether or not I stretched at some point during the day. I also track things related to the products I'm working on such as marketing activities, a summary of what I accomplished that day and what my objectives are tomorrow.
Unlike most other life tracking tools, this system is meant to be used once at the end of each day and should take no more than a few minutes to complete. Not only do you benefit from the analysis of your daily reports, but you also benefit just by making them because it forces you to be accountable for what you're doing each day. I highly recommend trying it, if only for a week or two to see whether or not it helps in your life.
My goal from the start was to build and launch this in four weeks of nights and weekends effort; today is exactly four weeks so I'm launching despite one or two rough edges. I'm very open to feedback so if there's anything you'd like me to add or change just let me know.
Thanks for checking it out. -- Matt
Stats and analysis are far less important for me than the act of tracking. Knowing that I'm accountable for my decisions makes me much more likely to make positive choices. For example, I've been trying to cut back on coffee. Knowing that I drink 1.2 or 0.8 coffees per day has far less of an impact on me than knowing that at the end of the day I'm going to have to go in and check "Yes" next to my coffee item. It sounds ridiculous, but it works.
Sebastian Marshall has written extensively about life tracking, which is how I originally got into it. His What Gets Measured Gets Managed post is an excellent primer:
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/what-gets-measured-gets-man...
I found a very similar effect when I started taking pictures of everything I ate and drank for a few weeks. My intention was to eventually write an iPhone app specifically for taking these pictures and tagging them with food items, having the phone tabulate overal nutrition information ,etc.
Turns out I never ended up having time to write that app, but what I noticed was that the simple act of taking the pictures (without ever reviewing them) was enough to force me to stop and think about what I was about to eat, and that was enough to affect a change in my diet.
The blurb from their website, and yes, it is a really useful app once you commit to actually taking the pictures:
>>Want to take real steps to improve your eating habits? Use The Eatery to snap photos of your food. We’ll give you something much more helpful than calorie counts. We’ll provide a big-picture breakdown of your habits, including your strengths, weaknesses, and the best places to start making a change. Other apps tell you about your food. We tell you about yourself.
I was doing this via a Google Form + iftt. Would be happy to show you my system and some of the things I learned. Drop me a line? Allen@Acceleprise.vc
PS Just signed up!
That being said, several folks have mentioned this so it's a possibility down the road, maybe.
I'm not looking at my computer in the evenings, and I don't want to. Computers these days are for work. If I'm on the internet in leisure time, ~80% of the time it's on a phone. A phone app is perfect for this. A website that I have to remember about, then visit, then wait for it to load, then scroll around, is way too much overhead for me to consistently do it. That's why I abandoned the solution I had using google docs forms.
2 yrs of learning: the problem to solve here is not a slightly better tool to track, but a way to track the metrics without any effort. If it requires them logging data, you'll have a straight downward usage chart.
They get super excited at the beginning to be a better person, then 2 months later fall into old habits and abandon the site.
Simple fact is we need hardware tech to monitor things transparently and without effort.
If you have any more questions let me know, I have lots of data to back this up.
Also agree that there is going to be downward usage, though I suspect that if you look at most apps usage will decrease over time. As developers, it is our challenge to discover and address the causes of the churn as best as we can, but understand that it's natural and unavoidable. Over the long run, everyone cancels.
I disagree. I believe if whats state above is the nature of your market/customers then you are in the wrong market.
SaaS products require a healthy customer retention rate to be successful.
The analogy in our case is often the gym. At a gym:
a) 70% try it out for a month or two then cancel,
b) 25% keep paying but rarely show up,
c) 5% of customers pay and visit frequently (regulars)
A business in that situation has to either make a ton of money form each customer OR have enough new (paying) customers signing up frequently to fill both B and A - to survive.
Attempting to minimize the effects of a market with an inherently high churn rate is costly and usually not worth the effort.
That's your problem right thar'. Data input is tedious. Eventually (most) users stop doing it and everything breaks down.
Solve this problem, and this would be a very compelling service. Until then its sort of a "great in theory, doesn't work in practice" type of tool (for most people).
Or make a "homepage" view that I can set to my new tab screen. Each time I open a new tab I can one and only one question with dead simple entry. If there are no questions to answer, I get some stats or something.
I saw the little image with the form fields and I thought, great! Forms to fill out!
And I say this as someone who has kept spread sheets, paper ledgers, you name it.
Being a good developer and being a good designer doesn't always go hand in hand. Your project is a one month side-project. Not only does it work well, but it looks great as well.
May I ask how you did manage the design part of your project ?
Thanks -- vhf (my side projects were ugly as hell till bootstrap came, and by now I'm tired of its look. How dare you come with a one month side-project not only usable but also good-looking ! ;) )
For example, I'd recommend not using Twitter Bootstrap until you're comfortable doing it all the hard way. It will take time when you start, but over the long run you'll be in a much better position if you know your CSS and know how to make it all look good.
On the latter point, create a favorites folder called "Well Designed" and save pages to it that appeal to you. Take a few seconds and ask yourself what about it makes it look good. Inspect elements using your browser's built in inspection tools and see what the developer did to make it look that way. Then try to do it yourself and repeat.
Maybe you could also look into embedding the form directly in the email. I know it can be done, as I've gotten emails from Google adWords after browsing their help pages. They contained a full blown form for me to fill out.
My one feature request: It'd be nice to record a time along with either yes/no, or open ended answers. For example, I'd like to track whether or not I did something, and add a timestamp along with it, maybe rounded to the nearest 15 minutes.
P.S. Typo on FAQs: 'desgned' should be 'designed'
It looks great. I really like that there are simple answers (yes/no!)
I wish there were a notification system, though. Like an option for "If I haven't made a report by ?pm, send me an email to remind me."
Or "If I haven't made a report for x number of hours, remind me."
Maybe implement it as an opt-in and opt-out list that's stored separately, so that your server doesn't have to poll every single account all the time.
The hardest part I have of tracking is remembering to track, and that would really help.
For now, try just getting through the first few days. After that it becomes more of a habit and you're less likely to forget. A sticky note can help too :)
But I'd rather it didn't send me an email if I'd already updated.
The way I envisioned it working was very similar to the way you implemented it. I'd like to make some recommendations though.
- Give the user options to start with pre-populated sections (health, learning, travel, whatever) or maybe even some generic pre-populated questions
- Instead of using a form to collect the daily report, what about a free form text field that auto-completes based on text in the questions?
The reason I say this is I imagine the way I would use this would be I have 20 or 30 long-term goals that I have but I don't want to be asked every day about all of them. I just want to type in what I did, and the "what I did" gets populated as I type. For new things that don't match an existing question, maybe they could get added to a list of "new questions" that they have to save.
Also, i'm assuming this is a feature that is coming, but ultimately I want to see which of my sections I've been avoiding and which i've been making progress on.
P.s, if you want a co-coder on this project, let me know!
I've signed up and I'm beginning to build my template.
One question, though: will I be able to export my data?
This is crucial not just to prevent lock-in and ensure I control my own data, but especially so that I can play around with my tracking history in e.g. Excel.
I know you have emphasized how you want this to be a once a day action system. I definitely understand the desire for simplicity but I would also like the option to be able to enter certain things as they happened so they are associated with a specific time. For example it would be great to easily see that it's been X number of hours since I last did this or just data regarding what time I tend to do what. My ideal system would have a dedicated iphone app where I could optionally enter things as they happen. See all my previous data. And have a daily reminder to fill out the once a day form. I know this would be a challenge to keep it simple but I think it would be worth it. Anyways fantastic start on the site!
I'm fearing I lie to myself about this. :)
Would I be shocked seeing a yearly overview with the answers to these questions? Would I realize my quality of life is far too low? Could I see a pattern of other things I do / don't do that causes my headaches? Could perhaps the app calculate a number for my quality of life?
matt11 - Would your app help me do this? HN - Any suggestion for a method / iOS / Mac / web app to do this?
A guided approach ie: Did you stretch? Tap Up arrow for Yes, Down Arrow for No.
Quick keyboard input (or touch on mobile) of one question at a time might be nice. You could also skip questions with another input. Learn what questions the user values most, and show those first.
I really like this idea.. signing up now to see where you take it.
Edit: also pre filled out question templates (I dont want to start with a blank slate)
And also community contributed questions that can be voted on/gauge by popularity so I can add others questions/ideas to my own checklist.
I love the idea about community-contributed questions. Thanks!
Still, I love these types of tools.
1) Would love to see the yes/no question template expand to become a multiple choice questions. Eg, which colour paper did I use today? blue, red or yellow.
2) Can you have an option to export the data out, especially for the questions with numerical data? This would be use for custom analysis or reports.
3) Is it possible us to specify some limits for the quantity questions? ie, I will only accept if the answers are between 5mins and 15mins.
4) What happens to the data that we entered?
Keep up the good work!.
* No mobile client yet? I'm going to use this a lot more if I don't have to be online to do it ..
Come to think of it, I'm quite inspired by the idea of combining the above two points into a side project of my own .. ;)
Some ideas: - An iPhone app or web interface - Allow you to upload a photo as a response - Some sort of API to add things like "How many emails did you send?" or "How many Twitter followers did you gain?" - Some way to pay you... I'd hate to start using this for a few months only to see it go away
Other then that, keep up the great work!
My concern with building an iPhone app or interface is that shifts the tool from being a fill out in a few minutes at the end of the day tool to a fill in stuff as it happens type tool, which is what I think discourages people from continuing with it long term. You might be interested in Daytum if this approach suites you: http://daytum.com/
As far as paying, thank you for the offer. I'm mainly looking for feedback right now; will likely charge folks down the road via some freemium model (and you all will be grandfathered in).
Thanks again!
Feature request: It would be awesome there was a 'calendar view' that showed the data as colored bars, like the Seinfeld 'Don't Break the Chain' concept. Then the user could click on today in the calendar and edit the report.
I really enjoy the summaries from 3 months ago I get from idonethis.com and I could see some similarities here.
Way to keep it simple and focused.
As someone else recommended, I'll probably implement an optional email reminder system down the road. Accepting inputs via email would be very tricky though. We'll see what folks want.
I would like to see a more compact dashboard though. One screen that shows me how successful I am on all my questions (I only entered yes/no ones and probably won't use anything else, except maybe the quantity)
The site could use some friendlier error messages. :).
1 error prohibited this user from being saved: <-- this line here.
Password doesn't match confirmation
I get kinda queasy whenever I find myself on a signup/login form that's not secure.
In all seriousness, their tool is used primarily for tracking quantifiable health-related things. You can track pretty much whatever you want with Lucid Tracker and it doesn't have to be quantifiable.