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Posted by Andy Petranek :
Friday, Dec 16, 2011
The other day, I was thinking about all the things that I need to do every day to keep myself and my life 'on track'. Things like take fish oil, do handstands, read for 10 minutes, pick up dog poop, take post workout protein supplement, mobilize for 10 minutes, meditate, etc. Many of these things get dropped out of my life, not because they're not important, but because I haven't had a system for keeping track of them. Here's the thing... they don't really need to be in a todo list since they recur every day, nor do I want them clogging up my calendar. But they are really important for me to both remember to do, and I'd like to be able to see how successful I was at doing them consistently, keeping on track.
To do this I started with a simple spreadsheet in Google Docs to help me keep track. The problem is that I don't really have access to spreadsheets all the time, easily... and 'easily' is important, because if it takes too much time to open it up, log in, and write it down, I just won't do it. This earned a big "F" for me. So next I turned to Evernote - the app that seems to do just about everything related to taking notes. Though I successfully created a system that would work, it wasn't very appealing, nor was it easy or fun. Scratch.
So next I went to my trusty iPhone and started searching for Apps that might do the trick. I came up with two. The first, that I started using on five days ago, is called Daily Deeds. It's really easy to figure out, and simple to use... and it gives me a running checklist of the month - so I can see what I did and didn't do clearly (by noticing gaps in checkmarks for each item). I've been extremely happy with it thus far.
Just before writing this article, I decided to do a quick search for a Daily Deeds Andriod app. While I didn't find one, I did see a review of it, that said that the user had found a better app called Way of Life. I've only poked around in it for about 10 minutes, but from what I can tell, this app does a little better than Daily Deeds in giving you the ability to see how you're doing graphically over longer periods of time (3, 6, 12 months). Successes are coded green and failures with red and you can see very clearly how you did each week, month and longer. Gotta give this one a thumbs up too!
For me, apps like these are indispensable... I don't know how I was getting along without them before this week. One of these two will become a staple in my daily routine. I'm going to use both for the next month to see which I like better. Do you have an app for things like this, or do you have another innovative system for keeping track? What is it? If you've used either of these two apps, lets hear about your experience!
Today's Workout
Snatch
- find TODAY'S one rep max (1 RM)
