

Show HN: My one month side-project, Lucid Tracker: a daily life tracking tool - matt1
http://www.lucidtracker.com

======
matt1
Hey guys,

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

~~~
cake
Would you mind sharing some of the conclusions you came about thanks to your
tracking ?

~~~
matt1
I think when a lot of people hear the phrase _life tracking_ they associate it
with conclusions like _drinking an extra half an ounce of water each meal
reduced my caloric intake by 6.6%_ and I think that can be a bit overwhelming
and it discourages people from trying it out (sounds like a lot of work!).

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...](http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/what-gets-measured-gets-managed)

~~~
cellularmitosis
"Knowing that I'm accountable for my decisions makes me much more likely to
make positive choices."

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.

~~~
77ko
That app already exists: The Eatery <https://eatery.massivehealth.com/>

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.

------
moultano
This needs a mobile app to be useful to me. I started doing this with a google
doc, but didn't keep at it because going to the form to fill it out was too
much overhead. Instead, I've been using Task:Life on android. I wish it had a
wider variety of inputs other than binary checkboxes, but it basically works.
Highly recommend a mobile app for it, because getting a notification and
filling it out in a few taps is basically the limit for the amount of time I'm
happy regularly devoting to this.

~~~
matt1
As noted elsewhere, this system is _not_ designed to be used as things happen.
It's meant to be filled out once at the end of each day and should take no
longer than a few minutes. It's supposed to be as non-intrusive as possible.

That being said, several folks have mentioned this so it's a possibility down
the road, maybe.

~~~
moultano
I know. I don't record things as they happen with Task:Life either. I get a
notification on my phone every morning, currently set to 7AM. I tap the
notification, tap the things I remember doing on the previous day, done. It
works great. My only complaints are that the fields are all binary, and the
analytics it provides are lacking.

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.

------
dmix
I run a site for diabetics for tracking health metrics
(<http://carelogger.com>).

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.

~~~
matt1
Agreed that it would be nice if this kind of tracking could be automatic, but
I don't think we're not at a point technology wise where that's economically
feasible right now. Some sort of hybrid approach is probably the best bet
right now and maybe that's something I can work towards if there's interest
(like providing an API that third party developers could tie specific apps
into).

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.

~~~
dmix
> 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.

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.

------
awolf
> 2\. Fill out a report at the end of each day

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).

~~~
miniatureape
I agree. Maybe send me an email in the morning that asks me a few questions
and let me reply with my answers or something.

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.

------
vhf
Hi matt1,

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 ! ;) )

~~~
matt1
The best way to get good at design is to practice a lot.

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.

------
driverdan
Screenshots? Demo account? Video demo? I need something to show me what it's
like to use without signing up.

~~~
asgaroth
I second this, I rarely sing up into something without seen what it does
first.

~~~
matt1
Great ideas; will work on it. Appreciate it.

~~~
wikwocket
I do really like the tour you've built after signing up. But I agree that more
screenshots etc would be great before signing up.

------
CWIZO
Definitely needs email reminders! Otherwise I doubt I'll remember coming back
every day.

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.

------
corywright
This is great!

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.

------
Johngibb
Hey, looks great! Not sure if you've seen this, but here's something similar
I've used in the past: <http://www.joesgoals.com/>

P.S. Typo on FAQs: 'desgned' should be 'designed'

~~~
matt1
Thanks and yeah, I saw Joe's Goals. This is similar except it's a bit more
flexible (more than just yes/no, for example).

------
Kerrz
Hi Matt,

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.

~~~
matt1
That's a great idea -- thanks!

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
:)

~~~
Kerrz
I actually set Google Calendar to send me an email at 6pm every day to update
the tracker.

But I'd rather it didn't send me an email if I'd already updated.

------
joelcollinsdc
I've actually been telling myself to make something like this to scratch an
itch of mine for a long time. Congrats on beating me to it!

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!

------
edj
This sounds great! It's exactly how I'd like to enter this sort of data – once
a day, using a template, with automatic tracking.

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.

------
jdoody
Hey I am really impressed with this site. I have explored a whole bunch of
sites of this kind and this looks like one of the most promising. I have
considered building a site like this with the exact features I want. I will
definitely have more feedback for you as I continue using the site.

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!

------
addies
This is great. I've been looking for an open-ended life tracking tool like
this for a while. After playing around with other services like Daytum, which
ended up feeling constricting and unintuitive for what I was hoping to do, I
kind of gave up. I'll be keeping a close eye on this as, after a quick once
over, it looks pretty awesome. Good luck with this Matt!

------
Flow
I have tension headaches often. I've been thinking of tracking for each day
things like: \- Did I sleep bad and woke up with headache? \- Did I avoid
driving to work because of headaches or fear of a slightly heavy head turning
into a nightmare in the afternoon? \- Did I avoid driving to work because of
medication? \- Did I say no to going out for beers because of
headaches/medication? \- Did I work out or talking a walk?

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?

------
andreipop
Nice work man! I wrote a blog post a while back about a QS system I use with
some interesting similarities: [http://designcodelearn.com/2012/05/14/my-life-
tracking-qs-sy...](http://designcodelearn.com/2012/05/14/my-life-tracking-qs-
system/)

------
savories
I'd like to see a better input method other than straight html forms.
Personally.

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.

~~~
matt1
The alternative input techniques you mention are an interesting idea. I have
to give it some more thought. It will just overly complicate the interface if
not done very carefully.

I love the idea about community-contributed questions. Thanks!

------
james4k
I thought I recognized this and after some digging, I found a similar side
project someone else posted a few months back: <http://routinetap.com/tour>

Still, I love these types of tools.

------
yitchelle
Just signed up and tried it out. Firstly, great work. It really show plenty of
promise. Secondly, some suggestions.

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!.

------
primitur
My first thought: way, way too much text. Really. This is an application that
is absolutely screaming for a team of great designers to pour over things like
<http://thenounproject.com> and integrate their findings directly into each
'thing' and activity that can be logged.

* 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 .. ;)

------
microcentury
Really like it! Only feedback so far is 'Create report from template' is not
intuitive to me. Would something like 'Enter today's data' work better, or is
there an angle here I'm missing?

------
frasierman
Wow... this looks really awesome!

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!

~~~
matt1
Hey, appreciate the feedback.

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!

------
dylanhassinger
Great job. I use pen and paper calendar for this now, tried Joe's Goals
previously but it wasn't flexible enough.

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.

------
julianz
It looks like a nice tool. I think you need to be a bit clearer about how you
intend to use people's private information. Giving you a permanent license to
use my data to market your site seems like a bad deal for me. What if I get
famous and you start marketing yourself as the website that made the now-
famous fat guy thin?

------
xbryanx
This is fantastic! It leaves me wondering if there could be some email
tickler, or even email input ability that could keep you on the wagon, filing
out your forms.

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.

~~~
matt1
Thanks for the kudos.

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.

------
pbackx
Looks good and it's something I could use.

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)

------
ittan
Matt:

The site could use some friendlier error messages. :).

1 error prohibited this user from being saved: <\-- this line here.

    
    
        Password doesn't match confirmation
    

Could just be passwords dont match!

------
bennesvig
You should add a spot to sign up at the bottom of the FAQ so people don't have
to go back to the homepage to sign up.

<http://www.lucidtracker.com/faqs>

------
ttsu
Is there going to be https support? When I tried https the cert was for
*.herokuapp.com.

I get kinda queasy whenever I find myself on a signup/login form that's not
secure.

------
pgrote
Quick question ... how does this differ from a site like
<https://www.chartmyself.com/> outside of the yes/no field?

~~~
matt1
Chart My Self looks like it takes a lot of work; Lucid Tracker doesn't.

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.

~~~
pgrote
Your first statement is spot on. lol

------
temuze
I would make some default/recommended questions that you can see upon signup.
At first, I didn't think of any examples of what to track.

~~~
matt1
Thanks, yeah. As someone else noted having a community-generated question list
might help inspire folks and solve the blank slate problem a bit.

------
kkyang
Awesome work! I have been using a pen and paper but found I can't get to in
depth with the analysis. I signed up. Looks great!

------
hilti
I'm already using www.daytum.com with it's iOS App. What's the difference
between Lucid Tracker and Daytum?

------
corkill
This looks great. Signing up now.

------
zapt02
looks good!

