Minimum Viable Diary

I’ve been using the app Daylio (12 Euros per year) as a low-effort life tracker / diary for 1100 consecutive days. That’s worth a recommendation.

Every day at 8pm I get a notification on my phone to add today’s entry to Daylio. I rate my day: rad, good, meh, bad, or awful. And I check off some activities that I did that day. Sometimes I add a few words of text or some photos from my phone’s gallery to add details to a day.

Daylio.net depicts this process like this:

2023 by the Numbers

In 2023 I added 365 entries with a total of 2132 activities.
My year in pixels:

I’m deliberately generous what counts as a good day. I’d rate most of my days last year (and in general) at least “slightly good” and then I round up :) If a day was “fine” with generally engaging work and some free time, it gets a “good”. Example: when I got Covid in August during my vacation (with very mild symptoms), my “rad” streak stopped and I marked on day “meh”, but I still rated my Covid days “good” since my symptoms were mild enough that I could still use my vacation days with enjoyable indoor activities (TV). They were not really bad days.

My top activities:

1. Being at home (364x)
2. Watching TV or a movie (334x)
3. Good sleep (323x)
4. Doing something outside (109x)
5. Working long hours – around 9.5h and above (87x)
6. Cycling (84x)
7. Gaming (83x)
8. Learning (74x)
9. Procrastinating (61x)

Daylio lets you further drill down into the data.

For example, I went cycling 84 times (usually for 1–2 hours). Up slightly form the year before.

I’ve been getting a lot less exercise since I stopped going to the gym (because of Covid). I’m not motivated enough to work out at home. Working out in a room with 10+ people with limited ventilation still feels like a bad idea.

I attended 23 meetups – some remote, some in-person.

My Inspiration

I started using Daylio at the start of 2021 after seeing it on twitter. Marissa Goldberg tweeted her 2020 and her experiences with the app:¹

My “Activities” for 2024

You can freely customize the categories and “activities” and their icons in Daylio. For 2024 I slightly adjusted / updated the “activities” I can check off each day. I removed some that I never used, and added some that I might want to use.

A tweet² I saw today inspired my to including tracking when my allergies act up and on how many days I poop. I don’t know if I’ll keep that around – if I want to ask myself the question, whether I pooped today, every night. But it’s easy to include and remove again and I don’t have good data on it. :)

The list is now pretty long, but since the “activities” work like simple checkboxes, it still only takes me a minute to create an entry.

• work
  • worked
  • long hours
  • vacation / holiday
  • success
  • fail
  • conflict
  • presentation
  • workshop
  • Techday
  • training / conference
• places
  • home
  • nature
  • office
  • city
  • gym
  • travel
  • vacation
• social
  • family
  • friend
  • colleague
  • meetup
  • team event
  • multiplayer
• hobbies
  • movies & tv
  • reading
  • gaming
  • keyboard
  • cinema
• better me
  • learn
  • project
  • content created
  • procrastinated
• fitness
  • cycling
  • exercise
  • pushups
  • swimming
  • walk
  • yoga
• emotions
  • stressed
  • anxious
  • worried/sad (family)
  • worried/sad (pet)
  • unsure
  • angry
  • cried
  • excited
  • grateful
  • relaxed
  • tired
  • bored
• health
  • poop
  • shower
  • allergies
  • illness
  • blockade
  • dentist
  • doctors visit
• sleep
  • good sleep
  • medium sleep
  • bad sleep
  • sleep early
  • sleep late