Background
I’ve always been envious of people that can collect good lifestyle data. Every so often, I see a Hacker News post from some engineer who has kept a meticulous activity spreadsheet for years - and I really want those data for myself.
Alas, I could never do that. I’ve tried various forms of tracking beavhiors - spreadsheets, apps, journals, etc. - they never last more than a few weeks.
Checkbot is an attempt at collecting behavior data, via the only mechanism that I might be able to maintain for years.
Specs
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Within Checkbot, I define a set of desired behaviors, e.g.:
- Meditate daily
- Lift weights at least 2x/week
- Stay hydrated all day every day
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Checkbot sends me a push notification a few times a day to check on those behaviors.
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The timing of the checks, the frequency of the checks, and which behaviors are checked are all adaptive.
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A check collects the behavior status (👍/👎) with some basic metadata (currently, root causes and corrective actions, if applicable).
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Checks are nonintrusive and not urgent. But, if I miss checks for 36 hours, Checkbot takes over my lock screen and pesters me incessantly via Live Activities.
Why I built this
I originally started building Checkbot in Feb ‘23 because:
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I wanted to refresh on native app development.
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I wanted to test bulding a greenfield project with ChatGPT (spoiler: it was awesome, but not in the way that you’ll see in the sensationalist YouTubes).
Current Status
As of May 23rd 2023:
- I’ve been using Checkbot for 2 months (on my phone via TestFlight).
- Compliance is good. Using the app (i.e. completing checks) is satisfying and still not annoying.
- The hardcoded check score algorithm is okay, but room to improve.