How Using Apps to Track Everything Unexpectedly Made My Life Easier

These low-commitment tracking apps put things into perspective and make your life easier without overcomplicating things.

1

Time since: Long-term tracking

Have you ever wanted to know how much time has passed since you started something? That’s what I thought when looking for a long-term time tracking app that isn’t focused on productivity, work or using the Pomodoro technique. I just wanted something to track how much has passed.

With Time SinceI can track different hobbies, skills, birthdays, pet ages, and my general existence. However, it is a bit existential to know how long you have lived in seconds, hours or days. As of writing this, I currently have 8919 days, which is a strange way to look at things.

In a more practical sense, it helps to know how much time has passed since my pet visited the vet or celebrated its birthday. I also added it when I started learning knife sharpening and the Rubik’s cube. While I don’t actively use the skills anymore, it’s nice to see how long I’ve been doing it. This app puts things into perspective that we don’t usually see. And, it is done in an easily accessible way.

It’s simple but it changes your life in a small way.

2

Wake Me There: helped me sleep without missing my destination

I used to go by bus often. It usually took an hour and a half to complete my journey, and public transport is often unpredictable. To help me avoid missing my stop, I started looking for an app that could wake me up when I got close to my destination. That’s when I found it Wake me up therea simple app with an incredibly self-explanatory name.

Basically, you set an alarm to wake you up when you reach a customizable radius for a set destination. The radius can vary from 10 meters to 20 kilometers. I like to put it at 5 km, though, since it’s enough distance to wake up, come to my senses, get my things, and get ready to go down.

I was worried about the reliability of the app, but after some paranoia and testing, I realized that it is reliable as long as your destination has an accurate GPS location. Fortunately, the app also tells you how accurate the location monitoring is at the bottom left of the main screen. When entering a more remote location, it is better to be conservative and put it at about 10 km or more.

It is also useful when you want to drive at the speed limit and know when to slow down near your destination. I find it often choosing between Google Maps or Waze quite annoying, as they interrupt my music with intermittent turn signals when I already know my way most of the way.

3

Fuelio: Helped me find out how much my vehicles cost me

I just recently bought my first car, and I like to track my metrics as much as possible. As soon as I got the car, I immediately looked for an app that best suited my needs. I tried several different ones Fuel economy apps at first, but finally I settled Fuel.

Fuelio has graphics and data that are easy to access and read. However, what was crucial for me was the fuel log. It was much more intuitive than other apps.

Logging a fuel-up is as simple as entering your current odometer reading and then entering at least two data points in the three boxes: gas, Price / L, and the total cost. You can also change the units if you prefer gallons or kilometers.

In addition to fuel, I also like to record my service appointments and the parts I have purchased for the car. These all go into costs, so I’m not going to worry too much about categorizing them too specifically. However, there are also tags that you can apply to further categorize.

4

MyFitnessPal: Making sure I’m eating right

MyFitnessPal It’s one that I don’t use constantly, but I go back to on occasion. I mainly use it to track my calories, especially when I’m trying to gain weight. I don’t use many other features, but it is still very useful.

It has a very large database of food. I didn’t expect it to contain as much data as it does about Filipino dishes. You can also scan packaged food with barcodes, and it will immediately enter the nutritional information. If you haven’t finished the whole package, you can also enter how much of the food you ate so you don’t miscalculate.

While it’s useful, I only use this app to figure out how many calories I’ve eaten in my meals. The calculation of each meal is exhausting, so once I gauge my fullness and the amount of food in my head, I stop using it until I feel unsure again.

Using apps to track the minute details of your life can seem complicated. However, each of these made my life easier in some way.