reorganising your life
I went through a trauma years ago that caused some permanent memory issues, and I've spent a long time since then trying to find strategies to organise and remember everything important in life.
I've used countless organisation apps and all different strategies, and then I landed on two great apps that worked in tandem at first: Finch and MyBrain.
Finch let me have my daily routine mapped out with reminders and incentives for all of it, which helped me to build a routine that worked. MyBrain was excellent for making notes for things I needed to remember, and great for planning calendar events.
But both had issues. Finch has slowly become less about the self-care aspect of things and more about the gacha mechanics and the cosmetics. They actively removed or changed features that helped users, and in the end, it was less 'gamified self care' and more 'game about self care'. A very important distinction. And MyBrain had a lot of features that I simply wasn't using.
So, what could I do?
I've made a few android apps over the years. Nothing extravagant, just little tools using the default Android designs and APIs. So I decided to create my own app which had all the features I used, only the features I used and a few additional features I found useful.
The first two things I implemented were the daily checklist and the notes, since those were the two main things I needed more than anything.
The daily checklist was simple enough, it would just reset its state at 4am every morning, with checklist items organised by category. The one thing I still haven't managed to get working is notifications for certain checklist items, but I'm hoping I work that out soon. Aside from that, it's a daily checklist with categories for my routines and it's worked perfectly, without the need for gamified elements.
Next was the notes. Initially just plain text files, I then added markdown because (considering I'm writing on Bear Blog) I absolutely love Markdown and it makes it so much easier to export notes elsewhere. I added folders and pinned notes, and that was all I needed. It's held up wonderfully and considering I make notes constantly, it's been awesome. I even draft my blog posts in it.
I added a basic calendar too, nothing massively special, but I did add a feature I've found very useful. I can mark any events with a category and an emoji, to make it easier to know at a glance what type of event it was.
At this point, I now had the most important features that I needed implemented, so I made a landing page that the app would always open to. It displays the current time, any calendar events from that day, a task that needs to be completed and a quick note button.
But it was missing something, and I realised that I could give myself the most important tool of all.
I added a weather overview, for current weather and daily forecasts. I'm blind, I can't just look out of my window and know what the weather is, and certain weathers can trigger my health issues. Having the weather front and centre in an app designed to be the first thing and last thing I check in a day makes it so much easier to plan around it.
So, finally, I have my app. The features I personally need without the ones I don't. No gamified elements, no subscription service in the case of Finch, nothing I don't need. And it's worked wonderfully, exactly what I needed it to be.
Organising our lives in a world like this can seem impossible, but find your own solution for what works best for you.
Some find recording voice notes to help them keep track of thoughts. Some like pocket notebooks, customising them much like how I customised my own app. Some use pre-existing apps, some make their own, some use other systems entirely. But having a system that works for you, instead of you having to work around it, can help manage all of life's chaos just that bit more.
Oh, and I named it PlaNya, by the way. I needed to have a little pun. (Also sorry for the lack of screenshots, I will add those when I can show the app without my personal data!)
This post was last edited 13 hours, 5 minutes ago.