There are so many to-do list apps now that instead of figuring out the differences between all of them, it might seem like a better use of time to just go back to pen and paper (or the infamous white board). But iOS app Life Graphy lends a refreshing new twist to task management. It lets you visualize how many things you manage to complete over the course of each month with a unique calendar view and pie charts (which it calls “masks”) for each day.
Created by a Korean startup, Life Graphy is targeted toward the same people who gravitate toward to-do list apps like Clear and Any.Do because they are easy-to-use and visually appealing. Life Graphy, however, has several key differences. It is meant as a tracker for the kind of recurring, everyday tasks (like taking vitamins or watering houseplants) that are easy to forget, but its simple design means that you can use the app in many different ways.
I am currently using Life Graphy to track how often I manage to hit all of my daily health and fitness goals. The app lets you enter up to 10 items, each with its own icon. Right now mine include six: taking my supplements; getting a certain amount of exercise per day; remembering to fill out my food diary in MyFitnessPal; sleeping at at least 7 hours a night; doing a bit of yoga or meditation; and watering my houseplants (the latter technically isn’t a personal health goal, but I’m trying to cure my black thumb).
Since I started using Life Graphy a couple weeks ago, I’ve done a better job of remembering each goal because at the end of the day, I really want to see a full pie chart. On the other hand, Life Graphy also let me see that I tend to let my routine slip on weekends and Mondays.
But Life Graphy’s simplicity also has several drawbacks. For example, every segment of the pie chart should be a different color to match the customizable buttons assigned to each tasks, so you get more information when looking at the calendar view.
I also wished Life Graphy would allow me to create more than one calendar. For example, I have a couple of prescriptions I need to take varying dosages of throughout the month. If I had a separate calendar, I would set each segment of my daily pie chart to represent increments of milligrams for each medication.
The app previously only had six tasks, but its developers quickly increased that number to 10 because of user demand, so I’m hopeful that they will continue to make improvements to Life Graphy. For now, the app is helping me stay on top of my most important daily health goals, and it’s satisfying to see each week’s accomplishments lined up in neat rows of little circles.
