Patterns, shifts, and an Android app

• Patterns: a title and a line, for what keeps happening
• Shifts: what you used to do, and what you do now
• Search both, and file them under a category
• GullyHabits on Android, on the same account
• Plainer words when a form goes wrong

The reports screen has always been able to tell you where your hours went. It could never tell you what you noticed, or what you did about it. That gap is what this release closes, with two small lists in the planner.

Patterns

A pattern is something that keeps happening. A title and a line, and that is all it is allowed to be.

“Every Tuesday afternoon disappears into email.”

There is no box asking what you plan to do about it, because noticing has to stay cheap. You spot something, you write it down in ten seconds, you get on with your day. Working out what to change can wait until you have seen it three times.

Shifts

A shift is what you changed. A title, what you used to do, and what you do now.

“I stopped guessing how long admin takes.” Before: I blocked 30 minutes for invoices. Now: I block 90, and stop pretending.

The pair is the point. The move from one to the other is the thing worth recording, and writing the two lines next to each other is what turns noticing something into deciding something. The screen strikes the old one through, so a row reads as a decision rather than a diary entry. Both lines are optional, because a good title is often the whole of it.

Both lists

• Search everything you have written, including the lines, not just the titles
• File one under a category, so it sits beside the hours it came from
• Tidy one away rather than deleting it: nothing goes from the main list for good

Neither is a task. They have no date, no length, and nothing to tick.

Android

GullyHabits is now an Android app as well as a website. Same account, same data, same arithmetic. It opens on today’s list, shows how full the day is, and lets you tick things off with one thumb.

• Today, in start-time order, with what is already done
• Upcoming, grouped by day
• Hours by category as a ring, daily, weekly or monthly
• Quick add that reads a line the way you would say it: “Call the bank tomorrow 11am 20m”

Categories, life areas, booking and calendars are still on the web for now, and the app links out to them. Patterns and shifts will follow.

Smaller things

Sign-up used to answer a short password with “password must be longer than or equal to 8 characters”. It now says your password needs 8 characters or more. Every form message got the same treatment.

The account menu was missing a couple of the pages behind the board. It lists all of them again.