Five areas of your life, cut down to a block on Tuesday.
The chain in full, with the habits underneath it measured — then the questions the home page did not have room for.
The home page has the short version and the sign-up. What it will never do is the six promises this method has to keep.
From a vision to a Tuesday afternoon
- The life you want. Five areas of it — work, health, the people in it, what you do for its own sake, and the practical one nobody writes down. You say where each is going in five or ten years, in your own words. Kept as versions and never overwritten, because a vision you cannot compare against last year's is not doing its job.
- A season cut from it. Three seasons a year, four months each, and one or two things actually pursued in each. Not a resolution list — a sized piece of the vision, with the things you decided against kept beside it and the reason you decided.
- A month, then a week. The season becomes this month's single theme, and the theme becomes a week: a few goals, the to-dos under them, and a cap of three things on the go at once. The fourth is refused, by name. The refusal is the feature.
- Blocks on a real week. The week is laid out in fifteen-minute blocks around the hours your calendar has already taken, so nothing is planned on top of a meeting. An assistant drafts it and saves nothing until you tap it.
- And the habits underneath. The habits you are building are placed in that week too, and ticked there. After fourteen rated days the statistics say which of them actually go with your better days — so the plan above them is being checked, not just written.
The fourteen-day rule
Influx Life will not tell you anything about which habits go with your better days until you have rated fourteen days. Below that, a claim is a guess dressed up as a number — a difference between two averages of two or three days each looks like a pattern and is usually noise. Fourteen is not a marketing number: it is roughly where a paired test on daily data starts to have the power to say anything at all, and the app counts your days down on the home screen rather than making a claim early because the space would otherwise sit empty.
Every other tracker I tried would have shown me a win by week two. Mine showed me that nothing had held up yet — because a claim built on four days is a guess, and I would rather tell you that than sell you the guess.
More questions
Do I need a watch or a ring?
No. The habits, the ratings, the statistics and the planner all work with nothing but you and a phone. A wearable adds sleep and recovery to the picture; it is not the picture.
How long before it tells me anything?
The planner pays you back the first evening you use it. The statistics wait for fourteen rated days, and the app counts them down on the home screen so you always know where you are. It will not make a claim before then, and it says so rather than filling the space.
What happens on a day I forget?
Nothing. No streak breaks, because there is no streak to break. A missed day is a missing row, and the statistics say how many days they are built on, so a gap costs you a little confidence and nothing else.
Where does my data go?
It stays in your account. The person running the server cannot open your habits, your ratings or your journal from the app, and you can export or delete everything from Setup in two taps. The privacy policy says exactly what is stored and what the assistant sends when you use it.