A while back I was in a business class, and I had this thought, that I really wish there was a way for me to log how many mental spoons* (how much mental energy) it takes to do a task. Something like a period tracker app, or a habit tracker, that could allow me to enter some data, and when it had enough it would be able to estimate how much energy a task would take, and how much energy I probably have on a given day, so that maybe I’d have an easier time managing my own energy. This idea developed into extending to physical spoons, as I’ve since developed chronic pain. It’s not just that I suck at time management, although I do suck at that, it’s that I have a hard time knowing how mentally or physically strenuous an activity will be for my mind/body, or how much energy I will have on a given day.
The hypothetical app would allow the user to input tasks, state how long they take, rate on a scale how strenuous the activity is both physically and mentally, or maybe have a number of custom scales. Like, for me it would be like, let’s say i need to go get something from the pharmacy. I could input how long I need to get ready, how long the walk is, the fact that it involves bright lights in the store but it’s usually pretty quiet, aside from cars on the way there and back. I could input that it involves talking to a cashier, which I hate doing but usually is only a few words. So I spend roughly 30 minutes on my feet, the task is low to medium Sensory Bad, has a small amount of Interacting With Humans, and takes a tiny bit of emotional energy due to the People Will Think I’m Stealing anxiety. Using this data and ideally previous data that the app has about my energy levels before and after other similar tasks, the app could then say “this will take 2 physical spoons, 1 sensory spoon, 1 mental spoon.” So then I go to the pharmacy and when I get back, I note how tired I am, whether each of these aspects were worse/more draining than I thought, and whether the task involved more types of spoons than I thought, and it could adjust accordingly to future instances. There would have to be a means of quantifying everything, but I think this would help me as a Moss quite a lot. It would be even better if I could also input things like, how much i slept, spoons used the previous day, etc. so that the app could guess how many spoons i have on a given day. I think this would help me manage my energy levels better, both in reassuring me of what I am capable of and reminding me gently that I shouldn’t overexert myself.
I looked into it briefly, and I haven’t found many apps that specifically are made to help disabled people manage their energy levels like this. The closest I think is one called Flaredown, which is meant to help chronically ill folks track their symptoms and meds.
I was wondering if y’all had any thoughts on this? I know a small amount of java and C++ (I think, whatever tinkercad uses when you code virtual arduinos.) and while I would definitely need to learn a lot to make this happen, the logic of coding comes easily to me. My ADHD is likely to make it hard to follow through on this project, and it’s pretty ambitious, but I still think it would be interesting to try and see how far I get. Do you folks think this is a good idea? Anything you’d like to see in an app like this? Any feedback or tips?
*For those who don’t know, spoon theory is a framework for thinking about energy made by Christine Miserandino. It was originally used to describe her own Lupus, but has since been extended to a wide array of disabilities)
I’m an autistic spoonie and this would not appeal to me at all, sorry. It just seems overwhelming and like it would require more energy to use than it would save, I also despise and really struggle with filling forms or questionnaires and stuff like that, and avoid it like the plague. And then there’s the privacy aspect of such personal data I would worry about. So yeah, not for me.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea that’s worth perusing, we all vary so widely in needs, and there are clearly others who would find it really helpful, so good on you for trying to put something out there that might make some people’s lives a little easier and I wish you the best of luck with it.
That’s super fair, and I appreciate this perspective a lot! I’ve thought about this a bit myself–part of the challenge i think is making something that I would use, because I’ve never really had a phone app that actually works for me in the realm of time management and similar for this exact reason. It’s a lot of energy to learn an interface and consistently input enough data that the app could even work. I think that will be the main difficulty, trying to make the app as effortless to use as possible while still maintaining the functionality I’d want.
Data privacy i think won’t be too hard to deal with–I’d intend for the app to be free, not have any login requirement, and for all the data to be stored locally. I have a lot of concerns about privacy (both as a general thing and because of my ptsd) so this is another part of making an App That I Personally Would Use. Thank you for the kind words and your perspective :)
No idea why I never thought of this before.
We have mood trackers, med trackers, sleep trackers, weight trackers, activity trackers, habit trackers, finance trackers, menstruation trackers, and whole host of others, but not energy trackers. I guess activity ones are the closest, but they don’t really serve this purpose well.
(Edit: After running a quick search, there actually are energy level trackers, so I’m going to take a look at some of them and see if they fit the bill.)
Theoretically, you could use a money tracker, but it’ll be missing the “learning over time” part which is probably the most important feature you want.
My logic for the money tracker is that you input your energy levels as a certain amount of dollars or whatever currency and instead of tracking “expenses”, you assign a currency value to the energy you think a particular activity “drained” from you.
Instead of spoons, you could use like $10 as an equivalent to one spoon. So $100 is ten spoons, etc.
Only problem is that they’re made to track your finances over time instead of per day. So you’d have to manually go in and “reset” how much “money” you have each day, which itself can probably be one spoon used up already.
Still, though, I feel like that’s actually kind of a good starting point if someone wanted to develop an energy tracker.
I find financial transactions and batteries to be good alternative explanations for people who don’t get why it needs to be “spoons” because everyone either deals with money or batteries on a daily basis.
A “body battery tracker” might be a good approach as well.
Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t use it because it ironically takes too much energy for me to figure out how much energy I’ve used up for any given activity.
Lol, I actually think several people might run into this issue. Made to track energy, too tired to add data to the tracker.
Edit 2: Okay, I actually found one Android app that does specifically use spoon theory. Problem? It only has 3 stars, zero reviews, and I don’t really trust anything that requires an account to function. Either way: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spoonieday.app
Also found a few others which aren’t quite there (one’s more focused on mood, but has energy as an additional data point, some also have no actual reviews and aren’t exactly rated highly), but they might serve a purpose:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.org.emerge.pacing
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fedosov.mindtracker
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.energonMy problem with a lot of these apps, though is either requiring personal info or having excessive permissions (in addition to being closed source). Looking for similar stuff on F-Droid doesn’t yield many results other than mood and activity trackers. Though, I might take a look at some of those and see if they don’t offer an “energy” feature along with the other features.
I’ll definitely look into these apps. The money tracker thing might be a good starting point!
On the point of spoons and whether folks would understand their significance: one thought is that, I could maybe have different settings to change the language and visuals to batteries or something similar? It’s definitely something to implement much later on, after i figure out the core functionality, code everything, make the first set of visuals, etc etc. But I definitely will keep that in mind!
Data privacy is definitely on my mind with this whole thing. It’s kinda why im on lemmy, and moved my laptop to linux, and generally am very vigillant when it comes to my online privacy. Ideally the app would be free, open source, have no login requirements, work without internet, and store data locally.
Thank you for your insights! If you do find anything notable with those apps, please let me know :)
“Track and graph” FOSS from Fdroid may get you part of the way. It doesn’t do everything that you want, but maybe will help. Good luck on your journey.
I’ll look into it, thanks for the recommendation!
There’s this https://www.makevisible.com/ which I think is an app teamed with a wearable but it’s not free so I stopped looking at it.
Some kind of spoon tracker would be incredibly helpful for a loads of people imo.