Do we need an app for everything? Spare me, spare me. But maybe we need one more . . .
My two 2016 big years were launched in my head based on little more than a mad impulse. I scribbled some plans in a notebook, waited for January 1, and began. The challenges have been, and very much remain, motivational: why oh why today.
But planning and monitoring were always part of my geeky attraction to the concept. I knew woolly-headed annual goals, such as “shouldn’t I try to inculcate a regular exercise habit,” would sink without a trace. Birders, my role model, know on January 1 precisely what species to aim to see, and they keep careful “I saw this” lists. How then should I organise a Big Year?
A while back, I opined that my jogging app, Strava, “is magic. I know exactly where I am in any day in relation to my big year target. Unfortunately not everything worthwhile in life is covered by an app.” Pedal Pete was onto me in a flash:
There is nothing else worthwhile in your life that cannot be recorded in Strava
So . . . is a Big Decade app worth developing? Intriguing. But no – the journey, half a year old now, seems to be more complex than any software can handle, and the unfolding journey is quite the point of the whole exercise.
Image: Visual Hunt