This free app allowed me to track everything I did for the past 4 years.
2020 looked different.

The Life Cycle app by Sleep Cycle AB (available on iOS) allows you to track your activities by using your geographical location. When used in conjunction with the the Health app and the more popular Sleep Cycle app (also on iOS), you can get a pretty good picture of your average day.
I have had this setup for the past 4 years (2017– present) and as such, I thought it would be interesting to share some of this data, with a special emphasis on contrasting 2020 with the previous years. To begin with, here’s a quick summary of my past 4 years:

Just a quick glance at these graphs reveals that 2020 was quite different. As a student, I had been accustomed to going on campus almost every day for the past few years, however that ceased to be the case starting in around March 2020, when campus closed down. As a result, it appears that I spent about 29% more time at home or sleeping than previous years. I also walked 53% less steps than previous years, illustrative of the more sedentary lifestyle that I adopted as work from home became the new norm. This is even though I made it a point throughout the pandemic to take walks through my neighbourhood to stay in shape and get some sunlight, which is probably the main reason I have even that many steps to begin with.
Please note that the pie graphs are not to scale. There are 8760 hours in a year, meaning that the combined 8098 hours between being at home and sleeping comprised about 92% of my 2020, not the ~55% that the graph visually indicates. This stands in sharp contrast to the 6287 hours on average I spent at home or sleeping (71%) in previous years. Naturally, even these numbers don’t paint the whole story since the first 3 months of 2020 were relatively normal. Here’s a comparison between March 2020 (pre lock down) and April 2020 (post lock down). April 2020 has been very representative so far of post-pandemic life for me.

Of course, I was getting many of the same activities done while at home (student life really does not stop, even for a pandemic) but the app was not able to pick up on this. That being said, it actually does have the feature to manually add your activity, which comes in handy when you would like to do an alternative activity at that particular location (since the app assumes that you only do one activity per location):

I personally did not take advantage of this because I felt it took away from my ability to use the app passively.
Naturally, you can also export all of your data in CSV format at any time for your own analysis. There are obviously many ways to explore such data, but I am actually quite happy with the graphical representations that the app offers built-in (even though they are distorted). That being said, please comment any analytical suggestions you would recommend and I will try to implement them in a new article soon.

I can imagine that many of you may be uncomfortable with a company collecting all of this data, and rightly so. However, there are many benefits to having this data available to you, other than the pretty little graphs. I believe that it promotes a philosophy that is very much in line with Steve Jobs’ well-known quote:
“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
Knowing more about how you spend your time will allow you to optimize your days. Even though a data-driven approach does undermine the emotional piece that Steve was probably alluding to, it does open another dimension to the problem and certainly allows you to reflect on a longer period of time than you might otherwise be able to. The app sends me a notification every Sunday in preparation for the new week, which reminds me to apply Steve’s quote to myself. As a result, I believe that it makes me a more productive and reflective individual.
Note: I am not at all affiliated with Sleep Cycle or Life Cycle and just wanted to share my experience using their apps. If you decide to get the app, please let me know what you think!