Apps We’re Trying: Actie — A Daily Planner by Priority for iPhone

Success is never achieved by the person who does the most things every day. Instead, success is always achieved by the person who does what is most important every day.

—Vincent Carlos

For certain people, building better habits by tracking streaks can be an enormously effective method for improving their daily routines. But understandably, some people (*raises hand*) simply aren’t wired for the anxiety that can come with the pressure of keeping a long-running streak going. Not to mention, a long-running streak alone isn’t an indicator of actual performance for a given task.

That’s why developer Farzin Tavakoli and his friend decided to build Actie, a smart daily planner app for iPhone (and Android) that sorts your daily tasks by their importance. It lets you define any tasks you’d like to stay on top of — whether they have deadlines or are simply routines you like to do regularly, like playing guitar or reading — and then assign a priority to each one based on this scale:

Casual Interest → Better Get Done → Make It Happen → Whatever It Takes

Each task can have a session duration, preferred day(s) of the week, and a color. As you complete tasks, those durations and assigned days may adjust automatically to better reflect how you actually spend your time.

Once you’ve defined your tasks, Actie presents you with a daily plan you can check every morning, listed by priority and with an individual time tracker shown for each task. All you have to do is work from the top down. If you’ve skipped any sessions recently, the plan will reflect that too, so you can make up for missed days and stay on track.

Over time, you’ll also get insightful statistics about the way you spend your time, like your most productive hour in a given week, the average length of your sessions, and more.

For me, there’s a certain level of encouragement I get from this app that I don’t always feel when I manage to “not break the chain.” We all have bad days, and rather than being devastated about losing a streak, Actie feels more like someone saying, “You’re doing fine, keep up the good work!” and that’s much more motivating for me personally.

If you struggle with anxiety like I do, you may find this a helpful method as well. It’s 100% free to download too, so it can’t hurt to try 😉