Quotations Improved

A timer is set to show a new quotation/author every N minutes, where N is defined in the Controls! tab. N is usually 1 or 5 minutes, but can be 15

However, now you have some control over the content. We've added two buttons to operate the quotations.

The "New" button will display another random quote from the Quotes sheet.

The "Save" button will move the quote/author in column B to column C. You would do this when you find one that speaks to you and you want to save it as a Quote of the Day.  Each Save wipes out what was in Column C and replaces it with what's in B.

Known limitation: these buttons work fine on laptop (MacBook Pro) but are inoperable on mobile device (iPhone).

Next: A favorite button, and a Delete button.

Simplifying, Minimizing, Cleaning

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" 

Einstein

It's real easy to add stuff to a design, the work is in taking away stuff. But it's In taking away the unnecessary that reveals the underlying simplicity. The user "gets it" more readily. It looks easy, the user feels more comfortable.

That was the mission for the last day or so: consistent font sizes and colors, removal of emojis (which only serve to junk up the screen... it's just visual noise), hiding some activities that are no longer serving a need. 

I'm breathing more easily now, and I think the product is too.

Although I have been working for about 8 years with this concept of a checklist for the purpose of success in life and business, I am reminded that almost everything can benefit from "Beginner's Mind".  This is the Zen principle of Shoshin. Steve Jobs was a practitioner of this principle and his works reveal such thinking.

Daily Completion percent for overall activities

 The daily score is one way of looking at your performance each day, and it's easy to compare it with every other day.

But there is another metric that's helpful and that's the daily completion percent; of all the activities on your checklist, how many did you actually work on.

This is what my checklist is telling me. I may have some activities that are aspirational and I'm not really working on very much, or at all.  That's ok, I guess, it's better to have them on my checklist as a reminder to do something about them, but with that approach I'll never (rarely) ever get to 100%. This will take some working with this new metric to learn more about what it can tell me.

While I had the code open, I optimized the formulas in column A, and I can almost feel the checklist breathing more easily with less cruft in the formulas.

Version 12.8.8

Rebranding ez ✔

 For the longest time I've been using a product name like this: 

but lately, it just looks to clunky and long and I started playing around with some minimal approaches and have settled on 

Tough to make it any simpler.  Say it like this: "easy check". And write it like this: ez ✔.

ez ✔ is a claimed trademark of dblm.com and Michael McCafferty, first used January 10, 2025.

Updated the version to 12.8.7

A Friendly Reminder in version 12.8.6

There have been times, maybe once or twice a year, I will actually go a day without using my ez ✔. When I discover it, the next day, I am completely amazed that I could have gone an entire day and not checked in, but there it is, an entire row of blanks starting back at me. How is that possible?

If I can do it, anyone can, and especially new users. This is where a friendly reminder would come in handy before it's too late.

That's why the latest version, 12.8.6 has a built in reminder in the form of an email that gets sent no later than a couple of hours after you wake up. Simple and effective.

The User Guide has been updated, of course.

12.8.5 makes New Day process more robust

 Something I've wanted to do for years is to eliminate the "(end of data)" entry in column B at the bottom of the checklist. Never liked a dependency on the data to signify the end of data. Seems wrong. So now the NewDay function is optimized and clarified, so much easier to follow for the next programmer, and will not barf when a user inadvertently clobbers the  "(end of data)" entry.

For 99.99% of users, this will never be an issue, but I'll feel a lot better that it is being handled more professionally now.

EZchecklist charts updated, now available to publish to the web (12.8.4)

 Here's an example of the sort of charts that come standard with the EZchecklist Dashboard so that you have a visual representation of what you do with your time. Many other charts available. These visuals make it easy to improve. 

These charts are updated in real time, with about a 5 minute delay. My charts are available to anyone at this link, and includes charts that I use to track steps, sleep, daily EZscore, etc. 

Although publishing your charts is completely optional, by doing so your commitment is strengthened and your results will improve.

Always interested in your thoughts, suggestions, etc.

The Unbearable Burden of Perfection (version 12.8.3)

Always code as if 

the guy who ends up maintaining your code 

will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

John Woods

The ToBeWise™ quotation above popped up on my EZchecklist, and it got me thinking about the imperfection of my own coding...

After experiencing first hand the spectacular abilities of AI, I couldn't resist the temptation to request a complete rewrite of the underlying Apps Script governing some of the special features of EZchecklist.

I described what I wanted the AI to program, in English, and it produced the code to produce the result. It was a "clean sheet of paper" approach as opposed to asking for an optimized version of my own code. 

The first result showed me that I needed to be more clear and precise in my description of the problem, but after I got the hang of it, the results were clearly superior to what I would have done. I was surprised that the AI even built in reasonableness checks on human-entered data and issued warnings for non-numeric input, etc. (something I had not requested, but definitely desirable). The code was even well documented with comments describing what was going on for each major step.

When the AI produced a code snippet that was unfamiliar to me, I simply pasted that snippet back with the question "What does this do?" and it gave me a thorough explanation. What a great way to learn!

Although this new version is functionally the same as the previous version, it runs faster, is more concise, more adaptable to edge cases, works better on mobile devices, and more clearly written. It's a most excellent Christmas present to myself, and a great foundation for what is to come in the New Year.

While I was building a more perfect product, I also went through and cleaned up some cosmetic issues. So it is now perfect and more beautiful... until the next time I decide to do something extraordinary.

Getting by with a little help from AI friend (versioin 12.8.2)

 

A couple of days ago I had just finished coding a feature in EZchecklist that I'd wanted to do for a long time. It took about 5 hours to get working, and it looked good, but the underlying coding was so ugly that I couldn't bear it if anyone ever saw it. The odds of someone seeing the ugliness were extremely remote, but before I went to sleep I promised myself to rewrite the code so that it was more presentable (to myself, at least).

That opportunity came the next morning because I just couldn't live another day with all that ugly code living inside my computer, even though it was invisible to the world except me, of course.  Another five hours and it was done.  Two hundred plus lines of code replaced with 39 lines.

Feeling much better about the transformation, I then had the thought that chatGPT 4.o might be able to do better, so I copied and pasted the code into the AI and asked it to optimize it... if it can. AI got it down to about 18 lines and did it in about 5 seconds, tops, but it's not as easy to follow as my code.  Sure, it would run a bit faster but speed is not the issue here.

Having a coder to coder chat with AI about the various approaches to the problem was amazingly educational.  For me.  I doubt AI learned anything, and sure didn't have that warm fuzzy feeling of getting something to work.

Maybe I'll go back later and implement AI's optimized coding.  Maybe not.  There's something to be said for pride of human workmanship rather than the sterile perfection of AI.

And I'm happy that, at 82, my mind is still capable of learning new approaches to coding.

Note: I asked AI to illustrate the concept. It took about 10 seconds. I couldn't have done it in 10 years.

More: Version 12.8.1

Every time I demonstrate the EZchecklist to a new, or returning, user, I learn something. Recently I was going through the features and usage and it hit me that a certain use case could be simplified a good bit and I got right to work on it, and... tada! Version 12.8.1.  But the goodness really deserves a version 12.9 or even 13 because it's just that excellent.

The old custom menu is replaced with a drop down in A1 for selecting the number of days to display.

And, something I've wanted for soooo long: when a new day is automatically created, it will be included in the number of days already selected. So, when you have, say, 7 days selected for analysis/comparison/whatever, now you won't get 8 days when a new column is added each morning. Is it just me, or is that a big deal?

The old custom menu was giving me fits. It showed up on every sheet, even though it should show only on the "Checklist" sheet.  If it was used on the "Dashboard" sheet, it would call or sorts of havoc and an out of sync condition with the Checklist sheet. It was madness. Now the menu is only on the Checklist sheet and all is right with the world.

Many cosmetic changes.

Updated User Guide

On January 15, 2025 it will be 10 years that I have been using and improving EZchecklist.