A command-line tool for keeping tallies.
npm install -g tlly
I've always kept tallies. I've done this for both practical and obsessive reasons.
Practical: if I keep track of how many times I've exercised or meditated, I find willpower. Simply making tick-marks on a piece of paper increases my stamina. Sure, this is silly. But what's life without magical thinking?
Obsessive: I like to count. I count all the times my cat has taken bites out of the sofa (47), the number times I've forgotten my wallet (16), the days that have elapsed since I promised I'd clean out the garage (129), and so on.
Pointless and a little off-kilter? Yup. Good thing I also tally home many times I've taken my meds! (I kid, I kid.)
Jerry Seinfeld (Yes, that Jerry Seinfeld) invented a super-simple productivity system. Each day that he worked on his act, he made an X through that day's calendar entry--with the goal of never breaking the chain of Xes.
Seinfeld's method has become my willpower superpower! Instead of a calendar, I just increase a count. First day of meditation = 1, second day = 2, third day = 3... I think of it as my score.
But if, after ten days (with a score of 10), I get lazy and skip a day of meditation, my score goes back to zero. The prospect of which fills me with such existential dread, I meditate even if I have the flu or have to yank myself away from binge-watching reruns of "Sex in the City".
For years, I've wanted a simple command-line tool for keeping tallies. Not GTD. Not a todo app. Something much mure simpler--something I can use almost without thinking. I searched, found nothing suitable, heard Gleb's say "Do a project," and built it myself.
By default, tallies are stored in .tllydb.json in your home directory. If you'd like to store them elsewhere (such as in your Dropbox folder), edit [your home directory]/.tlly-config.json, setting dbLocation to whatever directory you want. (Please use the full path.)
tlly --help displays the text of "War and Peace." Just kidding. It displays help.
tlly exercise 5 adds 5 to your exercise tally, creating the tally if it doesn't exist.
tlly exercise adds 1 to the exercise tally.
tlly adds 1 to the most recent tally.
tlly -c exercise displays the current total for exercise.
tlly -c displays the current totals for all of your tallies.
tlly -t exercise displays all the changes to exercise, sorted by timestamp.
tlly -t displays all changes to all tallies, sorted by timestamp.
tlly --delete exercise deletes the exercise tally. If you then do tlly exercise, you start over at 1.
tlly -s exercise displays how many contiguous days leading up to today you've exercised. ("s" is for Seinfeld!)
tlly -s displays the number contiguous days leading up to today for all tallies.
tlly exercise 2018-06-31 timestamps a tally with a specified date (ISO format).
When you're first playing with tlly, you may want to try out Seinfeld mode, but it's not much fun until you'll done something for a few days and then, perhaps, skipped a day.
So run tlly --demo, which will add _exercise _mediation to your tallies, setting both to 9, as if you'd been exercising and meditating for 9 days. (The underscores are to keep them from messing up existing tallies with the names "exercise" and "meditation".)
If you then run tlly -c you'll see 9 for both.
But if you run tlly -s you'll see that _meditation has been reset to zero. To see why, run tlly -t. As you'll see, you skipped a couple of days of meditating.
How un-Zen of you!
$ tlly --demo
Added tally _exercise
Added tally _meditation
$ tlly -c
_exercise: 9
_meditation: 9
$ tlly -s
_exercise: 9
_meditation: 0
tlly -t
_exercise: 1 (Sat, 04 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Sun, 05 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Mon, 06 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Tue, 07 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Wed, 08 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Thu, 09 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Fri, 10 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Sat, 11 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_exercise: 1 (Sun, 12 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Thu, 02 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Fri, 03 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Sat, 04 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Sun, 05 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Mon, 06 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Tue, 07 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Wed, 08 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Thu, 09 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
_meditation: 1 (Fri, 10 Aug 2018 23:50:26 GMT)
$ tlly _exercise 100
_exercise: 109
$ tlly _exercise
_exercise: 110
$ tlly
_exercise: 111
$ tlly
_exercise: 112
$ tlly _meditation
_meditation: 10
$ tlly
_meditation: 11
$ tlly insomnia
insomnia: 1
$ tlly
insomnia: 2
$ tlly --delete _exercise
$ tlly -c
_meditation: 11
insomnia: 2
npm run build
npm test
This app uses lowdb, because most of my work involves heavy-lifter DBs, such as postgres. I wanted to tlly try-something-different.
- get, parse, command-line arguments
- add help
- add new tallies
- increment/decrement tallies
- display tally counts
- delete tally
- display tally by date
- display contiguous tallies
- add tally with arbitrary date
- add demo
- configure storage location (e.g. for dropbox)
- readme
- npm setup + publish
- [] recalc contiguous after user adds arbitrary timestamp, which might have plugged a gap
- [] display arbitrary list of tallies (tlly -c exercise meditation)
- [] display tallies for a particular date
- [] display tallies for a range of dates
- [] allow days off for contiguous (e.g. weekends)
- [] badges (e.g. when you exercise X number of contiguous days, you get praised)
- [] due to lowdb bug, sync fails in some cases[1]. Maybe switch everything to async
- [] optionally display recent contiguous tally as some sort of chain: xxxxx
Your simple words "Do a project" made me finally do a project I'd procrastinated on for year. This is something I'll use every day.
Now please say "Clean out the garage!" My wife will thank you.