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Ask HN: Anyone using or working on a life dashboard?

22 points by helghardt ↗ HN
Finances, health, contacts, will, contracts, goals, reminders, sleep, all in one place.

Apple is probably the best version of this. I guess data collection and syncing is tricky. But now with more AI at our hands, perhaps this is becoming more viable.

Curious if anyone is using something or working on a solution for this?

25 comments

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eternityforest
Seems like it would benefit from some kind of standard protocol. Perhaps just and extension of RSS feeds or the like? A life dashboard seems like it would just be a feed reader.
helghardt
That is an interesting angle yeah.
stevenicr
So, a private netvibes / pageflakes / my.yahoo startpage kind of thing to sort data - perhaps from a private wordpress install as keiferski mentioned above might work.
samsquire
I wrote some notes about this of what I want in my "life engine":

https://github.com/samsquire/ideas#5-life-engine

I never got into the quantified self but I did want a portal (such as similar to the Yahoo! and Excite.com days) in the early 2000s. of personal facts that I can take actions on.

Then a few years later I wrote about "life situational awareness apps"

I want my phone and desktop computer system tray to have widgets for "accommodation", "travel", "food". I didn't want to have to open a website or app to order food, stay in a hotel or travel, just select what I'm eating/sleeping/travelling from a slideout menu and all the details are worked out by the computer.

https://github.com/samsquire/ideas3#59-life-indicators---sit...

(It was related to my lifestyle subscriptions idea that you can pay for a week or month of travel, acommodation or food) and you receive it seamlessly https://lifestyle-subscriptions.com

I did write a question generator feed dashboard written in Electron that let you snap in data collectors that would let you save records of stock purchases and facts about yourself such as your salary. The idea is that you could get advice based on what you answer.

https://github.com/samsquire/living-documents

https://github.com/samsquire/living-documents-library (the app repository)

Unfortunately it's probably not buildable and I forgot to take screenshots or videos.

here's me provisoning questions in the database:

https://github.com/samsquire/living-documents/blob/master/pr...

DaveFlater
Like many others, I have looked at the subproblem of whole-life scheduling and concluded that it can't be done well. On the one hand, a scheduling system has to implement a simple model or the overhead of working with it makes its net value negative. On the other hand, you have to deal with the fractal complexity of real life situations and priorities all the way down, and no simple model can represent it all accurately.
keiferski
I have a private WordPress site with many of these things, including:

- A countdown to various events in the future (end of the quarter, next birthday, age 50, etc.) as a kind of "memento mori"

- Tracking money spent, food consumed, etc.

- A custom system that displays random items that I add to Anki every day. I explained this more in a comment from a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35211448

The data collection is pretty basic and just uses a form plugin to input and display data. I use other tools for to-dos, but I'm looking into a to-do plugin to replicate something similar.

theaussiestew
I'm working on something like this actively, would love to chat and find out a bit more about what you're looking for. Looking to launch a small pre-alpha test in the coming weeks.
helghardt
Personally, I would love something that combines a life dashboard (show me how things are going, what I can work on, etc) and a personal assistant (someone to help me plan, make sure I go the dentist, review my health insurance, renew my car license, etc. Ideally it should give an overview of all key life things: finances, health, family, will, etc. Insights should be short term, medium term and long term. I should also be able to reflect on historic data as well and ideally compare with other people my age. And then finally, the dashboard & assistant should help me prioritize things by giving specific/focused instructions.
theaussiestew
That makes sense. Currently what I'm building is something that can handle most of life's tasks which is no small feat. Things like tracking errands, finances, goals and health metrics too. What's the best way to contact you? Email?
gardenhedge
It's a nice idea in theory but ultimately I don't think it agrees with what being human is.
sdfzguf
I've thought about this for years at this point. But I haven't compiled all my thoughts into a coherent system. So I can't share anything with substance :/ It's just a dump for bullet points as of now. Also, I'm not a technical person (yet).

I haven't looked into Org mode, but this might include all you (we) need.

dynamorando
What is the end state here? A way to measure personal life KPIs? Or just building a dak board?
sdfzguf
To create a space that holds together information of a varity of data (types, format, unit, etc). This would enable a more holistic approach to themes that include multiple points of content, which itself can be linked to several themes.

Example: Download a PDF of a book. Read it. Notes derive from that. Those notes can concern a diary, quote for some other work, inspiration for art, language learning, etc. The book itself can contain text, data entries, tabular, photo, etc.

There is a multitude of possibilities to find categories for every aspect of this 'idea'. The goal is to find a (not 'the') abstraction to handle data so it is possible to work with it. As someone already mentioned, even if such a system can be found, it is unclear if this would make it easier to work with all it contains, than how we do it conventionally.

Addit: DevonThink comes closest to what I described.

dynamorando
So to me, this sounds more like building a personal knowledge base. Not a dashboard IMO.

How does this differ from other note taking apps like Obsidian?

sdfzguf
Fair point, I might not made the other aspect clear enough. This database includes data points of any kind. From tabular about financial planning to health data to calendar and time management. Not only can it hold data, but also modify (calc) entries. Things can be automated.

What this leads to ('what I imagine'), is a modular system. Very bare bone in its core form. Data is processed with editors for each data type. Editors come in the form of addons to the system. Data (and meta, params, etc) would always have to remain human readable - comparable to MarkDown or something. As you must've figured by now, I don't have a definitive picture in my head. All of this must sound very delusional or dreamy ... :)

whelton
I've been building towards something like this with Conjure[0].

I've focused more on metrics, behavior, and achievement, with a rules engine for automatically completing habits and goals off those.

As you identified, the biggest obstacle for users has been the friction and overhead of tracking at scale. Integrations and automations have decreased that a lot. Transforming unstructured input through AI is super promising, and probably will make it more accessible to people who are less of the power-user/productivity-junkie persona type.

[0] https://conjure.so