Hi, I’m Jon. I’m building APPA - The Anti-Productivity Productivity App. It encourages a values-centered approach to productivity. Instead of doing more, we want to help you do what matters. Here I plan to regularly share the insights from my own usage of APPA.

Fitness And Mood

I generally know that physical exercise can help strengthen both body and mind, improving mental health and mood. And it was interesting to see that actually play out in my own data too.

Insight from September 2026. It reads, 'On days you tagged items with Fitness, you tended to have the lowest negative energy among your repeated values.'

I can’t say it’s made me feel more excited to exert myself and do some of the tough workouts. But I do at least understand the importance and effect it has for me, along with the tracking data to back it up.

Sickness Breaks the Routine

On the other side of the health coin, I got sick with a cold in the second half of the month. Being productive and jotting down end-of-day reflections was often the last thing I was thinking about.

Calendar from September 2026. Value alignment and affect trends charts from September 2026. Shows a gap in data from September 17 to the 26th.

So my graphs show a sizable gap from September 17 to the 26th. Maybe unfortunate, but I also don’t feel like anything’s been lost in that. There isn’t a streak I felt guilted into trying to maintain. And the reality of those days was that productivity and journaling just weren’t going to be as important as resting and recovering.

Reflections Moving to the Morning

One thing I’ve started to recognize for myself is that doing reflections at the end of the day can often be challenging. Mostly it’s that I’m tired and I’d rather just lazily unwind my mind. So instead of forcing it at night, I’d come back in the morning to both reflect on the previous day and prep for the current one.

And that’s been working ok for me! But it does feel a little clunky in the app. So this month, I’m considering some updates that can make this morning reflection and planning process feel a little more natural to do. More to come!

Visit https://theappa.app to learn more and download the app.