Wonderful Day (for iPhone)

A fellow comedian once asked Jerry Seinfeld how he became successful. Seinfeld answered that the trick is to work hard by writing jokes every single day, and that his motivational strategy is to keep a calendar above his desk. Every day that he writes jokes, he puts an X on that day. Pretty soon he sees a chain of Xs that he doesn't want to break. And that philosophy is the basis of a little iPhone app called Wonderful Day (99 cents).

Write your goals or ambitions that you will only accomplish through routine progress into the app, and check off day by day when you do them. A string of green dots marks success. Red dots break the chain when you slack off and don't do the things you promised yourself you'd do.

Wonderful Day works simply?too simply for a paid app, in my opinion. It's light on features and just not very sophisticated. You can add tasks at any time and indicate the days of the week when you wish to complete them, as not all tasks make sense to do seven days a week. For example, one of my goals, "Bicycle to work," isn't applicable on Saturdays and Sundays. Push notifications (those iPhone reminders you see on your locked screen) are included, but not much other functionality is. Based on the premise of the app, I could dream up many other features. Here's one: In the app, you can go back to any day at any time for any task and change the yes/no input about whether you completed the task.

Or how about making it more difficult to change your answers, so that you can't lie to yourself about what you have or haven't done? Or maybe the app might have some sharing features, so that I can send a Twitter message with one touch that reads, "I bicycled to work 10 days straight!" Or what about sending me a motivational message, either by push notification or email, if I miss my goals for too many consecutive days?

The main page does announce, under each goal, a short summary of your status, such as "Good" or "Awesome," but that's not the same as seeing a custom reminder that motivates you the way you want to be motivated. I'd like to write my own note to my future self saying something like, "You know you really want to reach this goal, and the only way is through consistent and daily practice."

I love the concept of the Wonderful Day app, but it's so minimal I have a hard time recommending anyone pay 99 cents for it.

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