LifeCharge 2 is here!
We built the first LifeCharge prototype 12 months ago. Since then, we’ve tracked over 2000 of life’s victories and defeats.
Along the way we learned some important lessons that shaped how we we built LifeCharge 2.
We’ve said before that LifeCharge is like analytics for your life. Well, performing analytics on your life for 12 months can lead to some profound lessons.
Before we describe what’s new in LifeCharge 2, here are a few we would like to share:
Lessons Learned
Some ups and downs are bigger than others
My dog passed away about 1 month after I started using LifeCharge. She had a heart attack, and dies in the back of my car on the way to the veterinarian. It was awful. I desperately wanted to put in a -1000 charge, but we only supported +/- 1 at the time. I entered about 15 -1’s instead.
After a lot of thought, we added three sizes, small (1), medium (3) and large (9) to allow you to reflect the magnitude of the event you are entering.
Why 1-3-9? This is actually based on sizing used in Lean Six Sigma Kaizen sessions. The rough idea is that you need to scale non-linearly, and have a small subset of values to choose from in order to simply but accurately reflect magnitude.
Something like that 🙂
People don’t want to be asked What’s Sizzlin’ at 2:30am
There was an oft-reported bug in LifeCharge reminders that caused them to go off at odd hours. We’re sorry for the lost sleep, and believe it is all better in LifeCharge 2. (Sorry!)
Understanding what is good in your life is valuable
As you begin to understand what is contributing positively to your life, you can start to find ways to create positive events in your life.
Everything is not sunshine and puppy dogs all the time for anyone, and when the dark days come it is helpful to know what is going to give you a lift.
As you get more knowledge about yourself, you can start doing things like spreading the good across your day, your week, or your month to keep the dark days at bay.
It’s fun and helpful to look back on old entries
Knowing what was getting you down 9 months ago can give you a lot of perspective.
Sometimes, you look back and laugh, because a problem that seemed so huge at the time turned out to be nothing. Suddenly you wonder about your current problems, and whether they are no big deal either.
Maybe, like your grandma said, ‘This too shall pass’.
Other times, you look back and think about how bad things used to be, and it makes you appreciate how far you’ve come.
The best times are when you look back and remember the good times that you had totally forgotten. Which is why we built Flashbacks into LifeCharge 2. Hey, since we are talking about LifeCharge 2 anyway:
About LifeCharge 2
There is some great new stuff in LifeCharge 2 that we think you are going to love. Some of the new features are part of what we call ‘LifeCharge+’, which is an in-app upgrade to LifeCharge. We won’t go through them all, but below are a few of the bigger additions.
Photo Charges
Add photos to your charge entries and view them on the charge timeline.
Custom Wallpaper
Select photos from your camera roll to use as the background for your LifeCharge home screen.
Flashbacks
Get a reminder of something great from the past, once a day.
URL Scheme support
Create entries in LifeCharge from other Apps like LaunchCenterPro.
Summary
We’ve learned a lot from LifeCharge, and from the people that use LifeCharge over the past year, and we hope you will continue to find it useful in your life, and share with us your ideas on how to improve.
Happy Charging.