Dash

Examples

Built for exercise snacking. Used for a lot more.

A grid doesn't know what it's counting. Give it a shape, a unit and a goal and it will keep the score for anything you do a little of, often — water, fruit and veg, breaks from the screen, the cat's dinner. Below are twelve grids as they look on the wall, from the ones we run every day to one we hope nobody does.

Move — Upper: 9 of 8 hours, a 3-day run, boxes 07 to 21 each showing the exercise done, one hour crossed
Exercise snackingPress-ups every hour, and a nag if two hours go by. The original.
Liquids: 2.63 of 2 L, six drinks as boxes with their sizes, the week beside
WaterEvery glass, can and bottle is one tap; two litres goes green. Coffee counts. So does wine.
Breaks: 7 of 8, boxes 09 to 18, one hour crossed
Screen breaksStand up once an hour, or the box starts to flash. For people who'd never open a fitness app.
Cat — fed: 2 of 2, Breakfast and Dinner boxes both filled with the bowl glyph, an 8-day run
Pet feedingTwo boxes a day, shared with the house, each saying who filled it. The cat's opinion no longer counts.
Physio: 40 of 60 reps, four sets of ten filled, two boxes to go
Physio homeworkSix sets of ten, in any order. Share it read-only and the physio sees them before your next appointment.
Meds & Supplements: 2 of 3, Morning meds and Vitamin D filled, the evening box empty
MedsOrder-free boxes, a nag at nine if the evening one is empty, and a carer who can log or a relative who can look.
Fruit & Veg: 5 of 5, five green boxes — berries, smoothie, fruit, salad, cooked veg — and two spare
Five a daySeven boxes, green at five. Ticks, not grams — nobody weighs a banana.
Calories: 2340 against a 1900–2200 range, tally in amber, '140kcal over'
Calories in a rangeA floor and a ceiling. Green in between; amber, run broken, nags silent past the top.
Coffee: 2 of a ceiling of 3, two cups filled, the third box outlined
Cutting downA ceiling and no floor. It says nothing all day, then marks the morning after. The fourth coffee is still yours to decide.
Feeds: 610 ml across five bottles of 90 to 150 ml
A baby, two parentsMillilitres, logged from either phone, each box saying who — and a 2am feed lands on the night it belonged to.
Deep work: 1h15 of 1h40, three 25-minute blocks filled, one to go
Focus blocksFour boxes of 25 minutes, a nag at four o'clock if you're short, and Trends showing when they actually happen.
Dead drop: three boxes — pigeons 83, a walk in the park 79, pigeons 83 — which is S, O, S in ASCII
Dead dropShared read-only with one other. The numbers are the message; the pigeons are a decoy. Not endorsed by any government, and the cat knows nothing.