Those of you following the blog from the beginning may remember my love of (almost unread) self help books. One of these is The Life Audit by Caroline Righton.
I've had this book since 2009 and even spent an extra £10 purchasing electronic pdf copies of the paperwork to save damaging the book by writing my inner most thoughts into it. But as you might expect from me I never quite got round to doing the audit properly. It was just too big a task to take on. However, I had visited The Life Audit website for some reason (can't remember why now) and noticed that an app (program for smart phones) was being developed. So I kept checking back at the page or checking the App Store whenever I did updates to see if it had been released.
Then on the 10 December I noticed it had but with the shocking price of £4.99. I don't, unless absolutely desperate and it comes highly recommended, pay for apps and even then would only pay 69p at most. But I'd been waiting for it and it would finally help me do the audit and get something back from having purchased the book and paperwork. It would have a fab way to record all the things, like the daily time log (how easy could technology make recording such stuff, housework planner, storage stock take, etc. I naively felt the app must be good for the author to be willing to charge £4.99. You'd have to be really proud of it and feel it was more than able to compete with the vast array of free apps, for example, like one of my favourites - My Fitness Pal.
I was naive, some would call me stupid and as stupid is apparently as stupid does I'm afraid I'd have to agree with them. I installed the app and opened it and straight away it looked disappointing. The book contains some 48 charts covering areas such as time, health, relationships, home, money, work, leisure, citzenship, etc. Here are some screen shot of the The Life Audit app....
This is the screen you get when you select activities.
You can record activities under the categories shown on the left. At £4.99 I'd want a little flexibility as to how these were labelled. Also, once you select them the clock starts. Fantastic. You just have to remember to stop it when you finish that type of activity and start the next one. The first activity recorded fine; the next one didn't but there is not a way to manually add the time that was 'lost'. I tried again and the app failed again so this is not fit for purpose at all. Not worthy of a free app let alone one that costs, yes, £4.99.
You can also record in the Journal section. By filling in the ???. It looks like you have a fair few characters to write your thoughts when you click on it but if you write too much then when you click okay it disappears and you have to start again. Which ironically is a waste of the time the book is trying to save you!
You can add notes to all the other sections. But really people are NOT going to just note down what they have consumed when they can scan the bar codes in My Fitness Pal and have a compete FREE breakdown of the nutrients and calories the food they have eaten contain; giving them instant tracking of their calorie intake.
And when you want to view the journal - this is what you get. I don't know if they thought they were being fancy or whether they had just got bored by then but really it's blurred!!
I used the app for less than a day and that was with trying to justify that I hadn't wasted my money. But you know what - I have. Please don't waste yours. This is not good enough. Not good enough at all. I wouldn't even recommend to the author to give the app away for free. The app should be driving sales of the book but right now it will drive sales away. If it were me I would refund everyone's money and pull the app from the store before more damage is done. Then I would go away and do my research properly. My Fitness Pal links with other apps and may be there would be room for My Life Audit to link to My Fitness Pal who could cover off the recording of food consumed. Why reinvent the wheel when someone has already perfected it. Then I would develop the parts of the Life Audit that can't be found elsewhere. Once I'd got a product that I was happy with and that worked for me and my friends. Then I would offer it for free and build up a bit of reputation off before finally, maybe, putting it on for 69p.
Anyway, hope the review helps because buying the Life Audit app certainly did not help me on the path to me discovering me.
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