Beta yourself Track your life

BETA YOURSELF

TRACK YOUR LIFE

You don’t have to spend your time at home binging on Netflix and snacks. This is a perfect time to build some new habits. Stuff has the apps to help and the tips to keep you sane.

THE BASICS

■ Set attainable goals Time to get a grip? Before you start, don’t set yourself up for disappointment, or morale will go through the floor –and tracking kit out of the window. Go easy on yourself at first, whether attempting to eat better, reduce screen time or exercise more. Positive trends are what’s important, not blazing to the best possible you in an instant.

■ Streamline everything Tracking can rapidly become complex if you splash out on a ton of hardware and end up juggling apps. Where possible, centralise and simplify. If you can use one app for multiple types of tracking, do so. One piece of hardware over three? Great –that will save time, money and brain load.

■ Keep data private Tracking is inherently personal. That’s just as true whether monitoring food intake or keeping tabs on your Tiger King addiction. So be sure you can trust the systems you’re using with this personal data. That’s doubly important whenever money enters the equation – especially if you link financial trackers to live bank accounts.

■ Prioritise your tracking What we’re talking about here is tracking your entire life, but be reasonable: monitoring everything you do can become onerous. If you don’t fancy the busywork, decide on what you care about most. Once you’ve infused a couple of habits into your routine, there’s a good chance you’ll be hooked on the idea and will want to expand it into other areas.

■ Don’t get obsessive It’s vital to understand your motivations – and what demotivates you. If tracking something specific starts to get you down, ease up on demands or temporarily stop. For example, there’s no point tracking sleep with an app like Sleep Cycle (Android, iOS) if you get anxious about never getting your eight hours – and then end up with insomnia.

Unlock ’n’ roll

Don’t invest time and effort in systems you can’t get data out of. If export options (like the pictured one from Apple’s Health app) don’t exist, head elsewhere.

START SOLID

■ Track habits Infusing new habits into your routine requires you do them often – and tracking helps with this. Streaks (iOS), Habitica (Android, iOS) and Productive (Android, iOS) all provide flexible systems for setting and tracking such goals.

■ Watch your money Always running out of cash before payday? Then figure out where it’s all going. YNAB and Mint are popular options for complex budgeting. Expenses (Android) and Pennies (iOS) are also solid, even if only to sanity-check non-essential spending.

GET PRODUCTIVE

■ Monitor app usage Android and iOS both have app-tracking baked in, so you can check your usage. If you find you’re spending too much time in an app or game, define limits. This won’t block it but will alert you when your allocation runs out.

■ Don’t waste time Products like Harvest, Toggl (both Android, iOS), Timesheet (Android) and Hours (iOS) track working hours by project, ensuring you don’t fritter the day away. Add Bear Focus Timer (Android, iOS) to keep your attention on the task at hand.

HANDY HARDWARE

APPLE WATCH There are some decent Wear OS options for your wrist; but if you have the means and an iPhone, the Apple Watch is a superb wearable for all kinds of health tracking, from general exercise through to keeping an eye on your heart and ears. from 4 000 / myistore.co.za

BOOST YOUR BODY

■ Manage your meals MyFitnessPal (Android, iOS) tracks food intake, often via scanned barcodes. But don’t get hung up on calories. It’s usually better to boost exercise and broadly track ‘negative’ habits (like allowing a few ‘bad’ foods per week).

■ Track exercise Think about how you want to exercise, and use a system geared to your preferences and motivation. That might be Runkeeper (Android, iOS) if you like running, or Apple Watch rings for general activity.

■ Map out wellness Try using the customisable Moodflow (Android, iOS) to take stock of how you feel every day, and spot patterns that affect your mental health. For getting started with meditation, try Smiling Mind (Android, iOS).

KEEP TABS ON MEDIA

■ Tally your TV Tracking needn’t always be about health and wealth: keep tabs on shows and movies to know what’s coming up, what you’ve watched, and what you liked. Try Simkl or Trakt and related clients, such as Television Time (iOS). Letterboxd (Android, iOS) is good for films.

■ Tot up your tunes Most streaming services will serve up an annual report on what you’ve subjected your ears to over the past 12 months. But Spotify has inbuilt last.fm support so you can delve into the fine details.

WITHINGS BODY CARDIO It’s not healthy to be tormented by your weight –general fitness is more important. But this smart scale is useful to check trends, not only regarding the kilos you’re carrying but also your muscle mass and heart health. R4 760 / bigapplebuddy.com

UPRIGHT GO 2 With health, it’s relatively simple to track things like calorie intake and exercise minutes. So the Upright Go 2 hones in on posture, buzzing when you slouch. That might sound oddly specific, but it can have a real impact on how you look and feel. R3 400 / fredmuk.com

TESTED G A M E S

PS4 / playstation.com

Dreams This isn’t really a game, it’s a whole new platform for creating, consuming and sharing interactive installations . We’ll let you be in our dream if we can be in yours…

edia Molecule’s debut title, LittleBigPlanet, democratis ed game design but was restricted to user-generated 2D platforming. Dreams is an altogether more complex creator in which you make whatever you want – art, animations, music – or spend your time diving into the warped imaginations of others.

It’s tempting to head straight into game creation, but that would be a mistake. Instead, have a go at Art’s Dream , the two(ish)-hour M

campaign created by MM’s own employees. It’s a sweet tale of self-rediscovery, starring a washed - up musician who enlists childhood toys to help him get his mojo back and reconnect with his jazz band. Just go with it.

This is a showcase of just how versatile Dreams is. At one point you’re a fox, 3D - platforming in a watercolour fantasyland ; the n you’re playing a point - and - click game in a grimy back alley and watching a mean-spirited bouncer taunt you by means of a ludicrous musical number. The only pity is that this is the only campaign of any substance.

Dreams lets you create games without writing code, animations without training , and music without investing in a DAW. You really can build entire games, but first you’ll need to learn how to sculpt, paint, add text and arrange music. Good thing, then, that M M has produced tutorials and how-to videos that are, dare we say it, fun.

Creation is based around the PlayStation’s largely under - used motion controls. Once you’ve got to grips with the basics, you can create scenes using the menu tools, or remix levels uploaded by others. There are also basic templates for FPS games and ball-rolling puzzlers.

Understandably, most games in Dreams lack pro polish ; but the clunkier ones are sometimes quite endearing. The game just wants you to make something and put it out there, and we applaud anyone who makes the effort. P layermade levels will only get better.

TESTED G A M E S

In this game, superhero Stuff Man rushes to meet his copy deadline.

In this game, a mechanical elephant tries to put up an Ikea bookshelf (possibly). Creation is only half of the Dreams package. The other is Dream Surfing, essentially a social media space for creativity. When you like something you can give it as many thumbs - up gestures as you see fit. The most liked creations are browseable by setting a filter, and you can also search for games you’ve previously played, games you haven’t, and updates since you last logged in.

Best of all is Autosurf mode, which is Dreams’ version of shuffle. Spend half an hour here and you may need to lie down. One minute you’ll be playing a fairly rudimentary open-world Spider-Man game ; the next you’re gaz ing at a staggeringly accurate remake of horror classic PT or a near- photorealistic digital painting of breakfast.

In our time with Dreams we watched a piece of asparagus perform stand-up comedy, got trolled by God on the way to heaven, nearly teared up at a Freddie Mercury tribute and , perhaps most impressively of all, sampled a half-decent 3D Sonic game.

These dreams can be small snippets or multi-level RPG epics. The variety of content on display is already as astonishing as the variety of quality. Baked beans and Freddie Mercury