what are you doing? (wayd)

Couldn't find a program to do what I wanted, so I built my own. Currently very hacky.

wayd is a python script that uses launchd to pop up every 15 minutes to ask what you're doing with a text input box. Fill in your current activity and it creates/appends a markdown file named with today's date with the current time and your activity.

If this is the first time wayd has run today, it creates a new file named dd-mm-yyyy.md that looks like this:

dd.mm.yyyy

today i will

==thrive (or your own goal)==

ideas // thoughts // things i did

• time: activity

If wayd has already run or there's already a file named dd-mm-yyyy.md in the directory, then it just appends * time: activity to the end of the file.

You can keep the file open and add your own content to it as well, giving you a daily file with a mix of thoughts and timestamped activities.

dependencies

• PySimpleGUI

to use

• download wayd.py and com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist
• download dependencies with

pip3 install PySimpleGUI

• open wayd.py in your text editor and set folder_path to where you want your files saved
• open com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist in your text editor and set the first string under ProgramArguments to where your python executable is stored and the second string to where you've stored wayd.py
• use terminal to navigate to the folder with com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist and move it to your LaunchAgents folder with

mv com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

• load (start) the agent with

launchctl bootstrap gui/<user id> ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist

tips

• find your user ID by running id -u in terminal
• find where your python executable is stored by running which python3 in terminal
• stop the agent with

launchctl bootout gui/<user id> ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist

• if you want to be able to stop and start the agent with a single command, add these two lines to your .bash_profile

alias wayd_start="launchctl bootstrap gui/<user id> ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist"
alias wayd_pause="launchctl bootout gui/<user id> ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist"

* start/stop the agent by running `wayd_start` and `wayd_pause` in your terminal

• customize how often wayd runs by changing the number under StartInterval in com.kailanathaniel.wayd.plist (it's in seconds)
• customize the new file template by changing the string under #if file doesn't exist line in wayd.py
• if you don't want to run this with launchd, you can use cron, too. You don't need the .plist file, just open cron with crontab -e from any location and put in this line:

*/15 * * * * /path/to/your/python/executable /path/to/wayd.py

future

• add ability to save settings
• package as standalone app
• make it prettier