Impulse: Mindful Tracking [iPhone]

This App was inspired by Leo Babauta's The Brief Guide to Mindfulness. In it he describes:

"I learned this when I wanted to quit smoking — often I'd just give in to the urge to smoke, without knowing why. The same was true of changing my old unhealthy eating habits, or starting the running habit, or waking up early. Rationalization and urges get in the way of all habit change, but we often don't even realize it's going on.

What I did with smoking was carry around a little piece of paper and pencil, and make tally marks each time I had the urge to smoke. This taught me an awareness of my normally unseen urges.

Once I had that awareness, I was able to watch the urge rise and fade away, without needing to act on it. I was able to listen to the rationalizations, without believing them, and recognize them for the lies they were. I was lying to myself all the time, but didn't realize it until I started paying attention."

Impluse provides a way of quickly tracking all kinds of desires (or impulses). For each kind of desire (and you might only want to track one, that is fine) choose a colour (from the five at the bottom). If you are recording in the moment just tap save.

But you can also dial in a time from the clock selector (choosing AM or PM appropriately) and then day from the top day selector for a time in the last week to record previous instances of an impulse.

Tap on Log to view your log with charts and a list of recordings. The average for hours or days is the lighter bar in the background.

Tap on edit to explicitly name your Impulse and to customise the on record message. You can also remove all recordings for this colour (if for example you want to change to tracking something else or are making a fresh start). If it something embarrassing you don't have to name it (just use the colour).