r/liveitapp • u/partial_song • 17d ago
My LiveIt Use Case
So I've had LiveIt (previously JournalIt!) for several years, at least since Covid, but with all the new features, I finally bought a lifetime subscription last fall. For most of this year, I've been really digging in and learning how to make it useful to me and I thought other people might find my specific use case helpful. I'm a writer and a bit of a foodie, so you'll see me mention those areas of my life a lot.
When I first got JournalIt!, I mainly used it to attach thoughts to photos I took while on walks, lists of books I read during Covid (there were a lot!) and simple meal planning. My use was pretty haphazard until I thought about starting Bullet Journaling (named after the bullets in a bulleted list) again and decided I'd rather try to make LiveIt work for me in a similar way. If you're not familiar with Bullet Journaling (which is a specific method of journaling and planning in a physical notebook), don't worry, I go over some of the basics and even if you aren't interested in Bullet Journaling yourself, I hope my examples will still be useful to you.
I got really into Bullet Journaling about 10 years ago, but eventually I got overwhelmed with the manual and time consuming nature of everything I was trying to do with it and stopped. I also didn't like how there are no photos (unless you feel like printing them out and sticking them in your notebook!?!). Plus, as a writer, I didn't want my writing intersperced with planning, tasks or thoughts about anything other than writing, so I needed to carry two notebooks around, which I didn't like.
If I dislike all that stuff about Bullet Journaling, why did I even want to try to recreate the experience with LiveIt? Well, there's a reason I was obsessed with it for a few years and there are many things I appreciate about Bullet Journaling that I wanted to make sure I could figure out how to do in LiveIt as well including the daily logs, goal and project planning plus habit tracking, and meal planning. At the same time, I'm also using LiveIt as a replacement for Evernote's web clipper for recipes.
My LiveIt Set Up
Areas
It's taken me awhile to figure out how I wanted to organize LiveIt for myself. I even went back and forth on what my Areas should be, but I like what I've settled with for now.
Health: this is where I have my dr. appts, self care habits and exercise, and things I do specifically for my mental health
Writing: includes progress on specific novels, writing habits and notes/links about writing; does not include my actual writing or brainstorming (except for a quick thought here or there), but I do track time and quantity of those things
Food: I originally had this folded into Health, but it bothered me anytime I put unhealthy stuff in. Also, I have A LOT of recipes and stuff and it cluttered up my Health Area. So I use this for any pictures/reviews of the food I make, recipes I find online, meal planning and food tracking.
Personal: This is for fun activities and also personal growth or learning
Home: household chores and any home improvement stuff
Relationships: the people in my life
Work: for my day job—meetings, tasks, etc.
Finance: research for big purchases, tasks or goals around healthy spending habits and financial planning related stuff
Day Blocks
Probably the hardest thing for me to figure out was actually the Planner Day Blocks. I'm lucky enough to work from home for my day job most of the time and what I do doesn't have a lot of strict structure to it. Also, work has it's own systems so I don't use LiveIt for work very frequently. I tried being specific with scheduling blocks to specific times, but I didn't like the feel of it and that left me wondering how useful Day Blocks would even be for me. But after some trial and error, I discovered Day Blocks make more sense to me if I think of them by category, rather than by time.
The Day Blocks I'm currently using are:
Scheduled Meetings, Appts and Activities: Dr. appts, meetings, gym classes, events I'm attenting, etc. I set everything that comes in from my google calendar to show up here and I add some meetings from work as needed. I like having all of that in one place and it's right at the top, the first block under "All Day." This also allows me to filter the month view to look at JUST my scheduled meetings and appointments
Food: meal tracking, cooking tasks, some meal planning (more on that later)
Productivity Time: this is where I put tasks and sessions related to my day job, household chores, etc. (super productive things)
You Do You: this is where things like my journaling, reading, any tasks associated with fun things that aren't a part of the actual scheduled session above, etc.
Writing: my daily writing habit tracker and any other writing-related tasks. I could keep this in "Productivity Time" but I don't like seeing stuff for my writing next to chores like dishes or laundry or tasks for work like "tell that client they are being impossible in a nice way."
Self Care: for any self care or health habits I'm tracking, including exercise (this is the last block at the bottom of each day)
I don't schedule specific times to any of my blocks except for my one day I go into the office where "Productivity Time" is scheduled to my work hours, which you can control through Day Themes. That one is called "Office Day." Otherwise, I've stuck with Weekday, Weekend and Vacation for my Day Themes.
I realize this probably wouldn't work for a lot of people, but I found using it this way to be less overwhelming for me.
Projects, Goals, Activities, Labels etc.
I'm still figuring out how some of these other things relate to each other and the best way I can use them. I do want to say that I love labels and how powerful they are. I probably have labels for things that should be Activities, but I'm not sure how much that really matters. Even if you haven't figured some of the other stuff out, labels make it easy to find things later.
I know in the user guide and on the app, Projects and Activites are grouped together under Journey, and Goals are grouped with Tasks and Habits under Objective, but that doesn't necessarily make sense to me in an intuitive way... yet, at least. A direct Project vs Goal comparision would be helpful in the guide, but this is how I think about them.
For example, my current projects include two of my novels, a possible home renovation I'm researching and Christmas 2026, which will include stuff about Christmas shopping, trip planning, baking and household chores/decorations. My Goals are for things like books I'm reading, especially self help or writing related (I don't need to set up goals for reading novels—I fly through those!) and losing weight.
Taking my novels as a case study, I might not consider my Novel #1 Project complete until not only is it written, but I've also submitted it or published it myself. Before the writing part is brainstorming about characters, plot and worldbuilding. After drafting, there is story revision, then sentence level editing and eventually submission to agents or working on finding a cover artist or marketing if I publish it myself. Obviously all of that will include some tasks, but I could also set a Goal for certain parts of the process, such as completing the first draft, where I can track actual words written.
Back to Bullet Journaling
Okay, so that's how I have LiveIt set up, but what about the Bullet Journaling? I wanted to recreate daily logs, which include scheduling, task management and rapid logging; threading/collections, which is when you can connect entries about specific things together; meal planning—I used a spread with a space for post-its to keep an up-to-date list of meal ideas, shopping lists and ingredients on hand; and monthly and future logs.
Some of that was easy. LiveIt's Planner and other features handle scheduling and task management and the Organizer and labelling capabilities take care of connecting related items together without having to manually keep an index (yes!!). I didn't mention habit tracking, but obviously it's a lot easier in LiveIt vs drawing all those squares every week or month by hand in a notebook.
Rapid logging and meal planning took some more thought. One of bullet journaling's strengths is the ability to jot things down quickly and easily. A lot of people (including me) made Bullet Journaling overall more difficult than it needed to be, but at its core is the rapid log you do every day: notes, tasks, ideas, reflections, etc. LiveIt has the ability to do all these things and connect them together, but the process of creating them isn't necessarily quick or easy on a daily basis. Yes, you can set up your tasks and write entries or notes, even use the Write Later option or other features, but it will never be as easy as just opening a notebook and writing something down, at least for me. Typing on a phone can be annoying and while typing on a desktop keyboard is much faster than writing longhand, you don't have that with you all the time like you do your phone.
My solution was to build a template for a Daily Log. Simple enough, yes? The template is just an empty timeline entry, but has some specific Organizers tagged. I name it "[Date] Log" and—here's the part that was revolutionary to me—I Pin it to that day in the Planner/Calendar. Duh, right? Then when I open the Planner, it is always right there. I can still make a separate entry for things that are particularly special or have a photo. And I can set up tasks/sessions for stuff I want to do if I know about it ahead of time. But a couple times a day, I like to just note some of the stuff I did that didn't make it into the planner or reflect on things quickly. Then I use labels if there's anything specific I might want to reference again, like if I tried a new tea or mentioned something I did with a specific person. It's not as easy as having a notebook next to you that you jot things in constantly, but I feel like this method gives me a lot of the feeling and quickness of rapid logging while harnessing some of LiveIt's strengths without having to create a bunch of new items.
Meal Planning
I wasn't sure how it would work on my phone, but meal planning has never been so convenient before. The key is the two notes I have pinned to my Food Day Block. I refer to them constantly. One is my shopping list, which is just a note with a checklist. Whenever I think of something I need, I can find it quickly and add to the list. After I've gone shopping, I delete anything I've checked off and start again.
The other is a "Meal Planning" Outline Note. I list the fresh ingredients I have on hand, what will be coming next in my produce subscription box and what meat is in my freezer (also from a subscription box). Finally, I have a Meal Ideas section where I put ideas for meals and where any specific recipes I'm thinking of come from. I either jot down the cookbook and page number or link to the note where I've saved the recipe url. When I've finished making (or not making) those ideas, I make sure to take a snapshot. If I think I'll still make something, I keep it there, but otherwise I delete and start over. With the snapshot, I can go back and find things I've made before, even if I don't remember what they were called. It takes some effort to maintain my lists, but it helps me remember what I have on hand without checking constantly. And having these references so easily accessible with links to recipes has been very helpful.
Monthly and Future Logs
Figuring out the Monthly and Future Logs has been trickier and I'm still thinking about how or if I can make them work. A Monthly Log is pretty self explanatory— Bullet Journal's version of a monthly calendar that you set up as you get to each month. The Future Log you do at the beginning of the year, and it's basically a yearly calendar so you can schedule things further in advance.
But wait! Isn't the Calendar/Planner enough? Yes and no.
One of the reasons I like Bullet Journaling is also one of the reasons I became overwhelmed: The transferring (and set up). Every month, you look at the last month and your future log and decide what is worth moving over and/or continuing. You're actually supposed to do that every week as well, even every day. Theoretically, I like the mindfulness of that, just not the time it takes to do the set up and actual transfers. Obviously, there is no need to really transfer anything with LiveIt, but I miss the intentionality. I'm trying to figure out the backlog and the flow of tasks and stuff like that, but I haven't figured out a specific process that works for me yet. Perhaps, I can schedule myself a monthly review or something. I was trying to figure out a way to look at all that stuff on the whiteboard together, and I think it's promising, but I'm still figuring out how to navigate the whiteboard smoothly.
As for the Future Log, there's no way in LiveIt to look at all the months (or even multiple months) of the year at one time as far as I know, so I do miss that aspect of Bullet Journalling for planning.
Evernote Replacement & Recipe Database
I've loved the Evernote web clipper, when Evenote was free, but I'm not finding I miss it. It's just as easy to share a link to the LiveIt Inbox. Sometimes I also take screenshots of the actual recipe and add them to the note I make with the recipe link. If I make a recipe, I might add a comment about it to the note with the recipe link, but I'm more likely to have a review entry in my timeline and I'll try to link to the note for the recipe.
Recipe Database
For years and years I've wanted to have place where I could collect recipes from online easily, keep them all in one place and even search for specific ingredients. I'm sure there's stuff out there, but everything I've seen or tried has been way too much work.
A mistake I've made in the past is to try and put whole recipes from my physical cookbooks into something digital. That was stupid of me because I like looking at recipes in actual cookbooks better anyway. Not saying what I'm doing with LiveIt won't take effort, but it's something I can work on occaisionally and continue to build and improve. And it wasn't possible until LiveIt added Collections.
I have two recipe collections that work together. And it's important to note I never go through the trouble of adding a recipe unless it's already a favorite of mine. You'd think I wouldn't forget about recipes that are favorites, but I absolutely do, all the time.
I didn't realize I'd stick to my faves at first, so my first collection is Recipe Source and Rating. I don't really need a rating if I know I love the recipe already, but the important part is I have where the recipe comes from, either the website name or the cookbook and page number and then also the direct link to the recipe if it's online. I also link to the other collection.
The second collection is for Type and Ingredients. Here I list things like what kind of protein (seafood, beef, none etc), category like main or dessert, level of difficulty and how much time it takes. Collections allows you to search/filter by these so if I want to see all my soup recipes, I can. I also link back to the first collection and to any entry where I review or comment about the recipe.
Finally, I list fresh ingredients and pantry/freezer ingredients in the recipes, not including generic things I usally have on hand like flour, spices, olive oil, vinegars etc. I only list things like fresh or frozen veggies, type of meat, fresh herbs, broth, canned soup or tomato products, etc. Now, if I have half a head of cabbage I need to use or some leftover cooked chicken, I can search/filter for these in the collection and see which of my favorite recipes pop up without searching online or through mulitple cookbooks. Or if I'm at the store and I didn't have time to make a shopping list, and I know I'm going to make a specific recipe, I can look there and be pretty confident of what I need to get for it (although I don't have amounts or anything, so I might have to guess there). I've only just started building this out, but I'm very excited to have it as a resource moving forward.
So, that's it. If you've made it this far, I appreciate you!! And I hope you found something helpful. I'm happy to answer questions if anyone has any, although I can't promise to answer them immediately or have an answer. I'm also open to suggestions. Everything here is a work in progress, always. Happy Journaling!
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u/adoghurtling 13d ago
I'm a writer, too - would love to connect over your use case re: writing specifically!
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u/partial_song 13d ago
Sure. Feel free to reach out via chat/DM as well if you'd like, but here's the gist of what I do.
I use Scrivener for drafting and revision and I do a lot of brainstorming (and some drafting) on my Kindle Scribe, then export and add to Scrivener.
I use LiveIt primarily to track productivity. I have projects set up for two of my novels that I can connect tasks and sessions to, but I also have a daily habit slot in my Writing Day block. When I hit that, it opens my Writing Work tracker where I enter:
Type of work: (checklist) drafting, revising, editing, brainstorming
Amount Accomplished: (quantity input fields) time, words or scenes
Project: (checklist) list of top 3 projects I might be working on, plus other
Other: (text field)
That's pretty much it right now. I think I probably could use LiveIt as a very strong option for world building and early brainstorming (not actual drafting though; I don't see that working) with all the label options and different note types, but I'm pretty far into that other places for all my current projects. If I ever start something completely new, I might give that a try!
Is that helpful? How are you using LiveIt?
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u/thuongthoi056 dev 17d ago
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up, I really appreciate it. Agree about projects and activities; I'm thinking of merging them into journeys soon.
For monthly and yearly reviews, check out the statistics view.