A personal journal and goal tracker - almost out of the iPhone box

I have created a micro journal/goal setup on my iPhone, built with stuff already on my iPhone, on my Google account, and connecting them through a site called IFTTT (If This Then That).

Here's the work flow for keeping track of different activities in my journal:

• On my iPhone I click on a "Journal" icon on my homescreen
• I select a topic from a list, for example "Run", add a count (for example of how many kilometers) and can also enter some notes if I like
• Every early morning I get an email, either of celebration if I have achieved a goal, or of encouragement if I'm still not quite there

How this journal/goal setup works:

• Go to IFTTT, sign up and create a webhook that triggers a google sheet
• It is very well described in this article how to do that: iOS Shortcuts for Data Capture (go down to the section called "Via IFTTT")
• So, by following that guide you'll now have a shortcut icon on your iPhone that adds a row to a Google sheet
• To create an email notification with some stats, open that spreadsheet
• I have named the first tab where the rows are added "Hændelser" (Danish for "events")

• I have created a second tab called "Mål" which contains my weekly or monthly goals

• In your spreadsheet, go to the menu bar and select Tools and then Script Editor
• Enter the following script, which will aggregate your data and send you an email:
• Google app script that creates status mail from journal
• Remember to change the names of your sheets, if you have named them differently than I have
• In the script, go to Edit and then Triggers For The Current Project
• Add a new trigger that calls the top level function "sendGoalStatus"
• I have set it to run every morning

Every morning when I wake up, I have a fresh status of what I've done, and how far I am towards reaching my goals.