ADHD (and Energy!) Friendly App Review: Lifestack
Heads up: There is an affiliate link in here, and I may get a little something if you choose to sign up with Lifestack. That said, I never suggest anyone I wouldn’t use myself, and have in fact been using this tool every single day. I think they’re great. OK, carry on.
So, as if having ADHD wasn’t enough, I also have a couple chronic things that cause my energy to rise and fall like a Six Flags roller coaster. It’s gotten better as of late, but I still have times where I can’t seem to get a good handle on when it’s a good time to focus on what, and it can be demoralizing.
Which is why I literally ran to try out Lifestack. And I’m going to tell you why I’m so glad I did.
Of course, you can go here to watch me talk about Lifestack instead.
What is Lifestack?
Lifestack is a to-do and timeblocking app that aims to support its users a little differently, by helping them plan out their days according to their Circadian rhythm. It’s like the Rise app, but it takes your sleep health a step further.
What does Lifestack do right?
So I can already hear some of you out there shaking your head like “welp! This isn’t for me. I don’t sleep well/I’m a night owl, so this thing is just gonna drive me nuts.”
That’s the beauty of Lifestack: it’s not here to judge; it’s just here to tell you when you might want to work on that big, busy task or that small, easy task. It even tells you what your Sleep Type is, so it’s here to work with your energy type, not to try to change it.
How does it figure this out, you ask? At the moment, there are two ways that this is done. The first way is by you entering the time you fell asleep and time you woke up. The second way is by reading your sleep data through a wearable device, which is what I do. Either way, it takes the data and turns it into a neat prediction of your energy rhythms for the day, then applies that to your calendar so that you can schedule accordingly. It also keeps track of how much energy you should have according to a points system that I have to admit I don’t totally understand, but that makes me excited to login every day. I just really love seeing my “energy points;” there’s something kind of nice about seeing when your number is higher than the day before.
Lifestack also has a neat “Energy boost” feature that will suggest ways to wake yourself up during a lull, and I love the fact that it includes “naps” in there. I feel like a lot of productivity apps out there tend to avoid suggesting sleep, because heaven forbid that you do. So an app actually supporting a mid-day snooze gets extra points in my book.
You can view your calendar by day, week, or month, and you can easily import your to-do’s from well-known apps like Todoist and TickTick.
There’s also an AI scheduler that helps you figure out where certain levels of focus work should go in your calendar. At the moment, it only makes general suggestions, and doesn’t pull from your to-do list, though. Which brings me to where I talk about…
How can Lifestack improve?
For one, there’s the aforementioned AI scheduler. It’s cool, but I’d love if I could just categorize my tasks by focus type, and then have them automatically put in the right places according to my energy predictions. According to the app’s roadmap, that is on the list of things to be done, so soon this’ll be a moot complaint. But it’s not now, so I’m mentioning it.
I did have two other complaints here, but Lifestack’s team is so responsive to issues, that after I spoke with them about said complaints, they actually already fixed them. So what I said above is probably my only complaint at the moment.
Also, this is not necessarily a problem with Lifestack itself, but it is something I mentioned to them: as an app that’s so empathetic and supportive of energy management, I’d love to see some ways to adjust energy levels and expectations according to special circumstances. This could be sickness, nightmares, or being a woman, which means your hormonal and circadian cycle won’t always run on the male-driven 24-hour cycle. Lifestack has been pretty consistently correct for me, but there have been days where my motivation or energy aren’t even close to 95/100, and it would be great to indicate that or support that somehow. No one does that, so hopefully Lifestack can in the near future.
Who should use Lifestack?
This is honestly one of the rare tools I’ve come across that I think works for everyone. Stay at home parents, people who work in an office, students…I’m actually struggling to think of anyone this wouldn’t be a great addition for. Maybe people who don’t work at a computer, since the mobile app doesn’t really allow the additional of tasks yet. Or people who have severe swings in energy, because this isn’t suited to accommodating that at the moment. But otherwise, I think everyone should be using it – we really don’t pay enough attention to how our energy ebbs and flows, and we should be.
How to get Lifestack
Lifestack is available on web, and on iOS and Android. They also have a Chrome extension. They’re incredibly fairly priced at either 4.99/monthly or 42.00/year, with custom pricing for teams and enterprise. They do offer 7-day trials. The link to try them is here.
If you try Lifestack, tell me what you think. I think they’re amazing, but I always love hearing what others have to say.
