From Spreadsheet to Software

Sometime during COVID, I started logging things in a Google Sheet.

It wasn’t dramatic, not due to a rock bottom moment, and not inspired by some kind of self-help epiphany. As many people found, the transition to work from home and the shutdown of gyms was jarring. I noticed I couldn’t remember how my weeks were going. Good days and bad days blurred together. I’d get to the end of the week feeling vaguely exhausted and not know why.

So I made a spreadsheet. Columns to track a few things that I felt made a productive day: reading & writing, deep focus or ‘cognitive’ work, exercise, etc. I filled it in most mornings.

Tracking helped. Not because it fixed anything by itself, but because it made the invisible parts of my week harder to hand wave away. I could see when I was overreaching, when I was slipping, and when a “bad week” was really just three mediocre days in a row where I didn’t exercise, read or write.

The idea of tracking this stuff was fine. The method of tracking this in a spreadsheet was far from ideal.

Every habit tracker I tried was either too simple, or weirdly complicated. Some wanted me to worship streaks. Others wanted me to join a community, as if my sleep quality needed an audience. None of them matched how I actually think about my days. I didn’t want gamification. I didn’t want social. I wanted my categories, my rhythms, my definition of a good day.

None of that existed. So the thought shifted from “I need a better spreadsheet” to “I should build an app.”

I don’t write code. I’ve spent over a decade in consumer tech, mostly in customer success. I understand software, I work alongside engineers, and I can usually follow and participate in technical conversations if I’ve had coffee. But I’ve never been the person building the thing.

For a long time, that gap was the end of the story. You either learn to code, pay someone, or accept whatever comes closest to what you’re looking for.

Then AI closed the gap. In the summer of 2025, I started turning a few long-parked ideas into real projects. First up was turning my colour-coded spreadsheets into something I could actually use daily without friction.

That’s how LifeRunner started. A colour-coded spreadsheet, a growing list of things I wanted it to do, and the slow realization that the tool I needed didn’t exist yet. In Part 2, the tool chain that made building it possible.