Goodtime: Energy Journal

Some hours glow. Some drain. Most of us are poor judges of which is which — we remember the day we planned, not the day we had.

Goodtime is a small journal for catching it as it happens. You write down what you did, then rate it on two things: how absorbed you were, and what the hour gave back or took. Energy has a real zero in the middle, so a flat hour reads as flat rather than as mildly good. If something took you somewhere else entirely, mark it as flow.

Log the day
An activity, and a short note if you want one. Typing suggests activities you have logged before, so the same thing keeps one name.

Rate it
Two quick ratings. Engagement runs from one to five. Energy runs from minus to plus around a real zero — green one side, red the other, and a flat hour is allowed to be a zero.

Reflect once a week
Which activities gave you a harvest, and what was it? Pick the moments that stood out, the highs and the lows, then take each one through five prompts: activities, environments, interactions, objects, users. Picking none is a fine answer.

Read the map
Every activity is plotted by engagement against energy on a quadrant map — more of this, engaging but costly, pleasant filler, redesign or reduce. Underneath: your energisers, your drainers, the things that put you in flow, and how the last three weeks have run.

The month calendar grows a small sprout on each logged day, a leaf per entry, a gold blossom when something reached flow. Quick Find opens with a pull down, for when you want to look something up.

What is not in here:

No account, and nothing to sign up for.
No subscription, no ads.
No AI reading your notes.
No streaks, no badges, no reminders. A missed day is just a missed day.

Your journal stays on your device.

The icons are drawn rather than picked off a shelf: nineteen small glyphs in the app's own hand. The rest is near-flat paper and ink, one warm amber accent, green and red kept for energy's sign, gold kept for flow. Light and dark are both first class.

Goodtime follows the good time journal exercise popularised by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. The exercise runs about three weeks, and that is when your weeks start to show their shape. It is not a mood tracker. It is a way of noticing where your good hours actually go.