Why I started building NLife App

It was an ordinary Tuesday. I had worked well, eaten lunch, had a couple of coffees. Around 3 in the afternoon I developed a headache that stayed with me for the rest of the day.

I took a painkiller. I moved on. But at some point that evening I found myself trying to remember what I had eaten or drunk — not out of concern, just curiosity. Had I eaten something unusual? Had I forgotten to drink water?

I hadn't kept track. I had no idea.

The problem with memory

Human memory is terrible at this kind of thing. We remember the unusual. We remember meals we enjoyed or events that stood out. We do not remember the third cup of coffee on a Wednesday three weeks ago, or whether we had two glasses of water or five on the day before we felt unusually tired.

And yet the connections between what we consume and how our bodies respond are often exactly that mundane. It's not the dramatic meal at the restaurant that sets something off — it's the thing you do every day without thinking about it.

I looked at the apps that existed. Most of them wanted me to calorie-count, to weigh portions, to enter nutritional data. That wasn't the problem I was trying to solve. I didn't want to be analysed. I just wanted a record.

A notebook that doesn't require handwriting

The idea was simple: what if you could log what you eat and drink in the same amount of time it takes to not log it? Three taps. Maybe five seconds. No typing. No nutritional data. Just: coffee, water, lunch, beer, headache.

And then — if you wanted — look back. Not because an algorithm tells you what it means, but because you can see the pattern yourself. Your own data, laid out in front of you, for you to interpret however you want.

No coach. No recommendations. No "based on your data we suggest..." banners. Just the log.

The thing I kept hearing

As I started building, I talked to people about the idea. Almost everyone had a version of the same story. Someone who had been dealing with something for years — headaches, digestive issues, low energy in the afternoons — and had never managed to find out why, because they had never been able to hold enough consecutive days of data in one place.

A doctor can help you if you come in with evidence. A log gives you evidence. Most people have never had one.

That became the whole point of NLife App. Not to be clever. Not to interpret anything for you. Just to be the log you never had time to keep — made fast enough that you might actually keep it.