az-log: one row a day and the profile that locked my phone

Where the spreadsheet came from

My goals for the year are written in my notes, in four areas. The problem was that by the end of the month I couldn’t honestly say whether I had met them. There was a feeling of “seems fine”, and a feeling proves nothing.

So I decided to count. Not in a tracker app, but in an ordinary spreadsheet that I can restructure myself, compute with formulas, and not depend on someone else’s service. Every goal in my notes now ends with the words “by az-log”: if a goal can’t be checked against the spreadsheet, it has to be rewritten.

How it works

One row — one day. The columns are grouped by area, each with its own colour, and each group can be collapsed.

I fill it in twice: in the morning after fajr, the sleep part; in the evening after isha, everything else. It takes a couple of minutes.

A few rules without which the numbers quickly turn into garbage:

• Empty ≠ 0. Zero means “definitely didn’t do it”. If I don’t remember, I leave the cell empty so it doesn’t spoil the average.
• A prayer has three statuses. 2 — within 30 minutes of the adhan, 1 — later, but within its time, 0 — missed.
• A reason is required for status 1 or 0, and only from a list: sleep, work, travel, forgot, phone, other. You can’t count free text, but you can count a list.
• A separate stats sheet computes everything with formulas. I never type anything there by hand.

That’s why I count not only “prayed or not” but also “on time or not”.

The first row

The first day in the spreadsheet was Thursday, 29 October. I copied it over from my old prayer log to test the format.

Result: 0 out of 5. I slept through fajr, and for dhuhr, asr, maghrib and isha the _why column had the same word: phone.

Until then I hadn’t thought my phone was taking so much from me. Suspecting it is one thing; seeing four identical cells in a row is another. It’s hard to argue with a spreadsheet you filled in yourself.

AZ-Way Lock

I decided not to rely on willpower and “just scroll less”, but to remove the choice itself. Using Apple Configurator, I built the configuration profile .mobileconfig and installed it on my iPhone and iPad. It has three parts.

1. DNS filter. All DNS goes through Cloudflare for Families over DNS-over-HTTPS. It blocks malicious sites and adult content. The ProhibitDisablement flag prevents turning it off in Settings.

2. Website filter. The built-in iOS web filter with a list of blocked addresses: video hosting, social networks, streaming, anime sites and online cinemas. The filter works both in the browser and in apps (FilterBrowsers, FilterSockets).

3. Restrictions. This is the strictest part:

• A list of blocked apps by bundle ID: social networks, video, music services, a few games, and every browser except Safari, so the web filter can’t be bypassed.
• Also on the list: VPN apps and anything that can “open a link somewhere else”.
• Apple Music, Podcasts, News, iTunes Store, Game Center, Siri, internet results in Spotlight and iCloud Private Relay are turned off.
• Installing other profiles, creating a VPN, erasing the device and connecting it to new computers are forbidden.
• The profile itself is marked as non-removable.

A short fragment to show what it looks like:

<key>PayloadType</key>
<string>com.apple.applicationaccess</string>
<key>allowVPNCreation</key>
<false/>
<key>allowUIConfigurationProfileInstallation</key>
<false/>
<key>allowEraseContentAndSettings</key>
<false/>
<key>blacklistedAppBundleIDs</key>
<array>
    <string>com.google.ios.youtube</string>
    <string>com.burbn.instagram</string>
    <!-- … -->
</array>

Most of these restrictions only work on a supervised device, so I had to put the iPhone and iPad into supervised mode through Configurator. That means erasing them and setting them up again. It also left exactly one way out: the profile can only be removed from the Mac that supervises the device. You can’t do that in bed at night, and that’s the whole point.

Calls, messages, camera, maps, books and work apps stayed. The phone became a tool again.

How it’s going

So far the spreadsheet has 9 full days, from 29 October to 6 November, and 44 filled prayer cells.

Reasons for being late or missing:

What I see in this:

• phone is no longer the main reason. Four of the five times fell on the first day. But 9 days is far too few to draw conclusions, so for now I just keep recording.
• Fajr is the weakest spot. In 9 days it was missed 5 times, and every time the reason was sleep. It was on time only on the last two days.
• The new leader is work. Dhuhr and the evening prayers on workdays suffer most. That’s no longer a question about the phone, but about how the workday is structured.
• other is too vague. Seven times “other” means the list is missing a real reason. I’ll figure out what hides behind it and add a separate item.

I count the other areas the same way, but they’ll be more interesting to talk about in a month, when there is something to compare. I wrote about where vit_d, gargle and cold_shower_sec in the spreadsheet came from in immunity-cold-hardening.

What’s next

For December I have concrete goals, all checkable against the spreadsheet:

• prayers: no more than 10 % missed, at least 60 % on time;
• mobility exercise on at least 90 % of days;
• dishes on at least 90 % of days, cleaning every Saturday, cooking at least twice a week.

At the end of the month I’ll count and write what came of it. If it didn’t work out, I’ll show the numbers too.