8 shapes of tasks — and why this matters

Open almost any goals app and every task gets the same checkbox. Did you meditate? Checkbox. Read twenty pages? Checkbox. Avoid alcohol? Checkbox. Weigh 75 kg by June? Also, somehow, a checkbox.

The checkbox is why your charts lie to you. A task that is really a quantity gets squashed into yes/no, so a 12-minute sit counts the same as a 40-minute one and a day you read two pages counts the same as a day you read none. A goal about doing less gets tracked as if it were about doing more. A target you approach gradually gets no chart at all, just a box you can’t honestly tick until June.

Eight shapes

Pathstory has eight task shapes. Each one is charted the way it actually behaves.

Shape	The question	How it’s drawn
One-off	Is it done?	A milestone on the stage
Count	How many?	Bars against a target line
Duration	How long?	Minutes, with the week’s total
Positive check	Did it happen today?	A grid of days, no streak
Avoid	Did I slip?	Clear days in green; slips marked, never a red wall
Band	Did I stay in the zone?	A shaded range — sleep 7–9 h
Trend	Am I heading to the number by the date?	Your line, the projection, the target
Cumulative	How much so far?	A total that only grows

The shape isn’t decoration. It decides what counts as a good day. For a Count task, a zero is quieter than a target hit but still a data point. For an Avoid task, a quiet day is the win. For a Cumulative task there are no bad days at all — the line never goes down.

Why this matters more than it sounds

Because the chart is the feedback loop. If the chart punishes a 12-minute meditation, you learn to skip it rather than log it, and the system fills with silence. If the chart draws the 12 minutes honestly, you keep logging, and six months later you can see the real shape of your practice — which days, which hours, which weeks it bent.

And the chart is drawn from the very entries you logged: tap a bar and the logs behind it are listed underneath. Only ever you, compared to you.