When he works out, Your JoeDog likes to do twenty reps of twenty things. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of shit to remember. “Wait, wait, wait — what set is this?”

Now whenever Your JoeDog loses track of his reps, he starts with the one he last remembered. A few weeks ago, he must’ve had amnesia. He woke up one morning and it felt like he was struck by a car the night before.

He tried marking lines on paper in the Roman counting fashion. But this is 2015 and he doesn’t have much paper. The previous evening’s bar tab kept rolling up and running away. Plus the Romans were slave holders. Why are we taking inspiration from them?

There’s gotta be an app for this, amirite? After a set of twenty, you can add an increment to your phone. Convenient! Except we know how that really works: after a set of twenty, you unlock your phone then add the set. Not Convenient.

Then a brain storm struck — hey, they happen sometimes. Your JoeDog codes in vim but he does use a programmer’s text editor for writing notes. “Hey! This thing has line numbers. I could use it to count my workout reps.”

Now Your JoeDog takes his dogs, his weights and his laptop onto the deck when he works out (it’s a production). After each rep, beginning with the second since the counter starts at one instead of zero, he simply hits the return key.

In Internets parlance this would be filed under “Life Hacks” but we’ll just call it an helpful heuristic. Hope it helps. Happy hacking.