Tracking Review: Jan 2013
Here are the questions I asked myself last month:
- How adventurous was your day? (0 - nothing new, 3 - crazy)
- How does today compare to yesterday? [-2 to +2]
- How long did you meditate?
- What will I create today?
- Do a pushup. How many did you just do?
Let's see how the month turned out...
How adventurous was your day? (0 - nothing new, 3 - crazy)
Almost every high score is a day when I had multiple plans already scheduled. Sundays, which involve working at the empty office during the day and then relaxing at home at night, were always a low score. Just about every programming day was a 0. I actually don't dislike Sundays or programming days. Programming days that got a 0 were among my most productive days. What this does show is that I consider days more "adventurous" when I'm out socializing. This isn't surprising, but this calendar does make it clear - if you want adventure, get out of the house.
Recommend this question? No. I like the idea of tracking "adventures", but a future question would need to be more active (behavior-focused), rather than reflective.
How does today compare to yesterday? [-2 to +2]
It's really hard to remember how yesterday "felt". Since my memory of today was much nearer than yesterday, almost every day felt as good or better than the previous one. This is likely not accurate. You can see in the graph that my month trended upward. That should mean I was having way better days toward the end of the month than the beginning. On reflection, I don't think that is true (at least not to this extent).
Recommend this question? No. It's a unique question, but too difficult to be objective.
How long did you meditate?
Prior to this month, I had never meditated. However it's something I wanted to experience, so I decided to try it in January and set a goal to meditate for 140 minutes (averaging 5 min per day). At the beginning of the month, I was receiving this question as a nightly email and often realized, when seeing it, that I hadn't meditated yet. For more than half of the first 10 days, the email was my reminder. If not for the email, I would not have meditated.
On the 10th day, I had a really good session. From that point on, it's like something switched and I meditated every day without needing the email to serve as a trigger.
Recommend this question? Yes! If you are new to meditation, a question like this will help you get started and keep you accountable during this initial habit development period.
What will I create today?
This was always waiting as a text for me when I woke up. It got me immediately thinking about my top priority for the day. Unfortunately, I'm not always ready to plan my day first thing in the morning. I do like that it gets me thinking about what needs to get done, but I'm interested in testing this question out at different times and in different formats.
Recommend this question? Yes!
Do a pushup. How many did you just do?
I started this on Jan 10 because I was curious to see how many pushups this question would get me to do that I otherwise would not have done. After 22 days, the answer is 335 pushups (averaging just over 15 per day). This isn't much, but it is 335 more than I would have done. I also wasn't very consistent with this, doing ZERO pushups on 8 of the 22 days... If we only count the days I actually did the pushups, I averaged 25. I never once settled for just the 1 pushup.
Recommend this question? Yes.
What are you tracking?
If you'd like to share your questions and any insights you have learned, email me because I'd love to hear.
-Mark