The number one question I get asked on Twitter these days is how I get the data for my media consumption posts and quantified self reports. So I thought I’d dedicate this week’s post to explain my tracking setup.
I got into self tracking in the early 2000s when I first discovered HistoryStats – a Miranda plugin that gave me interesting statistics about my messaging behavior (who I talked most often to, what words I used the most, etc). A few years later, Audioscrobbler (which is now last.fm) allowed me to get similar statistics about my music habits. I also started to keep logs of books and movies that I had read and seen.
Inspired by the work of Nicholas Felton, I later began to quantify all sorts of other activities. My 2013 Quantified Self report – my most comprehensive tracking project so far – included data such as: How much I walked, drank, ate and slept. How many people I talked to. How many buildings I entered. I even tracked how much time I spent in the shower and brushing my teeth.
At the beginning, I always carried a little notebook around with me to write down things as they happened, but over time I got into the habit of simply being more present and remembering the core activities I wanted to track, so I could digitize them later. Even activities such as reading books I now consciously quantify and memorize while I’m doing them.
I currently use an Airtable spreadsheet for the vast majority of my QS activities, which I update about once or twice a day.
My 2020 tracking sheet looks like this: I have 10 spreadsheet tabs – one for each tracking category. These include Sleep, Wellbeing, Fitness, Work, Media, Drink, Food, Social, Travel and Screen Time.
Each tab then has a variety of metrics that I update on a daily basis. This is my current structure:
Sleep 🌙
↳ Bed Time (hh:mm)
↳ Wake Up Time (hh:mm)
↳ Perceived Sleep Quality (1-5 rating)
↳ Sleep Location
↳ City (single select)
↳ Location type (single select: home/hotel/…)
↳ Nightmares (y/n)
↳ ██████ ██
Wellbeing 🙏
↳ Perceived Happiness (1-5 rating)
↳ Perceived Stress (1-5 rating)
↳ Perceived Overall Healthiness (1-5 rating)
↳ How Worried am I About the Future? (1-5 rating)
↳ Perceived Backpain (1-10 rating)
↳ Illnesses (multi-select)
↳ ██████ ██
↳ ███ ███
Fitness 💪
↳ Meditation (hh:mm)
↳ Back Exercise (y/n)
↳ Stretching (y/n)
↳ Swimming
↳ Swim distance (meters)
↳ Swim time (hh:mm)
↳ Push-ups (number)
↳ Plank (duration in minutes)
↳ Other Sports
↳ Sport (single select)
↳ Duration (hh:mm)
Work 💼
↳ Start Time (hh:mm)
↳ End Time (hh:mm)
↳ Work Type (single select: work/writing/…)
↳ Work Location (single select: home/office/coworking/…)
↳ Perceived Productivity (1-5 rating)
↳ Perceived Job Happiness (1-5 rating)
Media Consumption 📚
↳ Kindle Books
↳ Book Title (single select)
↳ Reading Time (hh:mm)
↳ Physical Books
↳ Book Title (single select)
↳ Reading Time (hh:mm)
↳ Audio Books
↳ Book Title (single select)
↳ Reading Time (hh:mm)
↳ Podcasts
↳ Podcast Show (single select)
↳ Podcast Episode (single select)
↳ Listening Time (hh:mm)
↳ TV
↳ TV Show (single select)
↳ TV Episode (single select)
↳ Watch Time (hh:mm)
↳ Soccer
↳ Teams (multi-select)
↳ Goals (number)
↳ Watch Time (hh:mm)
↳ Movies
↳ Movie (single select)
↳ Watch Time (hh:mm)
↳ Games
↳ Game (single select)
↳ Play Time (hh:mm)
Drinks ☕️
↳ Filter-based Coffee (number)
↳ Espresso-based Coffee (number)
↳ Beer (ml)
↳ Wine (number of glasses)
↳ Non-alcoholic Drinks
↳ Drink (single select)
↳ Amount (ml)
↳ Alcoholic Drinks
↳ Drink (single select)
↳ Amount (ml)
Food 🍕
↳ Breakfast
↳ Dish (multi-select)
↳ Location (single select)
↳ Lunch
↳ Dish (multi-select)
↳ Location (single select)
↳ Dinner
↳ Dish (multi-select)
↳ Location (single select)
↳ Pizza (number of slices)
↳ Meat Consumption (multi-select: beef/pork/…)
↳ Fish Consumption (multi-select: salmon/tuna/…)
↳ Perceived Healthiness (1-5 rating)
Social 👫
↳ In-person Conversations
↳ Partner (y/n)
↳ Close Friends (y/n)
↳ Friends / Acquaintances (y/n)
↳ Co-worker (y/n)
↳ Other (y/n)
Travel 🚗
↳ Did I use this mode of transport today?
↳ Plane (y/n)
↳ Car (y/n)
↳ Subway (y/n)
↳ Taxi (y/n)
↳ Tram (y/n)
↳ Train (y/n)
↳ Bus (y/n)
↳ Scooter (y/n)
↳ Boat (y/n)
↳ Other (y/n)
Screen Time 📱
↳ Total Phone Screen Time (hh:mm)
↳ Time Spent in Social Apps (hh:mm)
↳ Phone Pickups (number)
↳ Notifications Received (number)
While this might sound like a lot of work, it doesn’t actually take a lot of time to fill out the sheet each day. I probably spend less than 5 minutes per day in my Airtable spreadsheet.
In addition to my tracking sheet, there are a few metrics that are calculated (semi) automatically:
Number of Articles Read
Whenever I finish reading an article I add it to Pocket with a specific tag. Every article (title, URL) then automatically gets added to another Airtable spreadsheet via IFTTT.
Music Behavior
Last.fm tracks every song I listen to.
Fitness and Sleep Data
I have a Fitness Alta that tracks the number of steps I take and how active I am. It also tells me how long and well I slept.
Location Data
I check into every single place I visit with Swarm. I also have constant location tracking turned on in Google Maps, Gyroscope and Zenly. None of these always-on services is particularly great – I really miss Moves App.
Screen Time
I use Screen Time on my iPhone and RescueTime on my laptop. I wish Apple would release a Screen Time API so that I didn’t have to manually copy data from the app to Airtable.
Air Quality
The Plume Flow 2 is the latest addition to my quantified self setup. This is a mobile air pollution sensor that measures Particulate Matter (PM1, PM2.5, PM10), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and nitrous oxides (NO2).
I’m thinking about upgrading to a newer fitness tracker with a heart rate monitor or a more sophisticated sleep tracker like the Oura Ring. It would also be interesting to move to a sort of tracking bot that randomly asks me questions through-out the day (see Felix Krause’s LifeSheet or Reporter app) to avoid peak-end bias.
Eventually, I’d also like to build a dashboard that combines my Airtable spreadsheet with my yearly goals and gives me real-time reminders and statistics about my routines and habits – but this is for another article.
If you have thoughts or questions about my setup, I’d love hear them.