I've long dreamed of tracking every little thing. I don't know why but tracking everything I do, what I eat or drink or wear, how many hours I watch TV or sit on Reddit, how often I urinate, my work life balance, literally everything, the of having it all is exciting to me.

Beyond the thrill of acquiring and holding it, it would no doubt be more useful than simply admiring it. Compare it to say a sports trophy, that's something you simply admire although of course you have the memories of the journey to win it as well.

Data and tracking on the other hand feels practical and usable in the present and the future, as well as something to look back on or "admire".

Would you think less of people who put the hours into winning a sports trophy or writing a book (that they presumably never read or use themselves)?

Do you track how long it takes you to track things?

this is the point i fail... normally before i start.

I think about all the things i'll track, then realise just how disruptive and time consuming that will be and give up.

have you ever found a relationship between mood and what you eat in a 5 day window?

This is a passion of mine as well , and is called “life logging” or “the quantified life”.

I have a long term passion project called Navigoals (Navigoals.com) built around the concept. It’s like a habit tracker but I organize all my habits/actions into a massive DAG so if I track something at a low level it also bubbles up to a high level goal. I can track instances of things or durations of things (time tracking).

I also have an unpublished iOS version with Apple Watch support, using the Watch is quicker to track stuff.

I realize to many this sounds insane but PLEASE email me [email protected] if you’re down to watch a demo over video chat.

As far as the people who think I’m crazy, here’s why I’m passionate about this project. I really had trouble focusing my whole life so as an adult I bit the bullet and got ADHD meds. Those helped a LOT at the immediate problem of focusing but literally made me crazy, very crazy, almost ruined my life. During recovery I decided I would meditate 5 minutes every day and journal one paragraph every day, which I used a habit tracker for. This was a key part of my recovery. That got me thinking - if a little tracking saved my life, what can a lot of tracking do? I also needed to better manage my time and goals without the usage of any medication.

People will say the data is pointless if you just admire it, not the case. I noticed in weight loss subs , people strongly advocate starting with food tracking. Just the act of forcing honesty with yourself about what you’re eating will change your relationship with food. In a completely different domain, the most important step to playing pro or semi-pro poker is diligently tracking all results. Same reason - forces honesty. And also in both cases, surfaces trends (e.g. I eat or play poorly certain times of day).

I track over 200 of my actions every day and I strive for my apps to make it quick to do. However it’s important to understand this does not turn me into a robot. My brain is so naturally all over the place , I wander and do random things so much, that just forcing myself to use apps to have _some_ structure and discipline puts me in the balance of a rigid life and an improvised one.

I am realizing I’m in the minority, most people I demo my apps to say, “that seems cool…for a certain type of person.” So, open to connecting with certain types of people.

I find tracking things is a helpful (and relatively healthy) way to manage anxiety. It’s a total time vampire - but once I’ve made my lists of todos/sheets/Roam/Notion/BuJo/whatever and convinced myself I’m organized and in control, then I can get real work done free of nagging concern I’m missing something. I try to find a healthy balance, and my level of tracking varies with my mental health and stress. I’ve noticed that if I’m tracking nothing, things are bad. Likewise, if I’m tracking EVERYTHING, I’m spiraling and things are bad.

honestly sounds like you should talk to a therapist. spending so much time "organizing everything" isn't a sustainable or effective way to handle your problems

I've tracked things like food intake for years at a time when loosing weight. I also tracked every dollar spent manually for 3 or 4 years.

Both times I did that they were extremely helpful to achieve my goals. Too much of what we do is on autopilot. Noticing what you're doing is a helpful way to course correct before you're 10k over budget or 5 pounds heavier.

You have to do it in a healthy manner though, you can't obsess about tracking. Be gentle with yourself and know you'll make mistakes, both in tracking and what you're doing.

It can be a lot of work. It can be a trap. But I don't think Notion is the problem.

I will share some personal experience on this journey.

I like to be organized where I need to. I worked up a TODO list habit and a note taking habit over time. At first it was pen and paper. Then plain text notes. Then Evernote. And now it's Notion.

Regardless of the tool, there were times when I overdid it. I became too meticulous. The TODO list, instead of keeping me organized and my mind free, became the source of my work and worry.

I iterated over time, and have built up a system that works for me. Whenever I feel that something becomes too heavy, I trim it. Notion is nice because it allows me to be flexible. It's more like a notebook with superpowers than Jira and Asana.

If you're obsessive and don't catch yourself, Notion can become the source of troubles. But so can cataloging your CD collection.

I recently shared my TODO list workflow with someone. I have a daily and weekly template and they're quite involved. The person was surprised asked me if I ever get stressed if I don't do it all. Not at all, I said. What I don't do gets thrown away and I start over tomorrow. It keeps me structured and organized, but I am not its slave.

It's not how involved your system is. It's how much it works for you, vs working against you.

Yeah, I have so little energy and motivation to do stuff. I need to spend the little I have actually doing stuff rather than planning to do stuff

I somewhat envy people who can meticulously plan like this. When I try to do something like this I love talking about the planning and researching, but putting it all together into a detailed plan stresses me because I don't even know where to start. It starts to make it feel like work. Then there's another side of me that loves spontaneous adventure and just going with the flow. If anyone has any tips to find a happy medium, I'm all ears.

No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with <s>the enemy's main force</s> reality.

I just got home yesterday from a 2 week vacation. I was feeling especially relaxed during the trip, much more than usual. I thought this was due to how good I had gotten at thought exercises and managing anxiety, and I didn't want to forget what I was doing that led to this so I bought a notebook. After I started writing I lost the sense of detachment that was so pleasant and couldn't get it back the rest of the trip.

Slightly different context, but similar enough.

I wear a Garmin sportswatch so keep an eye on the subreddit. If you go there you’ll see daily threads about arbitrary metrics like “sleep score”, “body battery”, hrv and vo2 max. People obsess over the numbers without really thinking to take a step back and thinking about how accurate the data is and whether or not it’s actually meaningful in any real terms.

Definitely a lot of folks out there becoming slaves to this sort of thing.

I have the Apple Watch and I hardly ever check the stats but every few months it pings me with something like "Over the last 5 days, your resting heart rate dropped" which was a period I was on holidays, made me wonder if it was the lack of access to coffee, or just a more inactive period where I sat in a car most of the time.

The long term data can be interesting. Moved apartments and saw my elevation climbed stat went up as the local area was not so flat

It's contextually bounded, I think. You can't be the librarian of your whole life, but you can parcel out some things that warrant discrete records(e.g. finances).

I do think it's pointless to put all of it in a computer. Some things do better with a whiteboard(or an electronic version of such like Boogie Board) or a paper journal. The computer is for if you genuinely want to edit, rearrange, and structure the data. It constantly tempts you to do so.

To never do it, or to do it all the time, are neither good. The best is if you can do trials of things like this. To be able to monitor something closely, but then draw conclusions and let it go.