In today's increasingly connected world, many of our activities - from the type of content we consume, sleep habits, to how often we walk, talk, listen to music, and use different applications - leave a digital footprint that can tell us more about ourselves.
Our devices are already collecting a lot of this data, so with a little attention, keeping track of your personal data points can be a great tool for self-discovery.
Tracking my personal data paints a digital picture that I can use to adjust and calibrate my actual behavior. It also makes it visible when I drift off track on a habit i'm practicing or goal i'm chasing, or when patterns change.
When reviewing, it's interesting to see how my idea of myself stacks up with real statistics on how I executed. Over time, I've built heuristics to get a feel for what's a typical day, week or month vs a bad or good one. From the mundane: If i didn't share a song that month, it was probably not a fun month...to the more serious: repeated missing entries in my daily journal means i have too much going on and have lost a routine.
I've learned to
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mix physical and digital methods e.g my daily journal complements long term mindmaps for keeping track.
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find ways to automate the tracking through reminders, alarms, calendars, special apps for each hobby or activity.
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review this personal data daily, weekly or monthly to make adjustments as needed.
Want to be a runner/reader/writer/something equally amazing, why not track how often you actually do the things that help you make progress? We track our spending as adults, so tracking time and habits should be fair game too.