New Year’s Eve is my favorite holiday. I love a specific time to look forward and look back, ideally during getting tipsy with friends. The turn of the year is also a time when I am grateful for my habit of writing everything down – and I don’t just mean writing down my thoughts and feelings in a diary. I’m talking about tracking every book read, mile walked, and beer drunk (roughly). So if you’re interested in documenting your life – and you should be! – I strongly recommend using a wonderfully detailed table.
I’m not talking about bullet journaling (which can be coolwhich I find artistically too daunting). I simply create a Google Spreadsheet with different color-coded tabs so I can track them There are lots of ways to measure a year. From the most thorough Travel plans To detailed to-do listsIf you have a goal, that goal needs a table tab.
It’s a fun, slightly nerdy technique that helps me visualize my life in a way that traditional journaling can’t. That’s why I think this year you should create your own chart to keep track of all the little things in your life.
How to turn anything into a trackable performance
The spreadsheet journal is perfect for us geeks who like to combine sentimentality with statistics. Whatever metrics you write down, you can align them with a sense of success. Your smartwatch can track how many steps you have taken. However, in a spreadsheet journal you can estimate how many steps you have taken reached. From there, you can have fun with the numbers, convert those steps into miles, or find patterns over time or in whatever suits your nerdy brain.
Go wild. Create different tabs for different areas of your life so you can keep track of how much you’re doing. I’ll share some ideas in the next section, but at the end of the day, a spreadsheet is a low-effort and worthwhile alternative to trying to use your words all the time, so don’t get too caught up in the details. This technique is really about recognizing the value of every little number that defines your life.
How to create your tracking spreadsheet
First things first: choose your spreadsheet software. I choose the simplicity of Google Sheets, but understand that you may have privacy concerns there. Or maybe you’re just one Masters in Excel. Some formatting ideas can be found here In this post, you’ll learn how to create the ultimate travel spreadsheet. The key takeaway is to create a master file with as many different tabs as you want. Add tabs that track your health/fitness goals, the books/movies/TV shows you consume, your finances/budgeting, and anything else that matters to you:
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Slept for hours
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Miles went
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Attended concerts
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watched films
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Books began
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Books finished
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Appointments have passed
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Places traveled
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gifts given
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Sent thank you notes
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Time spent in traffic
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Playlists created
Be sure to add an add notes column to your entries – some personal comments to spice up the stats.
I created an example template you can download here. It shows examples of the drop-down menus and color coding that I personally use to track my travels, books read, etc Marathon training.
How to maximize your spreadsheet
You can set up a separate column on each tab for jotting down different notes. However, for the sake of organization, you should be careful not to overfill your fields with text. It also helps to stay consistent with formatting, e.g. B. by bolding the heading of each metric. I code the colors according to my mood. For example, as a stand-up comedian, I track all my shows with a certain color to mark how I felt about them: shades of green mean the show went well, and shades of red mean the show…didn’t work out went well. At times when it seems like everything in my life is red, it’s nice to be able to turn my gaze to everything green too. Perspective!
At the end of the year, you can use all of this data to visualize both the big and small things in your life over the last 12 months. At a glance, you can praise yourself for how successfully you’ve reduced your caffeine intake, increased your time outdoors, or improved the ratio of books started to books finished. Ultimately, my own spreadsheet is about appreciating all the little things in my life, even if I do it in one of the nerdiest ways imaginable.
