The Tools I Use to Track My Progress
Alright, so this is going to be the obligatory “here’s what I use every day” post for those of you — like me — who love to geek out over the tiniest details. That’s cool.
Important Note: I’ll be updating this post routinely to reflect my current reality. I first wrote it on 12/27/16, while I was in the late stages of preparation for the 2017 project. While I headed into the project with what seemed at the time as a great toolbox full of appropriate aids, I may find days or weeks down the road that one or more of my choices isn’t holding up to the challenge. Or, I might stumble across something even better. Either way, I’ll edit this post to reflect the change along with a date stamp and brief explanation if necessary.
Time
Time tracking is a tricky thing. It’s nearly impossible to perfectly track your time because it takes so much time to do it, there’s no way you’re going to be 100% accurate (unless you actually include an entry for “time tracking entry” every single time, which is way meta, and beyond my capabilities.)
At the same time, though, I think it’s important — especially for the first several weeks or as much as three months — to do the best I reasonably can to determine how I’m spending my time in order to confirm whether or not it’s lining up with my goals and perceptions.
In other words, if I’m pretty confident right now that I’m maintaining a 40-hour work week, but my time log shows an average closer to 65, I’m obviously not being very observant about how much I’m overworking. You can bet my family is, though, and other priorities I’ve set are suffering too.
Google Calendar
The first tool I’m going to rely on for time tracking and time management purposes is my trusty Google Calendar.
I try to put everything in my life that has a concrete date or time into my Google Calendar. I have a separate calendar for my SPROUT Content work and keep both in view on Outlook on my computer and on my phone.
This works well for a number of reasons:
- Google Calendar is ultra-powerful while remaining super-simple as well.
- It’s become the gold standard for calendar formatting online and is almost guaranteed to sync and crosstalk with pretty much any other app or cloud service you can imagine.
- It’s 100% free!
I rely on my Google Calendar both for planning ahead and looking back for tracking or reporting purposes. If an event doesn’t appear on my calendar, there’d better be some pretty convincing ancillary evidence (like a time-stamped photograph, for instance) if you want to prove to me that I was actually involved.
Todoist
I ran across Todoist a little over a year ago and immediately fell in love. It’s not that there’s anything dramatically different about this to-do list app compared to any of the thousands of others, It’s just that they seem to have put together the whole package just the way I would have if it had been up to me. They think the same way I think, I guess, and so I’ve found it more intuitive and helpful than any other similar app I’ve used.
Todoist is available anywhere and everywhere I want to use it: on my phone, on my tablet, inside Chrome, inside Gmail, inside Outlook, as a web app, and as a standalone desktop app on my Windows 10 laptop. They all talk to each other seamlessly, so I don’t need to think about it at all.
The project–task–subtask hierarchy allows for highly detailed project planning, but everything remains easily visible and usable without being overwhelming. Additionally, every task can have unlimited notes, images, links and whatever else I want to attach to it to provide effortless context.
For additional helpful features, consider the app’s reminder functions, which can be set to a particular date and time OR based on location proximity (i.e. when you’re driving past the store, Todoist reminds you that you’re out of milk.) It has easy-peasy delegation functionality that assigns a colleague a task with one click and parses out all the related notes, reminders, and ephemera along with it. And finally, unlimited tags and powerful custom search functionality make for a highly granular project management platform.
Can you tell I love my Todoist?
(Note: I love it so much, I invested in the Premium version, which is required for some of the features noted above. It’s less than $30 for the whole year and, in my humble opinion, worth ten times that. But that’s just me.)
SaveMyTime
Now we’re getting into the weeds a little bit, but for the sake of my optimization project, I need to go there.
SaveMyTime is a simple time tracking app I’ve installed on my Android phone that prompts me with the question, “what have you been up to for the last X minutes?” every time I look at my phone. I was afraid it would get a little irritating, but it hasn’t because it’s so darn quick to just press one of the nine choices I’ve created to answer that question and then move on.
It’s far from perfect, of course, simply because more often than not I’ve done things that fall into more than one category in the time since I last picked up my phone. But it’s “close enough for government work” as a famous writer from Maine is fond of saying, and it’s already shed some light on how I’m using my time in the few days I’ve been using it.
Instant
Even farther afield is Instant, an automated lifelogging app that I’m running in conjunction with SaveMyTime.
Theoretically, Instant should be able to add a lot of context to the time log I get from SaveMyTime as it incorporates phone app usage data, fitness data, travel, and more. So far, it’s been a bit too inaccurate for my taste, but I can see a lot of potential in it and it claims to be less power hungry than other lifelogging apps that do similar things. There’s also a pretty cool “Coach” function which is a chatbot that digs up interesting insights on data the app collects.
I’m not yet sold on the premium version for either of these apps, but if they work out well, I’ll probably invest in that because in both cases it opens up more robust reporting functionality which will only make my job easier heading through 2017.
Money
This is a short section because my wife has always taken excellent care of our finances — even when there wasn’t enough to truly “manage” — and I trust her completely. I don’t have the head for numbers that she does, and I tend to develop tunnel vision when I start looking at budgets, which is just going to cause her and me headaches.
That being said, I often feel like I should at least be aware of what’s going on with my finances even if it’s just as a silent observer. Enter: Mint.
Mint is by far the most powerful free budgeting app I’ve ever come across, and it’s available both as a web app and on all my devices, so it’s a win-win. Add in the fact that it’s completely free, and you can make that a win-win-win.
I simply set up an account, linked my online banking information, and spent a half hour with my wife plugging in all our standard monthly bills, and shazaam! Instant, automated financial tracking with enough reports to keep me busy for years if I ever get interested enough.
Health
Improving my health and losing weight is going to be a huge part of this entire optimization process, so I’m going to be concentrating a lot on trying to develop healthy habits, eliminating unhealthy habits, and tracking so I know I’m always moving in the right direction.
I’m lazy by nature and I love to eat, so I know this is going to be one of the most challenging aspects of my program. But it’s important to me. I’m almost 40, I have two kids and a wife I love dearly, and I really don’t want to keel over with a coronary in the next few years just because I couldn’t be bothered to lay off the Pop Tarts and take a walk.
MyFitnessPal
I’ve been using MyFitnessPal on and off for over a year already. It’s a fantastic app, the best of its kind, in my opinion. The only reason I’ve been so wishy-washy with keeping up with it is because I’ve seen no benefit yet.
My wife, on the other hand, lost nearly 60 pounds in the last 16 months or so, almost exclusively through logging her food in MyFitnessPal and identifying which habits were getting her in trouble and which were moving her toward her goal. So I’m living with proof that the app helps if you’re self-disciplined and committed enough to use it.
Starting on January 1, I’m going to shoot for a full 365-day streak of logged meals. Along the way, I’m likely to experiment with a few different dietary concepts as I’ve never been successful on the “traditional” low-calorie, low-fat diet the government recommends (after collecting billions in funds from the agricultural and grain lobbies.) The concept that makes the most sense to me is the ketogenic and paleo diets, although I honestly don’t know if they’re financially feasible for me.
Regardless of what I eat, how much, or whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent, it’s going in the app, and it’s going on the blog. If you’re one of the millions who also use MyFitnessPal and you’d like to connect on the app, my username is JPLambertski.
Google Fit
I’ve toyed around with a few different wearable fitness trackers and have always ended up finding them annoying. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get another one in the future. But for right now, the free and simple Google Fit app on my phone works just fine to automatically track my steps and allow me to manually enter more formal exercise activities.
It syncs up with MyFitnessPal (although sometimes it lags a bit, which is a bummer) so my exercise appears in context with my calorie intake. And, Google Fit has several stripped-down (but still valuable) reports available that can help me accomplish what I really need during my 2017 optimization project:
- Establishing a habit of daily exercise
- Slowly building that habit to the point that I’m actually benefitting myself
- Maintaining momentum in what I know is going to be a very challenging transformation
I’ve tried to set up workout routines about a thousand times in the past. I’ve paid for gym memberships, I’ve bought expensive home equipment I couldn’t really afford, and I’ve downloaded at least 7000 apps that promise to kick my butt into gear. And thus far, I still hate exercising.
I’ve come to realize there’s just no getting around the fact that I hate to exercise, and that I need to simply ignore that fact and form the habit before I get too old, too weak, and too out of shape to do anything about it at all. So, that’s what I plan to do.
And Google Fit will prove it.
Pacifica
The Pacifica app happens to be the one I’ve chosen to invest in for mood tracking, meditation, and general help with social anxiety and other similar issues. There are plenty out there and I can’t say I’ve tried many, so I don’t know if it’s the best or not, but it works well for me.
It offers a solid combination of journaling, energy and mood tracking, and practical relaxation and meditation guidance based around cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I don’t pretend to understand all the science behind it, but I know that when I take a few moments to fill out the mood tracking information and add some context using the journal when I’m prompted to do so, it offers some clarity that wouldn’t otherwise be there. And when I invest 10–15 minutes following one of the guided meditations, I always come away feeling relaxed, energized, and ready to tackle whatever’s next on my list.
Having come to terms with my desperate need for solitude and the benefits it provides me, I’m attempting to incorporate up to half an hour of mindfulness and meditation into every day of 2017.
How these tools are going to help me
This is all theoretical, of course. I’ve never tried anything like this before and it’s a pretty ambitious plan.
But my expectation is that collecting all this raw data on a daily basis and publishing it for all to see on this blog should serve as both an ongoing experiment in my own personal development and a source of continual encouragement and sense of accountability.
Frankly, I’m not going to want to post solid evidence of my failure day after day, so I’m counting on my pride to keep me working hard achieving success.
Also, I expect all this data to help me determine whether or not I’m truly living in a balanced way and according to my values and priorities, both of which are a key ingredient in this entire project.
If all goes well, I should be running full steam ahead by the end of January. The experts say it takes about 21 days to fully establish a habit. If I can make it to January 21st without any major issues creeping into the plan, it should be all downhill from there.
Right?
Please: if you have any recommendations for me about these or any other tools you think I should try, leave them in the comments below and I promise I’ll check them out. Thanks very much!
