"A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue."
—Hagakure
"To a sincere student, every day is a fortunate day. Time passes but he never lags behind. Neither glory nor shame can move him."
—Zengetsu
What Gets Measured, Gets Managed
(Written in 2010)
"What gets measured, gets managed."
—Peter Drucker
There is so much power in this quote. If you've never tracked yourself, you don't even know how much power there is in tracking. I couldn't even explain it adequately. You wouldn't believe me. You'd think I was exaggerating. The simple act of paying attention to something will cause you to make connections you never did before, and you'll improve the those areas—almost without any extra effort.
I'm not a believer in "free lunch" and I don't think the universe vibrates things to you just by thinking about them. But the closest thing to a free lunch getting vibrated to you by the universe is writing things down as they happen.
Before I go any further, I need to give you one piece of advice—start small and build up, so you don't overwhelm yourself. This is just being pragmatic. You want to build small wins, lock them so they become automatic, and then expand.
I also jot down the results every week (I use "week" very loosely, sometimes it's 5 days or 9 days, depending on what's going on). For instance:
Weekly review: 28 August to 5 September (9 days)
Basic Health:
How many days this week did I take a vitamin? 9/9
How many days this week did I stretch? 9/9
How many days this week did I exercise? 4/9
How many days this week did I do sit-ups? 6/9
How many days this week did I sleep eight hours or less? 1/9—damn, that's bad.
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 8.9 hours per night. 80 hours/9 days = 8.9 hours per night. 9, 9, 11, 7.5, 10.5, 9.5, 9.5, 7.5, 6.5
How many days did I brush/floss this week? 7/9 and 4/9
What was my diet like this week? It was okay—high in carbs, but that's okay. I ate pizza, but still had high energy levels/felt good afterwards. I had a slightly sugary drink and popcorn one day, and felt bad after that. Ate some chicken/rice/duck/rice type meals a few times which were good. Next week I'd like to incorporate more vegetables.
How many times did I eat sweets this week? Physical sweets, zero. Slightly sugar drinks, 1 or 2.
Look where I wrote "How many days this week did I sleep eight hours or less? 1/9—damn, that's bad." As you can see, just by tracking I realize what's wrong. I was sleeping more than I want to this week, and I also had lower productivity and energy. Honestly, oversleeping seems to drain me. Just by writing this down, I notice that and adjust.
I realized a while back that I wanted to actively pay attention to how often I help someone. How much I reach out to people, give advice, do little nice things, take care of people, help them make money, help them do strategy, things like that. In July, I decided to track it. I added to my weekly review, "How many times did I help someone this week?" Observe how tracking it changes things.
Review of four days: 6 July to 9 July (done on 10 July)—How many times did I help someone this week? Once online, maybe. Offered a few more times.
Weekly review 10 July to 17 July (8 days)—How many times did I help someone this week? Track in checklists [i.e., I wasn't tracking it daily, so I added it to my daily checklist after the end of that week]
Weekly review 18 July to 26 July (8 days)—How many times did I help someone this week? At least 6, maybe more.
Weekly review: 27 July to 5 August (10 days)—How many times did I help someone this week? Hmm… 2 or 3?
Weekly review: 6 August to 13 August (8 days)—How many times did I help someone this week? 3: Chase with writing, Chris with a few little things, David with business
Weekly review: 14 August to 20 August (7 days)—How many times did I help someone this week? 7
Weekly review: 21 August to 27 August (7 days)—How many times did I help someone this week? 7 :)
I knew I wanted to help at least one person per day, and you see it go from "I don't know" to six the first week I start tracking it, then it settles in around 3 for a little while, now it's back to 7. Just noticing it and trying to work on, I look for opportunities to reach out to people that are doing something in an area I'm experienced. I also write all over the place, "Drop me a line, I'm friendly" and try to get back with people promptly (note—massive email surge from a couple days ago, but I'll get the inbox to 0 shortly, and thank you for writing me. New emails are always welcome as well).
Please don't mistake for an altruist, though. Oh, not at all. I figure doing good and right by people is necessary for the kind of life I want and the kind of world I want to live in, and actively doing right everywhere you go means you walk into any room and feel like you belong there. Honestly, I help people as much for myself as for the world.
Want to see the evolution of how I'm quitting sugar? These are direct from my notes unedited:
Review of four days: 6 July to 9 July (done on 10 July)—How many times did I eat sweets this week? 5 solid, 2 sugary drinks times, pretty bad stuff. Three were in transit—on the train, in the airport, and on the airplane. The fourth was ordering an ice cream at McDonald's for God knows why … just a blatant mistake there. Also had an ice tea at McDonalds, damn those sugary drinks. Maybe iced coffee instead if I go back there? Also bought a sweet on the streets for no good reason just because I was a little hungry, which was no good. I suppose I just need to be aware of it and reduce it.
Weekly review 10 July to 17 July (8 days)—How many times did I eat sweets this week? Maybe six?
Weekly review 18 July to 26 July (8 days)—How many times did I eat sweets this week? Wasn't tracking this, but maybe 5 to 8? Which is really too much, no good.
Weekly review: 27 July to 5 August (10 days)—How many times did I eat sweets this week? Zero, maybe? Wow! Maybe once or twice, but yeah, not much. Doing well here.
Weekly review: 6 August to 13 August (8 days)—How many times did I eat sweets this week? 0 I think?
Weekly review: 14 August to 20 August (7 days)—How many times did I eat sweets this week? Zero? Awesome. I'm starting to turn sweets down automatically.
Weekly review: 21 August to 27 August (7 days)—How many times did I eat sweets this week? 1
I slid backwards a little bit and had two semi-sweet drinks this week. The Vietnamese like to put sugar in all kinds of things that don't normally have it, and twice I finished the drink (a coffee and kiwi juice, respectively). But as you can see, just the act of writing it down makes me aware of it, and the sugar is fading away.
Forcing yourself to write down areas where you're not taking action and want to be lights a fire under your ass. This week I'm going out to get some cash. But I don't lie to myself, I'm not getting cash, and I mark it down every single week. I've got to not spend, keep an eye on bank balance. Also, I already wrote down and publicly committed to my financial goals in "Mark This Down and Watch Me."
Now, I'm not sitting on my duff this whole time. I'm building things, working on other projects, writing fairly prolifically here at the blog, and building up my next company. But just being forced to write down those 0′s every weekly review is sobering. I'm not getting done something that needs to be getting done, and I'm forced to be aware of it.
How about if you know you want to start a new goal, but aren't sure exactly how to go about it?
Interestingly enough, you can add something to your weekly tracking and then just write down at the end of the week you weren't tracking it—that means you'll naturally consider tracking it the next week.
For instance, I knew I wanted to track my budget, but it wasn't happening. So I added it to the weekly review, even though I hadn't really started tracking it daily:
Review of four days: 6 July to 9 July (done on 10 July)—What'd I spend this week? Not sure, pretty low.
Weekly review 10 July to 17 July (8 days)—What'd I spend this week? Figure out expenses
Weekly review 18 July to 26 July (8 days)—Total: room $144 ($18/day), food $46, coffee $19, groceries $31, transit $2
-> I also bought vitamins for $66, but that's a long term expense over the next two months, not an expense for just this week.
Total spent: $223 for this week specifically, $27 per day.
The amazing thing about tracking spending is it naturally goes down. Having a coffee now and then in Hong Kong was costing me $19/week, whereas instant coffee costs almost nothing. But don't think I'm depriving myself—I realized I wasn't getting a massage when I was thinking about my spending for the next week. All instant coffee + getting a massage for health is much better than cafe coffee + no massage.
Unsurprisingly, my biggest expense was lodging/accommodation. But interestingly enough, the gears started turning in my head now that I'm writing those numbers down each week. I thought—"How could I get this down?" I came up with a rough idea. I'd see if I could be someone's guest, and then spend about half of what I would spend on lodging on gifts, dinners, things of that nature, and lend my talents to their cause. I'm fairly skilled in a few disciplines, and I'm happy to put my talents to use for whoever is hosting me.
I joined Couchsurfing, but I haven't used it yet. When I updated everyone that I was visiting Vietnam, my friend who lives here said I could stay with him as he has an empty guest room. I planned to stay a short time before moving on, but it turns out we had a blast, and after the first week he said "stay as long as you like—seriously, as long as you like Sebastian"—which is very gracious and cool of him. I make a concerted effort to pick up the check for dinners when we're out and otherwise aim to spend at least half or more of what I'd spend on lodging towards doing nice things. Then I spend 5-10 hours per week doing general strategy, teaching him on the topics I'm an expert on, spec'ing out a plan for him if he wants to do more creative work going forwards. I introduced him to a few people I know in business. I also run errands and stock his home with bread from this hybrid French-Korean bakery nearby. (It's a French bakery run by Koreans, so it has French bread, Korean-ish bread, and Vietnamese bread. Strange but good)
As an aside, he's quite talented as a manager and an executive, so we really had a blast talking on different topics, talking about politics and governance. He shared quite a few amazing stories about management and business, I shared on my expertise, and it's been a very virtuous good cycle. He's actually back in the States now and said I'm welcome to house-sit for him, which was very very cool and very appreciated.
This all cuts my expenses/burn rate down, which is good when I'm working on speculative endeavors and don't have cash coming in. I've got all the marketing and market research and product/service mix for my next company done, but we'll see if the market is really there. (It's business to business, so step one will be getting in front of someone who has budget authorization, and step two will be demonstrating the ROI… I see the ROI pretty clearly, but can I communicate it? We'll see)
This all got noticed by me tracking my spending. I also notice if I'm paying twice as much at one restaurant as another, but the twice-as-expensive one isn't any better… whoops, time to change. You wouldn't normally notice the difference between a $3 decent meal and a $6 decent meal, but when they're written down right next to each other, it makes you think—is the food better at the $6 place? No? Why don't I just always go to the $3 place? And so, I do. What gets measured, gets managed.
Tracking general time is simple, easy, and effective. I just occasionally write down what I'm doing or what I finished. It takes seconds, and I'm not fanatical about it—just whenever I notice or right before going out.
For instance, I pay attention to who is talking about and linking to me, so I can thank them, connect with them more, and write on the topics that suit them:
You can set this up easily, for free, at Google Alerts.
I also use analytics tracking to see what's going on, and I check in with that daily. It's fun, it's like leveling up in a video game, except it's the real world. But I'll talk more about analytics in the next day or two, I want to do a full dedicated post to it.
In the meantime, remember—what gets measured, gets managed. If you want to improve an area, start paying attention to it. Even if you're just writing down how you're getting brutalized in that area or being undisciplined, that should help inspire you to move forwards. Even if you're just writing down casually, you might notice things like how much you're really spending on coffee, and how you'd prefer to go instant coffee and spend that money on a massage. It's especially good for making sure you do little tedious things, like stretch and floss and take vitamins.
If you want to get started, I recommend you start small. Your tracking system should serve you, you don't serve it. Too many people jump in gung-ho, try to do something monstrous, and burn out and stop doing it.
The Evolution of My Time/Habit/Life Tracking
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system." -John Galt
I built a pretty good daily tracking template, and I evolved it over time. It's serving me pretty well now. I'd like to show you the evolution.
Version 0—I realized that tracking my time would be a good thing. I started writing down just one or two things per day.
Here's what my first day of tracking looked like:
26 May—Success
Stretched, sit-ups, pushups.
Took a vitamin.
Did some writing on Critical Thinking.
Version 1—About a month later, I formalized my daily tracking with some things I wanted to pay attention to every day. I created a template for the first time.
**THIS TEMPLATE RETIRED 18 JULY 2010**
General things to reflect on:
*Be decisive. Look at it once, make a decision, done.
*Live in the borderlands, awareness of the end in my heart
Time awake:
Total sleep:
Vitamin?:
Stretching?:
Walk/run?:
Sit-ups?:
Listen to audio?:
Food?:
Most key project:
Next milestones:
Objectives for today:
Time started:
Result:
Checklist:
*What are my key life goals? Spent 5 minutes on this.
*Is my urgent to do list clear?
*Is my people to do list clear?
*Look at my current to-do list. Is any of that suitable to do?
*The second most important project right now is SebastianMarshall.com. Do something with that?
What is most important?
Now consider…
*Networking, friends, counsel, helping people, factions.
*What do I need to learn?
*How to get cash?
*Consorting.
*Habits/Life Goals?
*Brainstorming
End of day:
What did I do right to move me towards my goals?
What would I do differently if I had the day to live over?
–Plan tomorrow
Version 2—The version 1 template worked pretty well. I wasn't sure what I wanted to pay attention to, so I listed some things and said, "Now consider…" which meant just think and try on those things. Eventually I nailed down some things that were important to pay attention to, and I formalized that into version 2.
——————————————-
GENERAL:
*Be decisive. Look at it once, make a decision, done.
*Don't check email unless I'm ready to write back immediately
*Set alarm at end of day
*Stop and reflect periodically
——————————————-
START OF DAY:
Time awake:
Total sleep:
Vitamin C and Fish oil:
Stretching?:
Walk/run?:
Brush/floss:
Sit-ups?:
Listen to audio?:
Food?:
Breathe:
Borderlands:
——————————————-
MOST KEY ITEM:
Next milestones:
Objectives for today:
Time started:
Result:
——————————————-
PEOPLE:
Blog post?:
New People (FB, Twitter, emails):
Current people:
Help someone:
Consorting:
Emails in box, start:
Emails in box, finish (and—why they there?):
——————————————-
GENERAL:
*What are my key life goals? Spent 5 minutes on this.
*Expenses for the day (estimate)?
*Cash gotten or worked towards today
——————————————-
END OF DAY:
What did I do right to move me towards my goals?
What would I do differently if I had the day to live over?
Plan tomorrow
Version 3—Version 2 worked great, but I grew out of it. One of the biggest things was I was filling in my template with time tracking which was making things messy and hard to review later. I just cleaned up and made my template more pretty. I also renamed and made more accurate a few sections. I grew out of "Most Key Objective" because now I've often got 4-5 things to do in a day. So I mixed that in to think about at the start of the day and added a general time tracking section instead. Also, I added a "Challenges" section to pay attention to things I still get wrong some days.
——————————————-
REMEMBER:
*Be decisive. Look at it once, make a decision, done.
*Stop and reflect periodically
——————————————-
START OF DAY ROUTINE:
Time awake:
Total sleep:
Vitamin C and Fish oil:
Brush/floss:
Stretching:
Check calendar, anything interesting?
Is there anything time sensitive?
What is my most key objective for the day?
Walk/run:
Sit-ups:
Listen to audio:
Food:
Breathe:
Borderlands:
Planning:
——————————————-
PEOPLE:
Blog post:
New People:
Current people:
Help someone:
Consorting:
Emails in box, start:
Emails in box, finish (and—why they there?):
——————————————-
TIME TRACKING:
——————————————-
CHALLENGES:
Did I start the day in my planner instead of online?
Did I only check email when I was ready to write back immediately?
Did I clear my active to do list before any screwing around?
Did I avoid getting into arguments with idiots online?
Did I only check a site once, then done with it?
Did I prioritize books/good learning instead of mindless surfing?
Did I avoid sugary food?
——————————————-
END OF DAY:
What are my key life goals? Spent 5 minutes on this.
Expenses for the day (estimate)?
Cash gotten or worked towards today:
What did I do right to move me towards my goals?
What would I do differently if I had the day to live over?
Plan tomorrow:
Set alarm:
I currently use a much more advanced system, which I'm not going to spell out in this book. Instead I'll focus on the features.
"Reach Out" at the start of the day. Send a short note or question to someone I respect and admire that I haven't met or haven't talked to in a while. It takes not very long, but pays pretty big dividends.
"Do Sometime During the Time" now gets looking at my to-do list and doing one item off of it… pretty obvious in retrospect, but it wasn't there before. Some days I wouldn't look at my non-urgent to-do list… which isn't any good. These are good items.
I moved my "Time Tracking" section around. I moved "Relaxing" as in pure, good relaxing up and calling it good time, and I added two new categories in "Okay" time—drifting off in thought (Daydreaming) and doing little errands or buying food or whatever (General-life). Writing is now separated out in Excellent time as well.
Finally, I get a lot of mileage out of my "Challenges" section. At the end of the day, I answer all those questions. A great way to see if I'm on-track or off-track with things.
Two new questions: "Did I keep surfing under 60 minutes for the day?" which relates to the "Conceding Defeat—The Internet is Stronger Than I Am" post. And "Did I act on my key habit for the day?" which is where I evaluate the key habit I set earlier in the day.
Running errands. Waiting in line. Waiting for a train, bus, or flight. Commuting. Driving in your car.
Dead time.
There's a lot of dead time, you might not even realize how much there is. If you can fill this time up with valuable things, you're going to have a much better life.
I used to try bringing a book with me for dead time, and it works sometimes. Now I listen to audio, which can be done pretty much anywhere. Waiting in line at an airport? Audio. Commuting? Audio. Getting groceries? Audio.
I can't stress enough how big of a difference this makes. Fill up the dead time. There's lots of it. You'll be amazed at all you can learn in the time that's normally slipping through the cracks.
I doubt I'll ever build or get involved in a time tracking app—yes, there could be a better one, but it's a saturated space. It's a relatively small market, and there's a disproportionately huge amount of competition in it. There's already tons of offerings ranging from "satisfactory" to "pretty darn good"—I might build something in the space for kicks sometime, but it's not a business priority. There's just too much low hanging fruit in old world, billions-of-dollar industries that are massively underinvested in technology. Whenever anyone tells me they're building a time/goal-setting/etc app, I advise against it until they're doing it for non-business reasons.
Anyways. Prioritizing.
How do I prioritize? Six months ago, my answer would have been "haphazardly"—I just picked things somewhat arbitrarily and did them based on… whatever.
Since then, I've gotten a bit more systematic about it.
Every morning I fill this out -
——————————————-
QUICK CHECKLIST:
Time started:
Vitamins, stretch, brush, breathe, posture:
Borderlands, celerity, gratitude, life goals:
Highest Impact Creative:
Highest Impact Enterprising:
Time complete:
——————————————-
CYCLES:
Target Expansion:
Target Maintenance:
Target World:
Other Priorities?:
Time complete:
——————————————-
That's my morning routine.
What are those "Cycles"? They're bloody miraculous is what they are.
I realized a few things:
1.) "Expansion"—doing creative or enterprising work—won't happen automatically unless it's prioritized, and it's the thing with absolutely the most positive impact on life. So I prioritize it, and aim to do it first.
2.) "Maintenance"—there's generally ongoing commitments I've got to uphold. This is where I reply to letters, follow up with appointments, run errands, whatever. Generally, my mind starts to burn out on expansionary tasks after 5-10 hours of it at most since it takes a lot of mental horsepower. So I can shift gears to maintenance, and get in a few more hours of cleanup, cleanup, etc.
3.) "World"—I realized that working all the time doesn't max out productivity. Every day I try to define some activity to either do in the evening or split my day in half. Go shopping, go look at art, go visit with friends, go walk around, chill out in a cafe with nice music, see a tourist site, etc.
I try to somewhat explicitly schedule these. Like, if I'm up at 6AM, I might say I'm heading out at 4PM to go play around out in the world and I'm done working for the day unless I get inspired (I often do get inspired and work a few more hours at night, but explicitly stopping work unless inspired is good—and perhaps conducive to inspiration anyways)
The trickiest thing for me is building around other people's schedules. I'm working on projects or in correspondence with people in Western Europe, East Coast USA, West Coast USA, and Asia. That means I get appointments scattered all over the place, sometimes winding up with something silly like a 2-3 hour call at 11PM China time (11AM EST USA) followed by another call at 6AM China time… I look at on that the schedule and say, "Who is the idiot that set that up?"
(The idiot, of course, was me)
So I've got to get better at coordinating my calendar and appointments across timezones, and yet not burning out off of no sleep and not enough relaxation. It's a tricky thing, but life is really fantastic overall. One thing I've started doing lately is spending a lot more money—keeping myself in the nicest surroundings, taking taxis even short distances, etc. I've been meaning to write about this, but I was hyper-frugal as my dominant strategy for years. I'm getting away from that, because I need to spend more to keep myself going at the rates I'm going.
I think most people are at, maybe, 10% of their max capability. Probably more like 2%. That's where most of my life I've been. Lately I'm near 40-50%? It's intense. Better technology, better coordination, better planning are all necessary.
Speaking of which, one thing that's helped a lot is doing a fast weekly review in business. The senior partner at a company I just came onto is a savant when it comes to productivity—he's got basically six full-time projects going on, one in finance, one in IT, one in government, one in consumer goods, and a couple consulting things. He's amazing with technology. I take his recommendations wholesale—he actually convinced me to buy the Mac, for instance. It's amazing how much technology can serve you if you're systematic about it. He's also ultra-fast at planning, filtering things into the right thing, action, etc.
I use Wunderlist pretty extensively, a great free app that syncs across platforms. It only does a couple things, but it does them really well. You create a task, you set a date when it's due, you can see what's due today, tomorrow, this week, and what's overdue. You can share it collaboratively easily, and it syncs easily. Great app, it's helped a lot. That's one of the things I review.
Then I periodically review what my "Top Priorities" are—I'll list out the 4-5 active business projects and 3-4 life projects I've got going on and check the due dates on everything in Wunderlist, or skim things I haven't set dates on yet. I update this weekly, when I do the weekly business review (which goes surprisingly fast).
I try to prioritize expansionary activities, because they just don't happen if they're not prioritized. After that, the next thing I prioritize are things that are a "dependency" for someone else—if I don't get it, it hoses someone else.
I complete every item that's scheduled a day unless an amazing opportunity or an emergency comes up, in which case I reschedule. The exception is if I feel burnout setting in, which I'm being very careful to manage.
My fitness instructor, he always advises me "against being hardcore"—if I feel weak, sore, or not there during my workout, just quit for the day and get back at it. Maybe gains are slightly slower, but you avoid being injured which takes you out of the game.
I'm treating burnout the same way. On a day when it seems the weight of the world is on my shoulders, I finish any critical dependencies so no one else is hosed, but then maybe I reschedule everything and take the rest of the day off. I could theoretically grind out a few more low quality hours when feeling early burnout set in, but you risk giving up weeks of higher productivity if you do. Just like in fitness, I'm not trying to be hardcore—maybe I lose a few small gains here and there, but I want that sustainability so I don't get taken out of the game for a while.
A quick recap:
There's a tradeoff you're going to have to make a lot of the time: simplicity vs. precision.
Simplicity often lacks detail and nuance. That's why we build and do more complex things—to get more precise, specific outcomes.
Choose simplicity unless there's a good reason not to.
Complex systems have more of a damage of collapse. Add complexity carefully, and in a way where you can roll it back if the added-complexity doesn't add enough benefit.
If you look like at one of my time tracking sheets, you'll see a pretty complex thing. But it gradually, slowly grew into that. If you were starting from scratch, don't start with something complex. Start with something simple. Track 3 things max.
Consolidate as time passes. Cross out things that you no longer need to track, either because it's not relevant any more, it's automatically successful, or because tracking wasn't producing gain there.
I used to have a "Research" category and a "Learning" category on my time tracking. They're slightly different, but I combined them to "Research/learning"—I lose a little bit of fine grain detail, but gain simplicity. And simplicity is good.
Start with simple. Add slowly. Complexity is a huge tax and increases the chance of collapse. You should be getting a big gain if you're going more complex.
Feature Example: Key Habit Today
"Key habit" is my newest addition, and it filled a little hole I had in my template. Before, I had something like, "Most important thing to be achieved today," or "Most important objective," but those frequently fell short. Some days I didn't have any key thing to be achieved—I just had to deal with a lot of little loose ends and work to have a good day.
On the other hand, sometimes I had a tremendous amount of work to do on one specific thing, and that dominated and was more important than anything else.
"Key habit" is a nice compromise between those two extremes. In it, I could list spending time working on some large project, I could list a new habit I'm trying to adopt, or to something I'm trying to scale down and quit. If my surfing the internet time was too high for a while, the key habit for a few days in a row might be "Keep internet surfing under 60 minutes."
If I've been eating poorly, it might be, "Make every meal healthy today." If I'm drinking too much coffee, it might be, "Drink three coffees or less today." (I pretty consistently drink way too much coffee. I'm working on it.)
But on other days, I care very little about general habits like internet use, food, and coffee—perhaps because I've got massively critical deliverable or deadline on a project coming up. For instance, I've been super busy since I got to Beijing, and I haven't found time to do some writing that I've meant to do for a week. Today I've got, "Find some writing time" as my key habit. I got invited to a breakfast with two good guys I like a lot, but I had a two-hour call back to the USA around the time breakfast was happening. I could have dropped in for the tail end of breakfast maybe, but I've really got to get this writing down—so I managed to carve out 30 minutes for writing, even though I would have liked going to the breakfast. I'd like to find another 30 minutes later in the day for writing at least, which I think I'll be able to do.
My key habit four days ago was, "Get a good blend of social and work today"—I had a lot of work to do, but I also wanted to see three or four people I know. Trying to do both was my focus that day (I did it—it just meant I couldn't screw around at all and couldn't have any real downtime that day).
Inconsistency with Habits? Start with the Hard Stuff First
Let's talk about consistency with time tracking, and indeed, all habits in general.
My first start at tracking was in January 2010 in Taipei, Taiwan. I read this excellent Lifehacker article on Jerry Seinfeld's method of writing jokes every day, called "Don't break the chain"—he would try to do a little joke writing every day, no matter what, and then mark the calendar if he did.
Well, I implemented something like that, and I had amazing results that month. Really, January 2010 is one of the nicest months in my life. Damn near everything went right that month on all levels. Magnificent.
For some damn reason, Taiwan only gives Americans 30 days visa-free. It's, like, the only place I've been with visa waiver that only gives you 30. So I left after 30 days, sadly, because I loved Taipei. Really a great city. After that, I was in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand.
For some reason, I just stopped tracking after I was in transit. Then I kind of started again for 3-4 days, and then I didn't do it again for six months or so until I was in Korea.
WTF?
I don't know, man. Us humans, we're kind of defective and stupid in some ways. We identify something that's really, really good for us. We do it for a while. It works really well, increasing quality of life, happiness, productivity, and gets us closer to our most important goals…
…then we stop doing it for some damn fool reason.
Can't explain it. Don't understand. It's kind of crazy and stupid.
So yes, I've had false starts. I have two big thoughts for you here:
1.) Get something down. At the very end of the day, estimate what the day's breakdown is. Just open your file or notebook or whatever, and put something down. This isn't just for time tracking, it's for going to the gym, calling your Mom regularly, whatever that's important to you.
Like, if you're too worn out or sick or tired to go to the gym, go anyways, at least for 10 minutes. Go, do a super light workout, shower, go home. Then you haven't broken your general patterns and commitments. Breaking commitments completely makes it easier to break commitments completely more going forwards. But doing it just a little bit even strengthens the habit.
2.) Start with the hard stuff.
This is actually my one critique of your time tracking, which I like but I have one issue with—don't start with "Mail, News, Facebook, Forums"—don't do that. Start with your non-deadline, expansive, important creative projects, your programming or hustling or whatever.
When you start with the easy, no effort stuff, it's far more likely the more important, more challenging stuff doesn't get done. So I'd move it around.
Final thought—answering some "yes/no" questions at the end of the day is very good for me. This is my current set of them -
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CHALLENGES:
Did I start the day in my planner instead of online?
Did I only check email when I was ready to write back immediately?
Did I only check a site once, then done with it?
Did I check "Current Targets" if I caught myself wasting time?
Did I prioritize books/good learning instead of mindless surfing?
Did I make war on procrastination?
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Might be worth getting something like that. Just the first question, starting in the planner instead of online goes a long way towards making sure you track—because if not, you have to mark "No"—just make sure you do open it up at the end of the day at the very least, and write an ultra-short summary of the day. If you've fallen off track some, that's fine, but doing something goes a long way towards not getting negative inertia.
Guest Essay: Nine Tips for Getting Started with Time Tracking
A very good guest post by Matt Mazur (mattmazur.com). Here's Matt:
Nine Tips for Getting Started with Life Tracking
Inspired by Sebastian's posts about the benefits of life tracking, I decided to try it for myself. After several false starts, I've now been doing it for almost two months straight and have had some great results. In this post I'll explain how my current tracking system works and I'll share some of the lessons I've learned along the way.
How it Works
Every Sunday morning I print an eight page document that I use throughout the week to track various aspects of my life. The first page is an overview, which I will fill out at the end of the week to summarize my results. The remaining seven pages are devoted to each day of the week.
Here's what the summary page looks like:
And here's what the daily tracking pages look like:
I added notes at the bottom of each screenshot where I thought things might need additional explanation.
At the end of each day I fill out the tracking page for that day. When Sunday rolls around, I flip through the pages and aggregate the results on the summary page. Summarizing the results at the end of the week is a good idea because it lets you quickly gauge how you've done and it provides a quick reference so you can compare your progress with previous weeks.
This system works well for me and it might for you too. But getting to this point was not without its challenges.
Here's a few key lessons I've learned along the way, a few of which echo some of Sebastian's advice.
1.) Start small
If you decide to make a big change in your life, like starting a daily life tracking routine, your best chance of success is to start with a small change and slowly expand it into something bigger. If you disrupt the status quo too much too quickly, you probably won't stick with it. When you begin, life tracking should barely have an impact on your current routine which means it should take as little time as possible to complete.
My first attempt at tracking was in November 2010. I typed up a daily tracking sheet in Pages, Mac's equivalent to Word, which I envisioned myself filling out daily. The problem was that it was way too long: one page, including lots of opened ended questions ("What are your goals for tomorrow?") and fill in the blanks that required me to do research like "How many sign ups on Preceden and jMockups today?". It took me about twenty minutes to fill out. I stuck with it for about two days before quitting, justifying it by saying that I didn't have enough time to do this type of tracking. And I was right.
When I started up again at the beginning of the year, I started with a much, much simpler version that took about 30 seconds to fill out. As time went by, I slowly expanded it by adding new items. Even now, after nearly two months of adding to it, it only takes me about three minutes to fill out. You might decide that you want to track a lot more than I am and that's fine, but make sure you start with something that's quick and grow it from there.
2.) Never skip a day
If you miss a day or two during the week, you're going to have a hard time going back at the end of the week and summarizing your results. How, for example, do you calculate the average numbers of hours you've slept if you didn't record it one day? You won't be able to without either guessing at the hours you slept that night or by qualifying your answer with "On the days I kept track…" which is next to useless. If you're want to compare your results week to week, there's nothing more frustrating than not being able to compare a week with another because you missed a day somewhere in there.
And along with the previous point, a short tracking sheet takes less time to fill out, which means you'll be less likely to miss a day.
3.) If you absolutely have to miss a day, fill it out as soon as possible
I try to mark things on the tracking sheet throughout the day as I complete them and finish the rest right before I head to sleep. If I can't fill it out for whatever reason, I make sure to complete it at my first available opportunity the next day.
Do not wait more than a day to complete it. What time did you go to bed the night before last? What did you have for dinner the day before yesterday? Chances are it will take you a minute to remember, if you can remember at all. For accurate results, complete your tracking sheet as soon as possible.
4.) The type of questions you ask are important
Yes/no questions are the simplest type of responses by far. If you're just getting started, I'd recommend starting with a few yes/no questions to cover a few key areas of your life. Answering a yes/no question takes about half a second. For my tracking, I don't even have to write a "Y" or an "N" because I include a "Y / N" next to the question so I can quickly circle the answer.
The easiest type of questions to answer next to yes/no are quantitative: How many blog posts? How far did you run? How many times did you eat that thing you're trying to stop eating? These could also be worded as yes/no questions, but for anything with a quantitative answer you should write the number, not just yes/no, because you get a higher fidelity when you analyze it later down the road.
Following quantitative answers, you've got fill in the blank: what time did you go to bed? What did you eat for breakfast? Etc. Because these are usually objective questions (i.e., there is a concrete answer), filling them out should not take very long.
At the other end of the spectrum are open ended questions: What are you goals for tomorrow? What mistakes did you make today? These require you to sit back and really think about the answer. These pay a lot of dividends, but are also the most time consuming to answer. You should avoid these until you've settled into a tracking routine.
5.) Make changes weekly, not daily
During the first two or three weeks of tracking, I wanted to make changes to my tracking sheet almost daily. "Include this… don't include that." Resist the temptation to change it daily. It makes aggregating your results at the end of the week difficult and you'll also change your mind a lot a day or two after you originally decide to make the change.
If you want to change your tracking sheet, make a note of it and then on Sunday when you're preparing for the next week make the edits.
6.) Track what you want to change
How do you decide what to track? Write down all the areas of your life where you want to improve and come up with questions that serve that end. Whether it's exercising more often, eating healthier, or writing more often, tracking how often you do it will help you gauge your progress and, magically, do it more often.
After you've met your goal for a specific area, continue tracking it for a few weeks until you're confident that you've made it a long term habit. For example, if your goal is to floss every day and you've been successfully tracking and doing it for several months, you can be pretty confident that its part of your routine and that you'll continue doing it when you stop tracking it.
7.) You should not be able to do everything all the time
Marking "No" for an item when it should be "Yes" is a bit unnerving at first, but don't feel like you have to do everything every day. In fact, if you are accomplishing everything you want to do, chances are you're not challenging yourself enough.
Sebastian says aim for a 70% success rate—that sounds about right.
8.) Focus on one big change per month
This one's inspired by Sebastian's New Years Resolution post in Get Some Victory: rather than make a whole bunch of sweeping changes to your life on New Years Day, split them up and try to accomplish one per month. A good tracking system should help you achieve these goals.
In January, for example, my goal was to cut out coffee and juice from my diet. This month I'm focusing on eating a healthier breakfast (oatmeal and fruit vs. Frosted Mini Wheats). Had I tried cutting out coffee, juice, and Frosted Mini Wheats on January 1, I'd have had a lot lower chance of succeeding than by breaking it up over the course of the few months.
The great thing about this is that you could conceivable go forever doing this: identify one area per month that you want to improve, focus on it for that month so you make it a habit, and repeat for the rest of your life. With a little bit of discipline, you can become the best possible version of yourself that you can be.
9.) For best results, develop your own system
This system works well for me because I started with something simple and then developed it based on my own lifestyle and goals. By all means, gain inspirations from this system and from Sebastian's, but if you really want to get the most out of life tracking then you should develop your own over time. Experiment with different types of questions, figure out what you like and don't like, and discover what works best for you.