NikithaI: “I want a fitbit. I want to track my steps.”
Friend: “What are you going to do by tracking your steps?”
I: “If I don’t know how much I am walking now, how will I know if I am improving?”
Well, it is not just the steps per day. In order to improve in anything, you should first know where you stand. Without a reference, you can’t compare. But don’t take your reference as others. Instead compare yourself for what you were yesterday.
It has been nearly 8 months, that I embarked on this self-improvement journey. If I did not have a base point, I would not have known if there has been any improvement at all.
But have I actually improved?
I did the following to track myself:
1.Rescue Time:
This software can be installed both on desktop and phone. It tracks the amount of time I spend on each application. I receive a weekly mail on the top applications I spent time on this week, top category, and productivity levels. You can customize it by categorizing the websites and applications the way you wish. I used to spend 45 hours a month on whatsapp when I started this exercise. Now the time I spend on that has come down by 3 times. You need not wait for a week to measure your productivity. You can go to their website or application to see how have you been doing in the day. On a few days, when I feel that I am not being productive, I go to the website and see what is distracting me.
2.Habit Loop Tracker:
I made a note of all the habits which are important to me in this app. Everyday I check the ones I do. It gives me a score based on that for each habit. This helps in not only tracking the habit but also acts as a reward. If the habit score comes close to 99%, I feel more accountable to do it daily to retain it that way and further increase it 100%. You also have a feature to sort the habits based on the score. So if you think that one habit is more important than others, you can work on it. It also shows you which day of the week you have been skipping it. For me, most of the times it is on weekends that I don’t read books. One of my friends gave me a 90 day challenge. That challenge ended yesterday. He asked “Do you see any improvement?” I immediately downloaded the data from it and showed him the statistics. He was taken aback looking at how clean the data is.
My areas of focus were productivity and habits. Hence those apps.
What are your focus areas? What matters to you?
Even if there are other areas which matter for you, productivity and habits form the base for it. If you want to improve your relation with your family, you can make habits around that. Those habits you have to track again. If your goal is getting better in your office work, it again comes back to building habits which will help you with that.
But if your aim is to improve your health, you can go for steps tracking devices. If it is concerned with improving your sleep, there is another app for it.
Analyze what your problem areas are and start tracking them.
Let us know in the comment section which area of your life you are going to track.
Happy tracking your life!