What do YouTube videos, emails, walking, running, web searches, phone calls, food, body weight, sleep, heart rate, and my geographic location all have in common? I measure and track them. Fortunately, many toys tools exist to make this easy—almost automatic. Using these tools to track some of your own key metrics will horrify you. Then it will help you identify specific behaviors to improve. And finally, it make you feel better about yourself.
The horror
Let’s start with wasting time. I viewed 554 videos on YouTube last month. And that was down 4% from the month before. If each of those videos were 3 minutes long, that’s roughly equivalent to 30 hours, which is roughly equivalent to me not having a life! (Many of those videos were much, much longer than 3 minutes…)
Moving on to fitness. The graph below shows what is pretty much an average day for me. Behold, scientific proof that I am a couch potato. At least I apparently “walked” 6 times on this day, but not enough to budge my heart rate.
We won’t even get into diet and weight in this post because it’s just too horrifying. Needless to say, collecting data about yourself will open your eyes. It will provide insights into your life you’ll wish you never had. And it will cause you to act.
Choosing what to improve
Once you recover from the shock of your initial discoveries, it won’t take long for the fire of determination to light up inside you. Before you panic, remember that there is really no reason to be overwhelmed. Of all the things you wish to improve, you only need to pick one. And it helps to pick one that sounds fun!
I picked YouTube viewing. No joke.
My YouTube stats actually kind of impressed me, so naturally I set a goal to view 600 YouTube videos this month.
...
Those three dots represent a long and boring story about how I decided that my YouTube goal wasn't really helping me get anywhere in life. The great part about picking just one metric at a time to improve upon is that it keeps you focused and protects you from anxiety. Also, it allows you to pivot quickly when you realize you are on the wrong track.
Having realized that YouTube (despite its amazing qualities) would only lead to an early death if I continued to consume it in those quantities, I set my sites on a more, shall we say, beneficial goal. Walking.
6,000 steps. I wanted to walk at least 6,000 steps each day. I combined this with a goal to get up and walk around at least once each hour during the work day. As I focused on these two metrics, I found that my behavior changed quite naturally as a result of consistently keeping my recorded progress in front of me. Walking a few minutes each hour is now a natural, almost automatic part of my routine. And I'm about to set a new goal: 10,000 steps a day.
Succeed and feel great
If you don’t know where you stand, it’s difficult to know whether you have moved. I think Thomas S. Monson said it best:
"When we deal in generalities, we shall never succeed. When we deal in specifics, we shall rarely have a failure. When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of performance accelerates.”
This, my friends, is a true principle. So start taking measurements! I think you'll love learning about yourself and finding small, specific ways to become a better you. I've listed a few great tools below for you to consider. I use or have used all of them, and definitely recommend them for making your data gathering fun and easy.
Toys and Tools for Personal Metrics
Google account Activity Summary - Emails, YouTube views, basically anything you do online while signed in
Lift.do - The Ultimate Goal Platform "Lift represents everything we know about helping people find success."
FitBit Trackers - Measures steps, sleep, stairs climbed, etc.
Basis Health Tracker - Measures steps, sleep (including sleep cycles), activities, heart rate, skin temp., etc.
LoseIt - Food diary/calorie counting
Aria Scale - It's a scale... But it connects to the internet and it's awesome.
Google Location History - So creepy. So incredibly cool!