Five years ago, going through a tough time I used journalling as a technique to keep my head screwed on properly, and to remain active about progressing.
I considered the important aspects of my life and asked myself in a daily journal how each part was going.
How is work Pete?
How is your health? Mental and physical?
How are your relationships?
With friends?
With family?
With partners?
With new people?
Iād give a score to each (1-5) and then ask myself why I gave that score.
This would help me figure out causes of symptoms.
What I didnāt realise, is that it helped develop my self awareness.
I had doubled my initial target of 30 days and felt great on my feet. Time to throw it away!
Months later Iād slow down and fell pretty shitty again!
I brought the daily journalling habit back.
Iād throw it away and bring it back now and again, and it became an āon-demandā life stabiliser of sorts. Until one day I just realised it helped so much I ought to incorporate it into my daily life.
To make it easier to update on a daily basis, I moved it into a spreadsheet and from that day on, my life tracker was born!
Over the next 4 years Iād tweak it in different ways.
Below is version 5 made for 2022. This is how Iād describe it briefly:
A vertical calendar split into the 5 component areas that I care about on a daily basis:
- daily habits
- waking up at consistent times
- doing a certain number of workouts per week
- learning a certain amount per week
- seeing family a certain number of times a week
- the health of myself
thoughtsas a place to put down my one-liner thought of the daymindlooking after my mental health, which could mean watching stupid videos all day, journalling, going for a walk or practising some mindfulnessbodystaying physically fit because thereās so many great things about stretching your body!- my learning
- the people around me
- the 4 Fs! I think strong relationships with friends, family, (girl)friends and future relationships of any type are important, and are slightly different, so deserve their own columns
- and finally, new experiences
- variety is the spice of life, and you could just do the above, hit a rhythm but thatās no fun! Add in some chaos, have everything in moderation, including moderation itself!
A tab for you to make your own analytics & graphs from the data you have
Below is an example of 2019. Iām analysing how much I did in each component, and how much I did in total. (Definitely doesnāt have to be your metric! Back then I was aiming to do loads of things, rather than ābalanceā or quality!)
A tab on fitness tracking
I connect this to a fitness google form and logged all my workouts there. Again, do what you want here!
Conclusion
Hopefully this gives you an insight into how I understand myself and keep self aware. It is my āsupport networkā amongst many others.
It only takes a few minutes a day, and when it adds up, you learn super interesting things about yourself!
It has helped me keep in balance (between life component areas), watch my habits, and plan ahead!
If you give this a shot, please give me feedback and let me know how it goes. Twitter is probably the best place =)
Enjoy!
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