I believe in “That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.”
There are things in my life that I log for improving it myself - while other aspects especially health related are useful when reporting is needed.
There’s a GTD aspect to it too where I’m able to take things out of my head - creating a less cluttered mind able to be a bit more present. My usual process is to instantly log the movie I’ve seen or the book I’m reading to not leave that item for later.
This is a list of the apps and things I log. Hopefully it’s useful to those who want an opinion on the app ecosystem around logging.
Locations
Google Maps Timeline - I love the auto-logging/tracking features from Google Maps. The visualisations and the details are great. If you have location tracking on - and the google maps app installed on your phone Google will list out all the locations you’ve been to. Checkout your own timeline here
This is a view of the cities I’ve visited
When visiting a place - I will log it on Swarm - a location logging app. One added benefit to logging on Swarm is knowing the places your friends have visited.
Entertainment
When I’ve finished watching a movie I’ll log it in Letterboxd
My profile
I’m open for suggestions to log TV shows. Hit me up on twitter @hsanat
Goodreads for books
My profile
Splitwise is great for logging expenses with friends. I use this for personal and family expenses too - eg. keeping a running tab on how much I’ve spent on my car.
Health
I used to log sleep meticulously on _DavidSmith’s Sleep++. Why I’ve stopped is a story for another post.
I use the built in Activity app for fitness goal tracking when I use the watch. Apple Health logs most of the health related logs from other apps I use.
For weight and body fat % I use a Fitbit Aria 2. This also connects back to apple health - which then feeds it to the other apps that need this information.
Events
I like taking photographs of things happening in my life. I take a lot of pics throughout good days - some of these pics end up being good. I have to get better at sharing those pics. But the general philosophy of it is that it’ll show up on the timehop app at some point in the future.
Timehop - is a great app to resurface logs. It connects to different apps and then is able to pull the things that happened on that day. It’s so much fun looking and then sharing timehop pics. Of late Google photos and apple photos have started surfacing pics from a x years ago as well. But my go-to app for what happened x years ago today is still timehop.
I’ll try my best to keep this post updated over the coming years.
