What daily activities should I keep a log of?

May 6, 2007 11:13 PM

Daily log: What daily activities should I keep a log of? I am starting to try to keep track of my daily activity in a text document. I also know of software to do this but are there any in particular that are good?

So far I have the following:
Sleep
Food
Mood
Sexual activity
Hourly activity

posted by ihope to health & fitness (15 comments total)

I would think that the answer to the question is in large part driven by what you want to do with this information. What do you want to do with this log?

Is it just for posterity, so you can look back, ten years from now, and see what you ate on May 6, 2007? Or are you doing it to keep tabs on your diet / mood / sex drive for some diagnostic purpose?

If this is for posterity, then you probably want to keep the format simple and avoid any programs that are going to lock the data up into a strange format that's going to be unreadable later. I'd just make a new text file every day, and then put them in folders by month, and then in folders by year. (Or you could folder by week and then by month, whatever.) Then you can trivially dump all the individual daily files into one long file if you ever want to, as long as you are consistent in naming them. (I'd name them "yyyy-mm-dd.txt")
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:29 PM on May 6, 2007

Books read
Exercise done
Money Spent
Clothes worn
Rooms in the house visited
Video Games played
Time spent online
People communicated with
Time spent gardening
Time spent paying bills
Work vs. Leisure time
Visits to bathroom...

As Kadin2048 says, what do you want to do with this info?
posted by vacapinta at 11:40 PM on May 6, 2007

Twitter might be useful. I haven't used it. I think one of the mods mentioned it in the latest podcast.

I would suggest making this a digital text deal. It is just so much easier to search and manipulate.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 11:57 PM on May 6, 2007

Its somewhat inspired by things Seth Roberts. The idea is basically track my life in an effort to see what makes me tick and what I can do to better it.
posted by ihope at 12:20 AM on May 7, 2007

The idea is basically track my life in an effort to see what makes me tick and what I can do to better it.

To further that end, I'd suggest tracking your emotions (e.g. contentment, anger, joy, shame, guilt), tracking what triggers those emotions, and how you act on them.

You also might like to track whether you've been stressed, what triggered the stress, how you reacted to it (and whether that was a skilful reaction), and what you've done for stress relief.

What forms of self-work did you do today? Keeping track of certain things is great because it promotes self-awareness, but after you've become aware of patterns in your life, what did you do to improve? Did you journal? meditate? read inspirational material?

Are you keeping your life in balance so that you're avoiding burnout? Have you set healthy boundaries with your friends and family? Do you have a work-life balance?

Have you recorded your dreams and looked for patterns and symbols in them? Don't worry about buying a dream interpretation book--Jung said that dreams speak the language of the dreamer.

I know that these aren't all activities, but they will help you figure out what makes you tick.

I'm sure there's more that I could come up with, but there's a limit to how many things you can track!
posted by purplesludge at 12:58 AM on May 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Things thought
Things heard/seen/tasted/felt/said/smelt
Conversations
Ideas
Observations
Times you noticed the clock
posted by divabat at 1:21 AM on May 7, 2007

Coincidences.

Seriously, I think noticing stuff like this may be kind of a barometer for how engaged you are with life in general - instead of living in your own head.
posted by teleskiving at 1:57 AM on May 7, 2007

expense tracking should absolutely be on your list, especially if you're going to be cross-referencing it with things like happiness / burnout / mood / etc.
posted by Alt F4 at 5:15 AM on May 7, 2007

I have had great luck with recording the following:

1. CNN news headlines at the time I am making an entry
2. The current weather along with the hi and low for the day
3. Exercise for that day
4. A section to highlight things I would like to review in one year
5. Any significant song that I really like that is new.
6. Food consumed
7. Drugs, supplements and vitamins
8. Short Video (2 mins or less) depicting something from that day
9. Sexual Relations
10. Wisdom
11. Journal entry
12. Description of the state of my health/mood
13. Current pollen report.
14. Dollars spent, along with total dollar value in checking, savings etc.
15. Location, where are you at the time you are making the entry- this will help you to recognize vacations, and work travel more quickly and loop back to how you might be feeling.

My aim was to create an overall global picture of the day. I wanted to include enough information to answer the "whys" that I would have when reviewing the information in the future.

I have "journaled" since I was in the third grade. I started recognizing patterns and decided to put it into a database in 1997. I am glad I did, those patterns that you see from year to year can go a long way in predicting what is coming before it occurs- especially where your health, and wealth, is concerned.
posted by bkeene12 at 5:28 AM on May 7, 2007 [4 favorites]

It's a really good idea to keep a detailed record of your health. Every time you get a headache or upset stomach, write it down, along with anything that could have triggered it. Write down every time you take any medication. What works, what doesn't?

This serves two important purposes: 1) it will teach you what behaviors/foods/situations are unhealthy for you, and 2) it can be an absolutely invaluable resource for you and your doctor if you ever have a serious medical problem where your health history could be relevant.

I keep this kind of information in a big spreadsheet: a row for each day, columns for all the topics being tracked. Low-tech but easy to sort and review.
posted by miagaille at 7:20 AM on May 7, 2007

Okay, this is what I've done.
I've made an excel spreadsheet and each row being a day and the columns being: hourly activity, hourly happiness, hourly emotional state, and then below the hourly count I have money spent, sexual activity, sickness, sleep, sleep quality, dreams, exercise, protein calories, other calories, stress level, stress trigger, stress reaction, stress resolve, people talked to.

Thoughts?
posted by ihope at 5:56 PM on May 7, 2007

My prevailing thought is: How detailed is the sexual activity component? And how long do you wait before logging it?
posted by Pigpen at 6:44 PM on May 7, 2007

Ha, I'm super obsessive so pretty frequently thereafter, not too detailed? Just number of times, whom, that kinda thing.
posted by ihope at 7:06 PM on May 7, 2007

This looks pretty comprehensive. There's just one more thing that I thought of: you could record your motivations for your actions and your speech. That can help us figure ourselves out pretty quickly.
posted by purplesludge at 4:23 AM on May 8, 2007

Sexual Relations, Really? Wow...Life is much too short to keep a detailed record of too many things. Beyond keeping track of your expenses, and if you are a health nut, your exercise regimen, just try and live your life and take whatever comes as it happens.
posted by bgraves at 1:40 AM on May 9, 2007