7 Things I’m Currently Tracking and The Benefits of Doing It Daily

Introduction

I remember that the more I was reading about successful people’s daily routines, habits and little tips on how to be more productive, the more I was noticing a tendency there.

They were all measuring their results one way or another. Be it online, offline, on a list, sharing it with an accountability partner, etc.

They weren’t talking much about this, but the fact that they took a moment to write down everything they did throughout the day (usually every evening or right after the activity), was enough for me to want to know more.

Nothing, of course, would have happened, if I hadn’t given this simple technique a try. And it turned out to be quite powerful.

It all started with my to-do list. Something I can’t live without these days.

Because if we look at it from another point of view, it’s a way of tracking the things that need to get done during the day, and then slowly crossing each off, until at the end of the day we examine how we’ve performed and what’s left.

But then I started making more detailed descriptions of different stuff I was doing daily. The written word is more powerful indeed. And knowing how much time something took you and the chance to compare it to the previous and the next few times you do it is priceless.

Nothing can give you such great feedback about your performance. And as a result, you can decide what changes you want to make in order to see an improvement. And then track that too.

The Benefits of Tracking Your Time, Life and Habits

When it comes to this, the first person I think of is Sebastian Marshal (whose blog is one of my favorites).

Here’s why he tracks his time every single day:

“I add things as it serves me. If something isn’t serving me any more, I delete it from my list.

But now, it’s super handy. Why do it every day? Well, honestly, I still forget a ton of things that are on my list if I don’t refer to the list.

Is it exhausting? Just the opposite actually, I get far more energy and time and life back from the tracking than I put into it.

If things get off-track, I can see where I’m doing good work, where I’m doing bad work, etc. If I wind up putting a lot of time into surfing the net, I notice fast. You can’t have 2-3 days in a row of spending 5-10 hours doing garbage and not notice it if you’re tracking your time. Again, filling this out took me six minutes MAX. That’s totally worth it to know where my time went, and to remember to do all the little things I want to do.

I love what I get back fro time tracking. Like, really love it. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done and it’s brought a hell of a lot of understanding and clarity and focus to my life. But again – it should serve you, it should get you to where you want to be. I don’t serve the tools, the tools serve me. It’s a powerful tool if you use it to get what you want…”

He continues in this post:

“One of the things I’ve gotten tremendous amounts of mileage out of it is tracking my time, habits, and life each day.

To put it simply – I now realize it’s impossible to understand how your life is going without some careful observation. There’s a lot of time each day, and knowing where that time goes, what you ate, what you did and didn’t do… it’s almost impossible to get a good picture of your life without some kind of measuring.

I definitely started small, and built up to where I am now. Don’t go crazy trying to track 20 things at once – it’s unlikely to work. Start small, then add a few once tracking the first group is second nature to you.”

7 Things I’m Measuring Daily

1. Tracking The Work I Get Done.

Working from home may be amazing, but there are also many distractions.

And although I’ve created the perfect schedule for myself, I still benefit a lot from writing down everything that gets done.

This may vary, of course. But in the end I like seeing:

• how many words I’ve written (for my blog/niche sites/guest blogs/books/freelancing);
• whether I’ve checked out writing job boards and gigs and applied for at least 1 or 2;
• the stuff I did in terms of affiliate marketing;
• making small changes to the site;
• joining advertising networks;
• doing sponsored posts;
• exploring new options of monetizing a site;
• formatting, editing and publishing posts and eBooks;
• pitching bigger sites for long-term relationships, etc.

In this list I just write down the things I’ve done connected to work right after I’ve completed them.

I don’t include things like checking email (unless it’s a carefully thought-out email about something important that took me some time) or social media (the 2-minute Twitter breaks definitely don’t count as work).

So basically tracking my work includes only things that can increase my income, or help my current and future online businesses in some way.

Read also: How I Earned $5,406 in a Month While Working from Home

How I do it?

I do nothing more than adding a new date in a Word document called “work” and listing the things I do under it.
I use no special software, apps or online tools, although I think they can help a lot.

2. I track what I eat.

That’s one of the new habits I’m doing.

Here’s what I say in the post:

“We hear about the benefits of journaling everything you do daily (in every area), but we don’t really realize the effect it has until we try it ourselves.
And it’s quite helpful, I’d say.

I’m always trying to change my eating habits and get fit, so this is quite useful for such goals.

Not only does it give you the bigger picture of what you eat, but you also become more aware of what you put in your mouth knowing that you’ll have to put it on paper later.

Guilt is a positive factor in this case. Because even if you’re not trying to control what you eat, you start feeling bad about it once you see it written.

So if you’ve tried other similar things but they haven’t worked, give this one a try.”

3. Tracking my water intake for the day.

Something I’ve been working on for some time now is drinking 2 liters a day.

For some it may be nothing, but I know many people that find a hard time drinking even 2-3 glasses per day.

I did my research long ago on the effect water has on our body. It turned out that our whole generation is suffering from chronic dehydration.

People just don’t think about water, although we know its benefits since childhood.
I also have my reasons to believe that the daily problems we co