Experiment #13: "Marie-Kondo"ing what we keep track of...

From business metrics to daily step counts, does it spark joy?

The Experiment: Stop tracking every damn thing.

Hypothesis: What I previously tracked will immediately turn to chaos. I’ll lose “control”. My finger will fall off the proverbial pulse and I’ll have no idea what’s happening.

Result: I have more free time and go to bed HAPPIER.

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I can tell you the exact level of my Triglycerides on October 24th, 2013

This isn’t because anything was wrong with my Triglycerides or anything else in my body. But because I have every single blood test ever taken and the results of it in a spreadsheet that dates back to that day. I also have this information (same spreadsheet, different tab) for my husband dating back to 2014.

Why? Because I’m a little obsessed and always have been with TRACKING.

Every month, I do a “metrics hour” for my business and personal life, where I plug all sorts of data into spreadsheets, Google Docs, and notebooks and ensure things are fully documented.

Recently, I started wondering…

• What exactly am I tracking?

• What’s helpful and what’s actually detrimental?

• What’s it all getting me/doing for me? Is it bringing me further to a goal or action?

I know this obsession seems silly. And so, by proxy, this experiment probably does too.

But once I started to wonder if all the tracking was helping or hindering, I needed to take a look and see if any purging needed to be done.

Sidebar: I’m for a tracker, BUT I don’t feel the need to share my “stats” with others. I’m not one of those people who share how many books they read at the end of the year, how many pages they wrote/read, or how many glasses of water they drank. I think it’s meant to be inspiring to others? A breeding ground for accolades and a boost for pride? I find it de-motivating when I see these kind of posts on social media, and it either makes me feel like a slob because I didn’t walk 5,000 miles this year or that I SHOULD BE tracking something I’m not already.

Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash

Moving on…. The actual experiment! Marie-Kondo EVERYTHING I track and let go of what’s not sparking joy.

First, I started by tallying up everything I track on a regular basis and WHY:

• Books - I do track what I read so I can recommend to others, and because I forget what I read sometimes

• Shows and movies - I track and rate them 1-10 so I can recommend them to others, and because I forget what I watch too

• Monthly celebrations - I like to celebrate EVERYTHING large or small that’s going well in my life and I keep track of it all by month

• Blood tests - data like this, accrued over time… it just does it for me, you know!?

• Movement - I write down yoga, walks, other forms of exercise, etc. Why? I like to make sure I move every day and I’m allergic to smart devices/apps/watches tracking it for me

• Supplements - Helps me remember I took things, know what’s working, what’s not, track patterns, etc.

• Meditation, Hypnosis, and any “streaks” I don’t want to break

• Business metrics - revenue, rate per hour on projects, where clients come from, brief notes about each project experience. Subscriptions and recurring expenses, networking calls, podcast downloads and completion rates, email open rates, social media followers and LinkedIn connections, mileage, the list goes on…

• Cycle stuff - I WAS using a daily journal that had me tracking:

  • Day in cycle

  • Emotional, physical, social, and mental energy

  • Physical notes

  • Overall mood and a brief synopsis of what the day consisted of

  • Challenges and successes

• THEN, because I have unfun cycles, my lady doc added in another tracker that had me tracking:

  • Sleep

  • Basal body temp

  • Weight

  • Energy

  • Movement

  • Health of eating on a scale of 1-10

  • Pain and other symptoms

  • Happy, sad, agitated, overwhelmed, depressed, lonely, tired, etc. etc. etc. etc.

What made the cut and what got cut:

Everything I track needs to be a relatively time commitment to monitoring. It needs to help move me in the right direction and not simply be gathering data to gather data. It needs to alert me to problems before they happen, and see patterns and trends that could otherwise sneak up on me.

So… after all that…

All that really didn’t spark joy was the cycle tracking. In fact, I would say it detracted joy because I was reminded just how messed up they continue to be… despite TRACKING. Furthermore, after my doctor told me to use her tracker in addition to the one I was already using, she never asked to see the data. Which I found annoying and unhelpful.

I’ve read SO many positive and wonderful things about tracking your cycle, syncing up to the moon, knowing your body, blah, blah, blah, and honestly… for some of us, I think it’s just more stressful than not!

I stopped tracking at the end of July and just two short weeks in, I feel FREER and lighter already!

And don’t you know, right after I made this decision, I find a podcast by my main health squeeze, Dr. Aviva Romm titled:

After listening to the episode, she nearly convinced me to pick it back up and get her fancy free download. Which if you’re curious, you can download HERE.

But then she said something along the lines of, “Most women don’t need to track for longer than three months to get an accurate picture.” And that was ALL that info I needed. Thank you, Dr. Aviva for permission not to track anymore something that wasn’t helpful in the first place.

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I wonder what tiny little shift will make such a huge difference in my life next!?

The answer is probably on the other side of the next experiment…

What do YOU track!?

Is there anything that’s unhelpful or just maybe a little neurotic (your secret is safe with me) that you can let go of!? Anything you're tracking that’s just a time suck and not sparking joy? Making pain worse? I want to know!

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