Track To Transcend

Tracking has been in my life for a while. At first, it started as a hand-written tracker in my last year of high school. For about three years, I tracked the days I worked out, the number of pages I read, my mood and the days without nicotine. I filled up two notebooks like that. It had become a bedtime routine that I would open up my tracking notebook and do the 5 checks.

This habit disappeared once I was drafted into the army in mid-July last year. There was no clear-cut routine, especially in the starting months. Furthermore, the forest adventures are slightly destructive for normal notebooks due to unreliable weather conditions.

That being said, I still got three years of continuous tracking in. Furthermore, I experimented with separate finance, workout and other specific trackers. I got to reap the benefits and more importantly discovered some of the pitfalls of tracking your life.

My most recent tracking experiment is food. For a long time, I believed that I would never track my calories because it seemed so strenuous. Another reason is that it seemed unhealthy that I would eat based on the amount some application gave me.

Never say never though. I started tracking calories last Sunday. It has been a week and it is surprising how fast it gets to your head – both in a good and a bad way. I was a lot more conscious of what I ate, instead of eating the whole chocolate bar I ate three pieces. Sometimes I did not take dessert because it would have been unnecessary. Most importantly, I controlled my portion size.

The negative however was the feeling I got as soon as I surpassed my calorie goal imposed by the app. It was a feeling of absolute failure. I did manage to calm myself though, since the point of this experiment is not to stay on track with the calories but to be more conscious about the quantity and quality of the food I consume.

The experiment will be coming to an abrupt pause. I am going to the forest for ten days starting today. I do plan on continuing it afterwards. I feel like more data is necessary to gather genuine stats and to have an understanding of my caloric needs.

So one of the benefits of tracking, as can be seen from the previous example, is the conscious or even active way of thinking about the tracked activity. A pitfall, that I have encountered more than once is that the tracking becomes so repetitive that we forget the "why" behind it.

That's when change is needed, either the tracking needs to be modified or even stopped completely. It is the point at which we should take a moment and reflect on the tracking and its necessity. It is easy to keep doing something out of habit, even though it does not have nearly the benefits that it used to.

Tracking your life has a lot of benefits. It gives a great overview and it can even promote good habits. The main trap to avoid is letting the tracking become a monotone activity done out of habit. Be active about it. Change it up or quit tracking.

This Week's Suggestions:

🎶 "i like the way you kiss me" by Artemas:

I've had this track on the loop for a moment. It has some kind of vibe that I cannot put into words, but a friend of mine could – there are some kind of apocalyptic sounds which really hits. This, for some reason, really resonates with me at the given moment, so yes. Give it a spin!

Cheers! Till next time!