I Tracked My Life For A Year, Here's What I Learned
Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to track different aspects of your life? Well I did just that. BIG nerd vibes.
Why did I do it?
It’s the question every asks first, and it’s a very fair question. Why would anyone bother to go so deep into the data behind their daily lives?
I suppose, personally, I wanted my own Spotify Wrapped. I was always so curious to know whether I had any patterns in my behaviour and if it had an overall impact on my health and wellbeing.
Turns out, there’s more to the data than meets the eye.
How does it work?
Ok, so I tracked 4 key parts of my life:
🍕 Food— devouring greasy takeaways or eating like a Californian beach babe?
🏄♂️ Exercise— rotting on the sofa or channelling my inner Mo Farah?
🍻 Alcohol Consumption— big night out or Lucky Saints and early mornings?
🧘♂️ Wellbeing— doomscrolling on TikTok or reading and meditation?
Within this, I weighted the different categories with a score. Food and Exercise were given 1-4, with Alcohol Consumption and Wellbeing having 1-3.
The higher the score, the better.
For the less mathematically inclined readers, that gives a maximum score of 14 on any given day.
How did it go?
Overall, I averaged 9.95/14 across the year.
So, in essence, I scored well more often that not across the core categories.
But currently that means very little doesn’t it? Because what you’re interested in is the insight behind this crazy experiment.
And here they are…
🏝️ MY WELLNESS SCORE IS HIGHER WHEN I’M ON HOLIDAY 🏝️
This one isn’t so shocking, let’s be honest. However it does show that I’m much more prone to actually switching off from work and social media when I’m not on the clock. This was something I was keen to do in 2024 so I’m pretty happy with that, though I’d like to focus more on reading in 2025 as getting outside for a walk isn’t cutting it for my wellness like it used to.
🥗 MY HEALTHY EATING IS WAAAAY BETTER IN SUMMER 🥗
There’s something in the air when it’s sunny. Perhaps it’s the smell of the sunscreen, but there’s just an aura that screams you need to have a salad not a pizza. But it’s not just about eating healthier, it’s about keeping it up consistently... this is not something I was so good with. It seems that the moment the weather got colder was when I started to let more calorifically-inclined options seep into my rotation. You can’t win ‘em all though, can you?
🏃♂️ EXERCISE WAS BETTER THE DAY AFTER HAVING A COUPLE OF BEERS, BUT MUCH WORSE AFTER A BIG NIGHT OUT 🏃♂️
This one is interesting to me. It shows that there’s a limit whereby my somewhat hungover self is dragged out of bed to make sure I repent for yesterday’s sins— but only to an extent. My estimate is that I can have 5 beers before tomorrow’s exercise is a write off, given that the only times my exercise level was good after a big night was when I went for a walk with my girlfriend to rid myself of the toxins. This is usually due to the fact that she’s tee total and I can’t be seen as a pathetic 30 year old hungover mess EVERY time I drink.
🍻 I DON’T REALLY DRINK ON FRIDAYS, BUT DO DRINK ON SUNDAYS 🍻
Fridays for me are more about relaxing on the sofa after a long week, so I guess that coincides with not being so keen on having a few beers. My girlfriend, whom I live with, also goes into the office on Fridays so it’s less likely we’re keen to have a date night that might see me nick a few jars. But it’s obvious that I still live by my longstanding motto of ‘Don’t let Monday ruin your Sunday’ because it’s actually more of a drinking day than Thirsty Thursday for me. The reason? I’m a long suffering season ticket holder at Tottenham. With games being more and more played on Sundays, alcohol is a vice I use to soften the blow of often terrible results.
🤷♂️ BETTER SCORES DON’T ALWAYS LAST 🤷♂️
Every day is a new day it would appear. If I score full marks on one day, it doesn’t correlate to a succession of better or worse days following that. It’s completely random. Why? I don’t know. I think it’s nice that I don’t feel obliged to force myself to keep up appearances but I also wish I could score full marks every day. Then again, curry is hardly healthy eating so it can’t always go your way.
🤝 BETTER SCORES IN ONE AREA BRING OTHER SCORES UP WITH THEM 🤝
This one feels like it’s all about perfection. If I’ve gotten up early, read my book, run a 10km and refused a drink then it only seems natural to me that I need to eat healthily as well. Then again, there’s a trend that sees a poorer start to the day coincide with overall less healthy habits so it seems to be an all or nothing approach. That’s definitely something I need to change for 2025 because that just stinks of irregularity and no one wants that.
So, what have I learned?
Well I mean, the insights above of course. But what’s most interesting to me is that there are some clear habits that I didn’t know I had.
The main thing I’ll take from this tracking of my life is that it has helped me to see with clarity where I need to make changes. It doesn’t feel right that I refuse to exercise if I’ve already had a big night out. I mean, if anything, that’s when I should be exercising more often.
But something more I’ll take away is that I’m a big nerd who just loves to uncover insights about behaviour.
And I won’t stop.