Ask HN: Do you have a smart system/method to track things in your life? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you have a smart system/method to track things in your life?

24 pointsramn750 comments

I wonder what kind of methods/ststems people use to try and track certain things in their life, and what is some of the things they're tracking.

One example of mine is to try and track how well I'm generally feeling, and related- whether, and how certain supplements and vitamins affect it. Another one is how often do I get specific issues I'm suffering from (minor-medium inconveniences that I generally live with), such as stomach aches, back pains etc, and potentially help to figure out what's casing them.

I was really struggling to find a solution to this and I wonder what other smart systems people have.

Full disclosure: I'm working on an indie project trying to provide a cool solution to this (that's what I use) and was hoping to learn more about the subject from others.

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I wrote a Telegram bot to save messages into a Google Spreadsheet [1], with some sime parsing rules to split the text into columns (essentially, #hashtags for column names and everything in between as content). The idea is then to use pivot tables and other spreadsheet goodies to aggregate, summarize and report data.

I mainly use it to track expenses and random thoughts or links.

The bot's username is @gsheet_notes_bot, feedback and suggestions are welcome :)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TelegramBots/comments/wqkpm7/your_m...

Super cool tool!

Are you thinking of a way to automate the actual tracking? Do you find it a hassle to do manually? (this is the main thing I was trying to solve, check out https://www.t12n.io )

Neat idea and great website!

I thought about having some periodic reminders, maybe using something in the spreadsheet (e.g. columns) as prompts or questions to be answered, but have not implemented anything yet. I am pretty disciplined myself so I rarely forget to write down an expense after I put my wallet away, but I can totally see that this is be a pain point for some users.

I could add a feature like that, but I do not really have lots of users to get feedback from, yet. I am currently in the "tell people" stage after I "did things" [1], so I should probably try to make a landing page as cool as yours ;)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30193714#30219978

Sounds good, best of luck!! Thanks the reference and the nice words!

I actually track things in my life. I have an inventory.yml that contains a list of all things in possession. I keep the value or price, a description, and the date when it came into possession. Sometimes also a reference to the manual and the invoice.

I like that because it makes me aware of how much stuff I own and what I really need (because it shows you items you would have forgotten).

Cool idea! Do you use a specific tool for browsing/searching it etc?

No, I edit it by hand and use Vim's search functionality. But I've used simple scripts to aggregate information.

Got it, thanks!

This is a great idea, I think I could store something like this in my Joplin notes.

Due likely to undiagnosed ADHD, Trello is the only way I accomplish anything in my personal or professional life. I have 3 columns of varying priority levels (to avoid being overwhelmed by one large list), "blocked" and "future" columns, "done" and "cancelled" columns, and crucially, a "working on right now" column (necessary for when I lose focus). If it's not in the Trello or in my calendar, it's not getting done.

Sounds great to have a system that works well!

wrt the driving concern: stomach aches, back pain, et al are often psychogenic, and institutionalizing generalized recording to find broad associations are unlikely to be helpful.

I would recommend being more of a scientist: identify a specific issue, canvas the literature for some causal hypotheses based in what we already know, and then design the experiment. Or, ask a professional, i.e., a doctor.

Probably the most fuzzy but prevalent driver is inflammation or an overactive immune system. Blood tests will say if it's hyper-active, and panels can tell you if you're allergic to everything from gluten to types of seafood. (You can order them directly from Quest Diagnostics for ~$200-$600 in the US.)

wrt system, I use markdown both for journaling and for analysis. I reduce everything to headers, bullets, and tables. Then I use full-text search from the keyboard to find things, and parsing to process, e.g., searching for data under a given set of topics.

For document granularity, use some combination of workflow and deliverable. My WIP stream has preliminary evaluation in time order, but I glean results to deliverables -- like lab notes vs. papers.

For details, you end up with your own tag/format system. e.g., most of my urls are something like

- [name - description in {language or system} from {source} on {plaform or date} from {domain}](url)

It reads normally, and allow me to find e.g., matching items from a source.

Obviously, the killer app here is a personalized voice assistant, which chunks your information, instead of your having to fit into some system. I'd pay for that.

Thanks so much for this thoughtful answer!

> Or, ask a professional, i.e., a doctor. I'll refer to his first, of course I'll go to the doctor for anything serious :) I'm trying to optimize for less severe things that can be VERY difficult to diagnose, if only because they can have so many reasons causing them, and the lack of resources due to their low severity.

> canvas the literature for some causal hypotheses based in what we already know, and then design the experiment This is something I'm trying to do, but was looking into a better way to track and follow up on. I was thinking for example, it can be potentially easy to see a correlation between back pains and a new type of work out I started to do. I'm trying to track these kind of things and see if I find correlations (will try better, automated analysis soon too).

Thanks for the reference for Quest Diagnostics, will check it out!

Cool system you have implemented there! May I ask if you have a way to process and analyze the data? Do you feel a need to?

wrt to voice assistant automation- someone mentioned here in the comments they use the Google assistant to add stuff to keep or notes, maybe you can try using something like this, combined with another automation to store the data in your preferred structure? (I tried something similar before developing the app, but without using voice assistant and with possibly simpler, structured data and it worked well).

I use the Google ecosystem heavily. I don't even have to take my phone out of my pocket to add something to a list in Keep or set a reminder.

Most non-voice systems have too much overhead, and things like adding something to shopping lists while cooking before you forget are a hassle that disrupts what I'm doing.

sounds legit! Do you use a similar solution for a more structured data that you want to track overtime (and potentially analyze later)?

At the moment, not really, I don't have much manual structured tracking. I do use Obsidian+SyncThing for journaling (Although it's still not 100% the perfect solution), and I use hashtags for structure pretty heavily.

I have a Garmin watch that tracks heart rate, steps, and sleep, a Bluetooth scale, and my toothbrush can track when I brush and for how long, I'm pretty big on buying the smart version of everything, unless it's basic functionality would stop working if the cloud shuts down.

The main analysis I do is failures. I've learned that for me, practice does not make perfect, and any mistake I make will almost certainly happen again without focused attention, so my #mistake hashtag has been very helpful.

Cool idea, and super interesting! Way to go on the diligence! I'm curious how often (and how) do you follow up on these. also if you feel comfortable sharing- what other hashtags do you use? can you give examples of things you put there?

I usually have a hashtag for every subject I'm interested in, if I should happen to learn something new that day, plus a few others like #dream.

Sometimes I even think about building a new custom notes app, that's purely just a Facebook Messenger window with yourself, with search and a hashtag list, or switching to logseq.

I usually follow up on mistakes by looking for patterns and... generally just avoiding the conditions that led to the mistake entirely.

Like, one of my personal rules is "There is no later". I try not to rely on memory for anything important, I assume the concept of remembering something later is only accessible to computers and sticky notes.

Insightful! Thanks for sharing :)

I stay on top of birthdays using an airtable automation. I've listed all the birthdays and get an email one week before it's due, so I can arrange a card and gift. I use something similar to remind me about weekly chores, e.g. taking out the trash.

Thanks for sharing!

My wife and I are still sticking with writing it down on paper. I've tried to find a proper solution as a web app or mobile app, but the ones I've tried are a pain to use.

I'm surprised that none of the mobile apps I tried will send me a notification prompting me to enter data. Instead I have to remember it myself, open the app, navigate through a few screens and finally enter a single data point. Ugh.

Instead I should be prompted to enter the data via a notification, and when I tap the notification the app should go to exactly the right place to enter the data. It should be: a notification pops up, tap notification, enter data, save. That's it.

Interesting! Was about to ask- how do you remember to log and how do you analyze the data from paper.

I have to admit the solution you describe was a pleasure to read because that is exactly what I'm building :) promotion was not my goal here but would happily share a link to the beta if you're interested.

edit: will add the link as well since your description is so on spot (other than my app uses the notifications action menu for the tracking). It's for ios and still in beta but pretty stable so feel free to sign up. would love to hear if you found it (at least potentially) useful https://www.t12n.io

The remembering to log is seeing the paper/book on the night stand when I go to bed. So it's mostly only for daily tasks. Finer grained logging doesn't happen because of the remembering and inconvenience.

The analysis hasn't been anything rigorous or long term. More eyeballing the data and checking for general trends. I'd like to be better at logging, but it's been too hard without an app to help remind and structure the data.

I tried using Google sheets or plain text on my phone, but the friction decreased my motivation to enter the data.

Got it, makes total sense. Thanks for elaborating! Would really love to hear what you think about the app I'm working on if you feel like sharing (pasted the link in previous comment https://www.t12n.io), seems very similar to what you initially described if i understood you correctly.

Yeah, it looks good, but don't have any IOS devices. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you are using android phone, check Loop Habit Tracker, which is FOSS and available on F-Droid (and Google-Play, too). It is beautiful (imho) and I've been using it for years already. You can export/backup data easily, but I never cared enough to process it any further. After some initial on and off's I am really using it for keeping quite a lot of stuff like supplements, treadmill, meditation, exercise, some do's (like morning walk) and dont's (like white bread). At this point I use it with fun, systematically, not rigidly.

Edit, added link:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.isoron.uhabits/

I've got a pretty complex system that's evolved over time. I'd say my meta-system is that I track everything with simple command line scripts, which makes this system super flexible and adaptive.

E.g. I can type:

    today wake 8:30

to record that I woke up at 8:30am today. Similar for other stats. All this gets saved in a simple JSON file.

I then have a bunch of scripts on the backend that can read the JSON file, display it in column form, graph it, dissect it, and so on.

For example, I can do

    series annotate wght -f annotate:Low-carb -t annotate:"End Low-carb" | graph

to display all the annotation (these are the major life events/trials) and weight data from the beginning of a low-carb data to the end, and display them in a nice graph.

I think the problem with off-the-shelf solutions here is that these aren't flexible enough. E.g. at one point I went through and compared major life events to see if any of them had caused changes in my sleep patterns or weight. At the time I recorded the data (almost a decade now) I hadn't even thought of this, but it was very easy to build the functionality in later to match my current needs.

Wow super cool, advanced(!) system.

Do you always remember to log? Do (or did) you consider that a hassle?

I haven't checked, but don't think I've missed a single day in almost a decade. It's basically the first thing I do when I sit down at the computer in the morning. I'm sure there are a handful of exceptions where I was on a 18h flight or something :D

My thought is: if I have to force myself or keep forgetting it, the system isn't working. So if I was constantly forgetting to log, I'd find some way to make the system more accessible/remind me. But I don't have that problem.

At one point I was tracking 6+ daily things, most of them completely unimportant, and I realized this was making me be less diligent, largely because it felt like most of the values didn't matter at all. So I stopped tracking factors I don't consider important and consider them "mental clutter."

Impressive! And super interesting, thank you for sharing!

> I think the problem with off-the-shelf solutions here is that these aren't flexible enough.

Too true. I am using ready-made Loop Habit Tracker on Android (mentioned in another comment), but I am slowly moving to track things inside Obsidian, which is free-form Markdown editor. Using Obsidian's Dataview plugin makes it really simple and has this advantage of being absolutely flexible that you mention is important. Doing it freehand inside Obsidian (with some prefilled templates and Dataview plugin) makes it really close to your CLI solution in terms of flexibility. Still, your solution sounds cool. :)

Mobile app: https://daylio.net/

thanks for sharing!

Great idea. How do you plan people to actually remember track stuff? I can track only work-related stuff. I keep going back to tracking stuff like mood, books I read etc, but forget in a few days.

Thanks! I actually saw a few problems: one that you mentioned with actually remembering, another with the friction of having to go to an app/write on paper etc, and another with the way to follow up on that data (browse and analyze). If you're interested, you can see what I cam up with here: https://www.t12n.io it's still on beta and in development but I think it solves those problems well (planning to add more features for better analysis too). Would love to hear what you think if you feel like sharing.

Using a mix of Trello, personal diary-like (more structured) notes on Joplin and apps for tracking numerical values (e.g. Track & Graph on Android).

Thanks for sharing, cool system!

Can you share what do you mean exactly by "more structured"? I would expect Trello to be more structured then Joplin, what am I missing?

Yeah sorry maybe it was a bit confusing. I meant that Joplin allows me to have a "structured" personal diary by categorizing experience and knowledge of different areas into notebooks instead of a simple "What happened today" page, i.e. what happens in "less structured" personal diaries.

Got it, makes sense :) thanks for explaining!

Evernote with Zappier integration is one of the ways I've done what you have suggested. Specifically I tried to track the weather (automatic email to evernote) along with my vitamin D usage and mood. It worked OK.

Ultimately, I consider data points like that very ephemeral, and it's almost useless after the fact.

Thanks for sharing!

Not sure I understood what you connect to Evernote with Zapier to track vitamin D usage and mood (or was Zapier only relevant for the weather and the others are manual?). Also, if it's ok to ask- what's the ephemeral value in tracking these?

I used Zappier to essentially take the local weather and send it to my evernote email address (which you just get by having evernote) so it would create an entry for me with the weather.

Vitamin D and mood was done manually for me. All of these were part of my Timeline notebook that focused on daily events.

I consider this "ephemeral" tracking because it's not data you can benefit from in a long term fashion. For example if my happiness ratio is up by 2 points if I take 5000 extra IU of vitamin D a day, it might not be true 10 years from now. Which makes any data you get useful for a short time, but then it's just noise. You can't leverage.

Since it's just data points you can't even claim there is an emotional connection to it. I do tend to be very light in terms of data though, perhaps you might like seeing things from 15 years ago.

I think I get what you mean now... IIUC you still think there's value for that (even for a not long-ish term) but not for the VERY long term (?)

I'm not sure if my life is worth tracking. I'm doing anything important anyway. I used to have some sheets tracking activities to pinpoint a cause for an illness but I don't bother to do that nowadays.

Thanks for sharing! I'm sure you have a lot worth tracking :)

Were the sheets helpful in pinpointing the cause for an illness (or you stopped because they weren't)? If so, interesting to hear what method you used to do that (from the raw data).

Thanks, they are not very helpful because I realized there are too many things to track, too many variables.

Totally agree. I'm just trying to focus on things that I guess might correlate and then hopefully try to find them, and/or specific things I'm actively trying to improve (and then it's helpful for following up on that improvement).

I do have a deep fondness for logging / tracking information in my life, and currently use several disparate tools for the purpose and am trying to consolidate much of it.

On one hand, I have my "lazy trackers", or things that are recorded automatically. Last FM for music history, the health info that gets aggregated into the Apple Health app, etc... These are things that get collected automatically, and I have scripts to automatically back them up to CSV format every so often. The collection tools themselves tend to have all the analysis features I care for, so I haven't done anything major with the CSV backups at this time. I'm generally cool with the automated collection stuff and have no interest in changing that dynamic while those methods remain available. I outsource what I can.

And then there are the things I log manually. The catch-all here is a personal journal that I do with daily markdown files with a timestamp for each time I write something in them. Over time, I have decided to break out specific things into their own markdown files rather than the catch-all journal. These include media notes, where I now capture thoughts on books / movies / games / etc in their own markdown files; and contact notes, where I write down memorable notes on interactions with my friends / loved ones so I can be the best friend / family member I can for those people. Those are all encrypted markdown files. The one spreadsheet I manually keep tracks the hours that I spend playing individual video games over time, which I've always found interesting even though I'm not a huge gamer.

As for the things I have chosen to break out from the catch-all journal, that has come as a result of querying those things so often that I find it easier to make purpose-designated areas for them. That's worked well for me up to this point, but in the future I want to have a catch-all text input area that collates everything into a timestamped "database" and then automatically scripts out appending those things to the appropriate place. I normally wouldn't bother with so much development overhead, and I did start out light; but this is a huge passion in my life that makes it worth the effort.

My current notion is to use the Drafts app for this, since I operate within the Apple ecosystem and that is a fully scriptable cross-platform text notes app within that ecosystem. I can enter whatever input parameters in plain text as a passing note, and that output can be automatically parsed into a master JSON or SQLite file or whatever that can then be parsed to output everything to the appropriate markdown files automatically. This is something I plan to mock up a test version of soon. I want do keep the markdown files up to date like I always have, mainly so that I can reference notes via mobile, which is a major review and consumption platform for me.

Super interesting! Sounds like a very well thought system.

May I ask how do you use some of these outputs? Is it mostly for the action of journaling itself? do you feel like it helps you optimize yourself/ your day to day (referring to the stuff you didn't mention the functionality of such as lazy tracking of health data, personal notes that don't relate to human relationships etc)?

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