I Tracked 182 Personal Metrics This Year: Here's What I've Learned

Hope you had a great Christmas! 

Today’s email is our way of wrapping up 2024. 

We started What Counts because we’re interested in how people use the science of self-improvement to live healthier, better understand themselves, and feel more fulfilled.

Our hypothesis was that if you track the things that matter to you, those things should improve. 

Since March 20th, 2023, I’ve been using a Google Sheet each day to record 182 different data points that give a pretty complete picture of my life, activities, and well-being.

(Each data point is a column, and each new day is a new row. It will probably sound like a lot but it takes about 15-30 minutes a day to fill it out.)

In this email, I’ll analyse my data for 2024 and try to determine whether all this self-tracking is actually making a difference.

I find this data interesting as it’s my life, but to keep things useful for you, I’ll also explain why + how I generated the following insights and the broader lessons I’ve learned throughout this experiment. 

Here are the insights I generated. . .

Insight: This year, each day I completed 71.78% of the habits I was tracking on average (up from 63.15% last year.)

• How did I figure this out? I have a list of around 46 habits I aim to do each day. If I do the habit, I put the letter ‘Y’ in the cell. If I don’t, I put ‘N’. To calculate the average habit completion rate for these entries, I had ChatGPT create a custom formula for me. Below is an example for the date range corresponding to 2024 so far:

  =IFERROR(

  SUM(ARRAYFORMULA(COUNTIF(A289:FY645, "Y"))) / 

  (SUM(ARRAYFORMULA(COUNTIF(A289:FY645, "Y"))) + 

  SUM(ARRAYFORMULA(COUNTIF('A289:FY645, "N")))),

  0)

• Why track this? My goal is to get to the point that I’m completing 80%+ of the habits I want to perform daily on average. Tracking this tells me how close I am to that. 

Insight: Compared to last year, I fell asleep 34 minutes earlier and got up 30 minutes earlier. 

• How did I figure this out? I use a Whoop to track my sleep. Each day’s sleep data goes into my sheet. To calculate averages, I find it useful to convert the data points into minutes before or after midnight. (i.e 23:30pm is -30, 9am is 540), this makes it easier to run calculations like averages. Before Whoop I would just estimate when I fell asleep based on the time I went to bed and how long I remembered being awake. 

• Why track this? One of my biggest goals for 2024 was to improve my sleep. This data helps keep me accountable and see if that’s happening. 

Insight: I rated the cleanliness of my diet as 5.9/10 this year, up from 5/10 last year. 

• How did I figure this out? I think back on the day and rate my nutrition out of 10. It’s subjective but it’s safe to say that it's more accurate than not. For example, if I’m usually scoring my food as 6.5/10 and then I eat fast food all day, whether it should be 3/10 or 4/10 it’s definitely lower than 6.5 and so is directionally correct. 

• Why track this? I love food and have a fast metabolism so if I'm not careful I indulge. Keeping my diet as clean as I can supports my other goals—health, athletic performance, mental wellbeing.  

Insight: I spent 53 minutes a day exercising this year, up from 35 last year. 

• How did I figure this out? I think back on the day and log how many minutes I spent exercising. To get this number I just took averages of 2024 vs 2023. I also log the type of exercise, although I’ve never really found a way to use that particular data. 

• Why track this? I’ve heard that experts recommend 20-30 minutes of exercise a day. I like knowing I’m staying above the baseline. 

Insight: I slept 8 hours 7 minutes on average, up 10 minutes from last year. 

• How did I figure this out? I use a Whoop to track my sleep. Each day’s sleep data goes into my sheet. In order to calculate averages, I find it useful to convert the data points into minutes before or after midnight. (i.e 23:30pm is -30, 9am is 540), this makes it easier to run calculations like averages. Before Whoop I would honestly just estimate when I feel asleep based on the time I went to bed and how long I remembered being awake, and then calculate the difference between that time and when I got up.

• Why track this? I’ve been curious for years about what my ‘sleep need’ is. How much sleep does my body need to perform at its best? Given that this figure is dragged down by nights when I was traveling or didn’t sleep much, I think the actual amount I sleep normally is significantly higher. My body seems to have a high sleep need, but maybe that would come down if I had a more consistent sleep and wake time. 

Insight: This year, I did 61% of the things I said I would. (Last year was 79.8%).

• How did I figure this out? I write out my goals for the next day, and then the next day I record how many of those goals I achieved. I then divide my goals achieved by goals set to get a percentage. 

• Why track this? I want to be confident that if I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it. This lets me see how well I’m doing at that. Goal is 80%+.

Insight: I spent 63 hours running 421 miles, my 5k went from 24:30 to 21:46, my mile went from 7:30 to 6:12, my VO2 max from 45 to 55, and my resting heart rate from 59 to 52. I also swam for 15 hours. 

• How did I figure this out? I used an Apple Watch the majority of the year and exported my runs to Strava. I recently started using a Garmin Forerunner, but I don’t have a ton of data from it yet. 

• Why track this? I wanted to improve my cardio and feel fitter overall. These metrics helped me stay on top of that. 

Insight: My average weight this year was 150 pounds (up from 136 the year prior).

• How did I figure this out? I was weighing myself daily, but recently it's been more like once a week. I then log that number in my sheet. 

• Why track this? My goal was to get to 165 pounds. I basically achieved 50% of my goal, so that tells me I have work to do.

Insight: I listened to 0.48 podcasts a day (0.52 last year), watched 18 minutes of TV a day (54 last year), spent 11 minutes on social media (5 last year) and watched 16 minutes of YouTube a day (5 last year.)

• How did I figure this out? I pretty much just think back on the day and provide my best estimate, sometimes using the screen time tool on Apple to help where needed. There were certain categories that I didn’t count as time on YouTube for the intent of my tracking—such as listening to music, a talk, or podcast (I was more concerned with tracking typical YouTube usage i.e. watching videos).

• Why track this? I want to stay focused and these media platforms usually don’t help with that unless managed carefully and used in careful moderation. By tracking this data I can make sure I stay within healthy levels. What’s healthy for you might be different than what’s healthy for me. 

Insight: I was 5% more social this year. 

• How did I figure this out? Each day I record the number of social interactions I had that day (often a rough estimate) in my sheet. To get this number I took my average daily social interactions for 2023 and compared that to 2024. 

• Why track this? Loneliness is a big problem for a lot of people, and since I run an online business and work for myself I could definitely be at risk for it. So it’s useful to know that I’m managing to stay social, and even got a bit more social over time. 

Insight: I worked 78 minutes less per day on my main business, but I doubled the time I spent working on my second business. 

• How did I figure this out? Each day I record the time I spent working in minutes, and separate that time logged based on which business it went to.

• Why track this? This one probably isn’t that important. However, one of my goals this year was to transition from working full-time on my main business (a company teaching magic to magicians) to starting a new business (this newsletter.) So this data point confirms that I have done that to an extent, although not as much as I wanted to. 

Insight: I spent 102 hours studying German and estimate that I’m 22% fluent.

• How did I figure this out? I have a set of columns in my sheet tracking various skills I’m interested in developing, German being one. Each day I log the minutes I spent working on this skill. Experts estimate that German takes 600 hours to become fluent in, so I divided my total time studying German and divided that by 600 to get my %. 

• Why track this? I’m curious whether it’s true that 600 hours is enough for fluency, so I’m running an informal study using myself as the subject. I feel like focusing my language learning on this data point simplifies the whole process. All I need to do is focus on making the number in my spreadsheet go from 0 to 600, and fluency should take care of itself. 

Insight: I spent 22 minutes a day programming in 2023, this year I spent 0.7 minutes a day. 

• How did I figure this out? Same as above. 

• Why track this? This is one example of how just tracking something doesn’t guarantee you’ll improve. I dropped the ball on this one this year. But I would say that it’s useful to know as now I know to focus harder on making it a goal I follow through on next year. 

Insight: This year I was 38% less stressed, 16% more focused. 19% more friendly, and 29% more present. 

• How did I figure this out? Each day I subjectively rate on a scale of 1-10 how stressed I was, how focused I was, etc. Then I just took the average of 2023 and compared it to the average for 2024.

• Why track this? I think we all want to feel less stressed and more present. While it’s fun to see that the numbers did improve, that wasn’t the primary goal. I actually wanted to log these data points so I could start exploring correlations and see if I could figure out why days with a low score got those low scores. Simply knowing that I was 16% more focused is less helpful than being able to pinpoint which other factors seemed to boost focus.

(Anything subjective is hard to measure. In the beginning, my scores were a lot more varied as I tried to figure out what my average levels felt like and what should be more or less than that. So there’s a bit of a drift in the averages over time just due to me getting more fine-tuned on my personal subjective scoring. 

And while I use a simple 1-10 scale, I like to think of improvement as having infinite potential. In the future, I might explore a scoring system that better accounts for this, perhaps by incorporating a logarithmic approach.)

Conclusion: Does tracking what’s important to you help you focus on and improve those things?

My own data seems to indicate it does, but I think it’s important to point out that these changes have occurred over literally years of tracking. 

I’ve found there’s a 3-part journey to progress with self-tracking.

In the first stage, I’m full of new energy for the project and think it’s going to change me overnight. Then, as the novelty wears off and it becomes a fairly normal part of my day, I lose some enthusiasm and realise that just tracking something doesn’t make it improve. 

But then, if I stick to it anyway, I find that very slowly and gradually I’m making progress. It’s almost always painfully slow and not how I imagined, but there’s something about reminding yourself of what’s important every single day that can’t help but make you 1% better at those things. And that 1% improvement over time adds up. 

I can’t guarantee you’ll see the same results, but I’d be shocked if tracking what’s important to you didn’t in some way help you live healthier, understand yourself better, and feel more fulfilled. 

Reach out if you have any questions and we’d be happy to help you get started. 

Here’s to a better 2025!

Benji and Jacob

P.S. If you read this whole email thinking 182 sounds like a crazy amount of things to track, I should mention that I started with much less than that, and it’s only grown because I’ve found the additions helpful. Feel free to track as little or as much as you find useful.

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