I Tracked 168 Personal Metrics This Year: Here's What I've Learned

Today’s email is our way of wrapping up 2025.

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 168 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. The number of columns has fluctuated between 100-200 but hovers just over 150 consistently.)

In this email, I’ll analyse my data for 2025 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 68.4% of the habits I was tracking on average. 2023 was 63.15%, 2024 was 71.78%. I’ve managed to keep most of my gains from 2024 but slipped a little.

• 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 2025 so far:

  =IFERROR(

  SUM(ARRAYFORMULA(COUNTIF(A655:FY1015, "Y"))) / 

  (SUM(ARRAYFORMULA(COUNTIF(A655:FY1015, "Y"))) + 

  SUM(ARRAYFORMULA(COUNTIF('A655:FY1015, "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, on average I went to bed 13 minutes later (1:43am) and got up 11 minutes later (9:59am). I got an average night sleep of 8 hours 1 minute, down 6 minutes from last year. (Average time to fall asleep - 15 minutes.)

I’m still about 20 minutes earlier than 2023, but it’s not the result I wanted this year.

My sleep consistency score is about 111 (on average the variability in times that I go to bed and wake up is 111 minutes). My goal is sub-15.

(Although most of my poor score here can be blamed on a crazy October - December, where my average sleep time was 3am. If you exclude those months, my average sleep time was 1:15, or 15 minutes earlier than 2024. I should be 100% returning to that baseline or far earlier in 2026.)

• How did I figure this out? I use a combination of fitness trackers and memory 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. On the days I don’t use a fitness tracker, I would just estimate when I fell asleep based on the time I went to bed and how long I remembered being awake.

(To calculate my sleep consistency score I use a standard deviation calculation on my average wake times and sleep times over the year, and then combine those two scores to find an average.)

• Why track this? One of my biggest goals since 2024 has been to improve my sleep. This data helps keep me accountable and see if that’s happening. I’ve also been curious for years about what my ‘sleep need’ is. How much sleep does my body need to perform at its best? 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: I rated the cleanliness of my diet as 6.1/10 this year, up from 5.9 in 2024 and 5 in 2023. I more or less cut out added sugar about halfway through the year which I think is where the improvement came from, although I’m shocked it only increased by 0.2. I think that’s because it’s possible to avoid sugary snacks but still overindulge in processed food, which is the next hurdle.

• 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 46.2 minutes a day exercising this year, down from 53 in 2024 but still up from 35 in 2023. Honestly a bit surprised by this—I’m objectively in the best fitness level I’ve ever been at but somehow managed to get there on less overall volume. I think I increased the intensity of my workouts this year so perhaps I’m just squeezing more out of those minutes.  

• 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 2025 vs 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: This year, I did 38% of the things I said I would vs 61% in 2024 and 79.8% in 2023.

Am I getting worse at this? Maybe. I also think I just have way more to do now and end up writing much longer to-do lists on average now than I did in 2023, meaning I’m fighting an uphill battle from the get-go. (It’s easier to do 80% of what you plan when you only plan 5 things, harder when you plan 30). Next year I’ll log how many overall items I put on my to do list each day along with what % get done to account for that.

• 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 64 hours running 437 miles (+16 miles on last year but only +1 hour, so my average pace was quicker, 8:47 vs 8:58), my marathon went from 4:19 to 3:27, my 5k dropped from 21:46 to 19:22, my mile went from 6:12 to sub 6, my VO2 max from stayed the same at 55, and my resting heart rate from 52 to 47. I also swam for 2 hours (-13 hours on 2024.)

• How did I figure this out? I used a Garmin Forerunner 945 the majority of the year and exported my runs to Strava.

• Why track this?  I of course wanted to improve my cardio and feel fitter overall. I also want to fulfill a childhood dream and start running proper fast. These metrics help me stay on top of that.

Insight: My average weight this year was 145 pounds (vs 150 in 2024 and 136 in 2023.)

• 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 has always been to 165 pounds. It’s been an elusive goal so far but I’m still happy with my progress. I might only be 145 but I’ve hit a body fat level I’m happy with. (Waist to height ratio currently about 0.42). If I can keep this body composition but gain the lean mass I’ll finally get there. 

Insight: I listened to 0.2 podcasts a day (way down from 0.48 in 2024 and 0.52 in 2023), watched 7.3 minutes of TV a day (vs 18 in 2024 and 54 in 2023), spent 17 minutes on social media (up from 11 in 2024 and 5 in 2023) and watched 8 minutes of YouTube a day (16 in 2024, 5 in 2023.)

All metrics are trending well, but frustrating that social media is the one metric going the opposite way. I recently got a Brick device so hopefully that will help in 2026.

• How did I figure this out? I pretty much just think back on the day and provide my best estimate, usually using the screen time tool on Apple to verify. 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 and unhelpful YouTube usage i.e. watching videos).

• Why track this? Developing laser focus is one of the highest value skills you can acquire. 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 had an average of 11 social interactions a day, up from 6 in 2024. 

• 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 2025 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 spent 478 hours working on my musical skillset, bringing me 5% closer to mastery. At this rate, it will take me another 19 years to achieve mastery.  

• How did I figure this out? I have a set of columns in my sheet tracking various skills I’m interested in developing, music being one. Each day I log the minutes I spent working on this skill. Experts estimate that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a master in something, so I divided my total time studying music and divided that by 10,000 to get my %. 

• Why track this? I’m curious whether it’s true that 10,000 hours is what it takes to reach mastery, so I’m running an informal study using myself as the subject. I feel like focusing my practice 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 10,000, and mastery should take care of itself.

Insight: This year I was 14% more stressed, 3% more grateful, 1% less friendly, and 3% more creative. The stress increase makes sense to me - I also feel like I got more done this year so I think it was just a busy year. But it’s a good reminder to me to focus on improving my abillity to get stuff done without the stress becoming overwhelming.

• 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, and a bunch of other subjective measures. Then I just took the average of 2025 and compared it to the average for 2024.

• Why track this?  I think we all want to feel less of the negative emotions and more of the positive ones. So I started tracking mine. 

  While it’s interesting to see the difference from last year, 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 14% more stressed is less helpful than being able to pinpoint which other factors seemed to cause that. For example, my energy level has a -0.24 correlation with my stress level (aka: higher energy level, potentially less stress.)

(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.)

New insight for 2025: Time accounting - I can account for how I spend 95% of my time.

I turned 25 this year. That’s not old, but it’s old enough that it really made me think “Wow, life is happening. I need to be really intentional about how I use my time.”

So I decided to add another step to my daily tracking—I call it time accounting.

The idea is fairly simple: when I sit down to journal each day, I think back on the day from midnight to midnight and write down an exact play-by-play of the time I spent on various activities. The goal is that the total of this should add up to 24 and provide an exact accounting of what I did that day.

For an example of how accurate I usually am, this week to date, I’ve managed on average to account for 22.7 hours out of 24. That’s pretty good, but shows there’s still some time I’m losing track of each day. 23 and above is a good goal.

New insight for 2025: Reaction time decreased by 0.082 seconds. 

Reaction time is a good indicator of age. My goal has been to reverse the average trend and decrease my reaction time over time rather than increase.

I took some online reaction speed tests in 2024 and my starting average was 0.339. As of today, 28th December, my average reaction speed in the same tests is 0.257. I’m really happy with that, as it’s not something I’ve specifically trained, but seems instead to be a side effect of other healthy habits. 

(F1 drivers react around 0.2, 100m sprinters around 0.16, and competitive gamers probably sit somewhere in that range too).

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 2026!

Benji and Jacob

P.S. If you read this whole email thinking 168 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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