I’ve had several conversations over the last few weeks involving the question, "Is tracking a good thing?". The topic might be sleep, activity, food, you name it, with so many smartphone apps, journals, and activity trackers on the market, I get asked "Is tracking a good thing?" a lot.
So, I thought it might be time that I put some information out to my readers to help them decide when tracking is right for them and what form it might take. Because there are so many things that can be tracked when it comes to our health and so many pros and cons to various approaches, this post is just the beginning with more specifics to come.
In today's post, we’re just going to look at what we mean by tracking and when "Is tracking a good thing?". In future posts will get into the nitty-gritty of tracking sleep, food, activity, and habits
What do we mean by tracking?
Tracking is simply making a record. You might record how long you slept, what you ate the day before, whether you exercised or flossed your teeth. It can take a lot of different forms which we’ll discuss more specifically later in the series but for now, thinking of tracking as recording what you did (or didn’t) do.
So, "Is tracking a good thing?"
First let me say, that there is no right or wrong when it comes to whether it’s good to track. This is something I personalize with all my clients. Some track quite a bit, some not so much. Some people track on paper, some use apps, and some just make notes in their phone. There are pros and cons to all different forms of tracking. The more important question is when is tracking is a good thing. Here are few situations when you might want to consider giving tracking a try.
1) Trying to build a new habit
Say you decide you want to start meditating 3 days a week. Some mornings you hop out of bed and happily sit for your meditation practice. Other days, not so much… How do you know at the end of the week whether you got your 3 sessions in? You might be struggling to remember what you did his morning, never mind seven days ago...
A system to track your habits allows you to record that you did your meditation on Monday so that at the end of the week, you can look back and say, yes, I got my 3 sessions in, or no, I didn’t.
Habit tracking can be one of the simplest forms of tracking (and one I use quite a bit in my coaching practice). You’re simply interested in whether you did the habit you’re training to instill, or you didn’t. I’ll be expanding on habit tracking further so don’t worry, there is more to come on this!
2) Trying to figure out if someting is working for you
Let’s say you started that meditation practice in the hope that you would feel calmer at work, snap at your family a little less or sleep better at night. Tracking allows you to figure out whether a change you’ve made is giving the results you're looking for.
In this example, you could start a daily rating of your stress level during your workday, or count the number of times you snap at your family each day. Are these decreasing the more you meditate? You could track the number of times you wake up in the night, unable to fall back to sleep. Are you waking less frequently at night? Tracking gives you the evidence you need to say whether the change you’ve made is working for you.
3) Trying to figure out what is NOT working for you
Sometimes we need to do a little tracking to see what is not working for us.
Perhaps we find that some mornings we wake up feeling a little less rested than other mornings. We’ve read up a little bit on sleep and have some suspicions about what may or may not be influencing our sleep so instead of making any changes, we’re just going to track a few of those factors.
We might note a few of these like when we have a second or third glass of wine with dinner, the evenings we have late soccer practise or the days we had to address a few urgent emails before bed. We track the days we feel rested vs unrested and see if any patterns emerge. Once we find what we suspect is NOT working for us (that extra glass of wine perhaps?) we go back to figuring out what does work for us. We try removing one glass of wine in the evening and see if that has a positive impact on our sleep.
So, we’ve covered the question “Is tracking a good thing?”. Next week we’ll delve into specific, commonly tracked areas starting with sleep. Should we track, should we not and if we do, how should we do it? I’ll present the pros and cons of various approaches and provide some suggestions on what approach might work for you.
Of course, if you're looking to get some coaching on how tracking can support your personal health goals, consider booking a free 30-minute consultation here.
