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Meg's avatar

It's not exactly the same thing, but for most of my adult life, I've been very interested in tracking my own habits—it's taken many forms, but the longest lasting version was a massive spreadsheet, named 'Tracking', and each sheet covered a different topic, oftentimes years' worth of self-reported data*: Restaurant Habits (where I ate, on what date, whether it was new to me or a repeat, what type of food I would categorize it as, etc); Exercise Habits (what activitees, what date, what duration); Dinner Parties hosted (including invite lists, food prepared, etc); Sexual Partners; Books Read; Movies Watched; Mountains Climbed; Travel (actually complex enough that each trip gets its own spreadsheet); Bathroom Habits; and so on...

I've often reflected on what possesses me to care, or to expend any energy at all trying to wrap my arms around what is mostly fleeting instances of a lived life. Most people just 'do' those things that I meticulously track, and never give them a second thought. And I think that's the crux of it for me...these otherwise insignificant snippets of my life are often times the clues that allow me to bring forth important memories and connections, and if those slipped through my fingers, I worry what else I would lose. So I go far outside of my way to try to hold onto the most mundane details.

* The self-reporting data part is important...I could have easily used Yelp to track restaurants, or Strava to track exercise, or any slew of other apps. But I want full and complete access to my data; I want to never worry about losing my history because some company goes out of business or wants to IPO (ahem, Reddit); and I want to be able to manipulate how I interpret my own habits and trends. Data scattered across platforms that include user-generated content simply doesn't work for my needs. With that said, I used Nara to track my baby's first year of life and whole-heartedly recommend it to any other parents. I've been able to download my data and manipulate it as I'd like, and I don't feel like my content is being used for monetization of the community owner.

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Bethann Garramon Merkle's avatar

I use a hodgepodge of methods, none of them adding up to any real "system." I keep most emails, have a complex Dropbox system and a separate, and mostly not-redundant Google Drive system. I have piles of notes and notebooks, but I rarely go back to them. I horde papers in Zotero but can't seem to develop the meaningful habit of attaching my comments to them. I have multiple years' of spreadsheets tracking work habits and outcomes, projects, etc., plus all the academic records that are required artifacts of work at a university. I even have a file box with scraps of paper sorted by subject. But, the main things that help me to remember these days are: rocks from the places I visit (labeled with location & date), sketches of places I go amd food I eat, poetry notebooks, and my extensive (some might say excessive) photographs going all the way back to middle school and then college darkroom film and photos I developed myself. I'm going to try Capacities because I struggle with much of what you have described. (I've also heard good things about Scribner, but haven't really dedicated time to seeing if that will do the job.)

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