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How I Tracked Everything in 2015

Posted by Matt Birchler
β€” 1 min read

This post isn't going to do you much good without seeing this infographic about some stats I tracked in 2015. So check that out first and then come back to see how everything was collected.

Workouts

The number one tool I used for this was a sheet of paper with a custom-made yearly calendar that I marked everyday that I ran1. This allowed me to move from app to app and service to service throughout the year without fear of losing my progress.

My Apple Watch was the only fitness device I used this year, and I used it every time after April 24 when I got my launch day Watch. It's a great fitness tracker, and I wouldn't trade it for anything else on the market.

Apps/Devices/Services

BirchTree Traffic

This was really straighforward as SquareSpace has built in analytics. All i had to do wwas see my monthly stats at the end of each month and save them to a Google spreadsheet.

I did switch the site over to Statamic this month, so the last month has been tracked with Mint. Mint hasn't been updated in years, but it works, is lightweight, and shows me exacly what I need to know.

Apps/Servcies

Weight

This is something I've never tracked before, but I was able to this year with a Withings scale, which automatically saves all my weigh ins to their site. It's stupid easy, and that's why it works.

Withings also syncs your weight data to Apple Health, if you're into that sort of thing.

Apps/Devices/Services

Weather

This was the most work of all the stats I tracked. There is an awesome IFTTT recipe that will record certain conditions/forecast data for the day into a Google spreadsheet. This recipe ran at 6AM every day of the year and all I had to do wwas work some spreadsheet wizardry to make sense of the raw data.

Services

Twitter

Much like my site analytics, Twitter has built in analytics, so this was just a matter of loading the information into a spreadsheet and building some charts.

Services


  1. And a few bike rides later in the year.