New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday. I love a designated time to look forward and to reflect back, ideally while getting tipsy with friends. The turn of a new year is also a time when I’m grateful for my habit of writing down every little thing—and I don’t just mean getting my thoughts and feelings down in a journal. I’m talking about tracking every book read, every mile run, and every beer crushed (approximately). So if you’re interested in documenting your life—and you should be!—I highly recommend using a wonderfully detailed spreadsheet.
I’m not talking about bullet journaling (which can be cool, but which I find too artistically daunting). I simply create a Google sheet full of different color-coded tabs so that I can track any number of ways to measure a year. From the most thorough travel plans to elaborate to-do lists, if you have a goal, that goal needs a spreadsheet tab.
It’s a fun, slightly nerdy technique that helps me visualize my life in a way that traditional journaling can’t. Here’s why I think this year, you should start your own spreadsheet to track all the little things in your life.
The spreadsheet journal is perfect for us freaks who like to combine sentimentalism with statistics. Whatever metrics you choose to jot down, you can frame them around a sense of accomplishment. Your smart watch can track how many steps you’ve taken. A spreadsheet journal, however, is where you can appreciate how many steps you’ve achieved. From there, you can have fun with the numbers, converting those steps into miles or finding patterns over time or in whatever suits your nerdy brain.
Go wild. Create different tabs dedicated to different areas of your life, so you can appreciate how much you have going on. I’ll throw around some ideas in the next section, but at the end of the day, a spreadsheet is a low-effort, high-reward alternative to trying to use your words all the time, so don’t get too caught up in the details. The technique is really about recognizing the value in every little number that defines your life.
First things first: Choose your spreadsheet software. I opt for the ease of Google Sheets, but I understand you might have some privacy concerns there. Or maybe you’re simply a master at Excel. For some formatting ideas, check out this post on creating the ultimate travel spreadsheet. The main takeaway is to create one master file with as many different tabs as you see fit. Include tabs tracking your health/fitness goals, books/movies/TV you’ve consumed, your finances/budgeting, and whatever else is significant to you:
Hours slept
Miles walked
Concerts attended
Movies watched
Books started
Books finished
Dates gone on
Places traveled
Gifts given
Thank you notes sent
Time spent in traffic
Playlists created
Make sure you include a column for adding notes to your entries—some personal commentary to spice up the statistics.
You can dedicate a column in each tab for jotting down miscellaneous notes, but for the sake of tidiness, make sure not to overfill your boxes with text. It also helps to stay consistent with your formatting—e.g. bolding the header of each metric. I color code at whim. For instance, as a stand-up comedian, I keep track of all my shows with a specific color to mark how I felt about them: Shades of green mean the show went well, and shades of red mean the show...did not go well. In times where it looks like everything in my life is red, it’s nice to be able to shift my gaze to all the green, too. Perspective!
At the end of the year, you’ll be able to use all that data to visualize both the big and the little things in your life over the 12 months prior. At a glance, you’ll be able to pat yourself on the back for how successfully you cut back on caffeine, or upped your time outdoors, or improved your books-started to books-completed ratio. Ultimately, my own spreadsheet is about appreciating all the little things in my life, even if I do so in one of the nerdiest ways imaginable.
