How to boost your motivation by tracking your progress!

Almost everyone has a health tracker these days, and it has become very common to use them to track and quantify many of our behaviours.

But what should you be tracking?

When does the tracking become too much, and go over to the not helpful side. I want to share with you some ideas on how can you use your tracker and other data to HELP YOU stay MOTIVATED your project. And make sure it does not discourage you or cause you lose out on the JOY in the process.

After reading this post, you will have a few ideas how you can use data tracking to keep you motivated and on track with the changes you are trying to make.

Why Track Data At All?

I believe that if you have no data, you have nothing at hand to change in your behaviour, doing "more" or "less" is a very subjective feeling and becomes difficult to work with if a person does not reach their goal.

For example if you are trying to get stronger, and we test your strength after 6 weeks of training, but we didn't note down your starting strength, track your weights during or after just base your test results on if you FEEL stronger but not weight lifted or repitition. How can we know if you really have improved and the method worked?

I know this sounds silly in this context. Most people say duhhhh - more weight lifted = person got stronger. But we do this in many other health contexts, and forget to track the relevant set of data to note a particular improvement.

Data takes the speculation out, and allows you to trust in the process.

On the flip side I believe very few people can be successful with NO tracking, noting or evaluation of some sort of data, current habits and baseline. It’s rare to find people who blindly trust in the process, and have the patience that is needed to trust in the process for a long time without even knowing if the thing they are doing is working. Said in a different way habit changes that demand difficult behaviour change from your side based of a "feeling" most likely will fail.

Using the feelings to guide, but data to track!

And I hope we can agree that just feelings are a poor way to guide us on health and marginal gains.

As you may have noticed, we as humans tend to mainly and mostly remember the bad things. I'm not sure why we are like this - but it is highly unlikely that you remember the 10 good things that happened last week. But you will remember that one bad thing, the one comment, the one number on the scale or the one day where you felt off.

When you are trying to make changes to your health, diet or exercise - routine it is super important. To have numbers and measurements of some kind to keep you on track and motivated on the days where you "FEEL" like everything is not going anywhere.

But make sure to track the right things to see the results that you wish for:

Out of the 100´s of things we could track and measure, it's important to track the RIGHT set of measurements that is relevant for our goal and the desired outcome.

For example if you want to increase your life quality and daily energy with a new training program and sleep schedule, what data might you track?

You would track daily mood and energy with a journal, hours slept, how long it takes you to fall asleep and perhaps how many times you woke up during the night.

Do you need to track your weight? Not very likely. Does it matter for your goals - not at all.

Because you can still weigh the same and feel 100% better and have more energy throughout the day.

Here are some frequently used "DoItYourself" datasets for common goals:

Weight-loss

Activity journal, Circumference measurements, Fat %, Bodyweight and clothing size. Nutrition intake portion sizes or calories and hydration. When relevant journal on mood and emotional eating.

Strength Gain

Training Journal, Sleep, Recovery, Strength benchmark testing, Fat %, lean body mass gains, Circumference measurements. Nutrition intake portion sizes or calories

Better Performance,

HRV , Speed, Strength or Performance in a specific area of fitness. Nutrition intake portion sizes or calories and other measurements specific to a goal. When relevant journal on self limiting beliefs and emotional blockers.

More Energy

Sleep hours and quality, use of coffee and stimulants. Journal on mood and energy throughout the day, exercise log or a workout journal.

Tracking data with meaningful gaps between them.

Setting realistic goals and expectations, and making a plan that includes meaningful time between collecting data. If you are waiting for a weight loss to happen, there is no need to step on the scale daily - changes happen over a longer time progressively. In this case it would be suitable to step on the scale every week to 10 days to see if the current trend is going downwards so you know if you need to make small changes in your approach.

When it comes to sleep on the other hand, you would need to measure every day - see if that coffee you had at 6 pm affected your ability to fall asleep, or if the meditation you did made you fall asleep faster.

So it all depends again on the goal and our approach on how frequently we need to keep track.

The big picture:

I believe in tracking data and using it to motivate, help and inspire you to continue changing your habits. Your success will be determined by the way you define it. The more you use data, and track the relevant data to your goal to guide you on your way. The more likely you are to achieve that goal, and not something else "accidentally".

I have made some guides that might help you you can for example get out of your toxic relationship with the scale, and stop allowing it to control your moods.

Or you can check out this starters guide to a healthy habit accountability journal.

And last but not least, do check out the subtle difference between Enjoying and Suffering through the health journey. And find out if you are Thriving Or Surviving in your pursuit for better health.

Hope this helps!

Just keep swimming, now just while tracking the data!