What to track first: five things, not twenty

The first week of a new tracking habit is exciting. You find an app or build a template, switch everything on, and log twenty things a day. By week three you are logging none of them. If that sounds familiar, try a shorter list.

Why fewer beats more

Every metric you add costs a few seconds a day, and those seconds add up until you skip a day. Gaps make the habit easier to drop, and they weaken what the data can tell you. Patterns need a run of days where the things you are comparing were both logged.

A short list you log every day will tell you more in a month than a long one you log on good days.

Start with a question

Before picking metrics, pick one thing you want to understand. It should be about your own life and something you would act on. “Why do some weeks feel so much better than others?” works. “Optimise everything” does not.

Pick five

1. One outcome. The thing your question is about, usually a feeling you can rate quickly: mood, energy or stress.
2. Two or three suspects. The things you think might move with it. Sleep, caffeine, alcohol, exercise and spending are common starting points.
3. One or two freebies. Anything your phone already measures, like steps and sleep, costs you nothing to include.

Here are three starting sets you can copy:

• Why am I tired by mid-afternoon? Energy, sleep, caffeine, alcohol, steps.
• What goes with my better weeks? Mood, sleep, steps, workouts, one-line journal.
• When do I overspend? Spending, mood, sleep, stress, alcohol.

Make each one fast

• Prefer a scale to a sentence. A 1 to 10 rating takes a second. A diary entry takes a minute, and you will skip it on a busy day.
• Prefer yes or no to a count when a count does not add much. “Drank alcohol today” is often enough.
• Log at the same moment each day. Attach it to something you already do, like your first coffee or getting into bed.

Give it three weeks

Resist judging the list after a few days. Patterns need data, and it takes around three weeks of mostly complete days before connections between two metrics mean much. After that, drop anything that never seems to matter and add one new suspect at a time.

How VitaSync helps

VitaSync is built around this approach. Every metric is optional. The first screen offers starting presets, such as Mood and sleep or Money, that switch on a short list for you. On Android, steps, sleep and resting heart rate fill themselves in from Health Connect. The daily check-in is designed to take about ten seconds.

Once you have a few weeks of data, the Insights tab shows which of your metrics moved together and how sure it is. Here is how it decides.