As the saying goes, “what gets measured, gets managed”. With that in mind, I created a spreadsheet at the start of 2009 that would allow me to track:

-How I spend my time (in 15 minute increments)
-How I rate my mood, energy, focus and health (in 2 hour increments)
-What I eat
-What my daily goals are and how many of them I accomplish
-How I feel about different aspects of my life (professional, creative, personal, etc.)
-How much time I spend on different tasks: work, writing, chores, exercise, etc.

I print up a “tracking sheet” every day to write down all of this information by hand. I keep it in my back pocket, so it’s also a handy notepad for brainstorms I may get.

Then, every so often, I transcribe these hard copies onto a master spreadsheet that totals and averages the data by month and year.

It was a pain in the butt at first — and sometimes still is — but it gets easier. I think a lot of the benefit — productivity and happiness wise — comes from just being mindful. If you’re regularly checking in to say ‘what am I doing now? how am I feeling?”, then you’re less apt to spend a day doing nothing or moping around.

A lot of work, yes. If nothing else, I highly recommend everyone start the day by setting three goals. Think of it this way: if I only get one thing done today, what should it be? Decide, that’s your first goal, do that first. And so on for two and three.

“Designed, used and refined an efficient system for tracking, testing and improving my productivity and wellness.”

Is this basically the flow chart you mentioned, or something else?