In the early days of 2010, I have undertaken a few new year’s resolutions. One of these resolutions is to record and track a number of daily activities and fitness metrics. I was incentivized to do this by Brad Feld, whose 2009 metrics were pretty impressive! In 2010, I am going to be tracking the number of books and magazines I read (and their genre, of course), workouts (broken down by type) and logging net time as well as unique instances, daily mood (or “feeling today”) and number of hours of sleep logged. I’ve also set goals in each of these categories and I’m excited to see how the presence of a tracking mechanism affects my net performance and my choices of what I do with my ever-decreasing spare time.

There are a few tools that can help to keep track of this data for you such as Daytum, but that requires a $4/month fee; I simply created a Google Spreadsheet with inputs on one tab and a dashboard of progress on another – an economy version of sorts. Let me know if you want a copy.

Some more granular tools can keep track of some specific details if you are really into this stuff. For example, a company called Zeo has a product for $249 that tracks minute details of your night’s sleep such as time in REM and disturbances and can upload data to it’s website for further analysis and coaching on how to get a better night’s sleep; I’d love to try it, but I heard it was only semi-effective. There are also plenty of tools to track running including a suite of pedometers, GPS-enabled units and embedded heart rate monitoring to ensure that you maintain an ideal cardiac output during your workout. No need to venture into more detail here. Let me know your favourite tools that you use to track your life, workouts and whatever else you track!