Skip to main content

So Much Data

In my quest to become better organized, I've tallied a master list of all the data I generate and where I log it. Upon review, it seems to be very haphazard - some things are tracked in analog systems while others are recorded in digital format. When I decide to record a new type of data I often struggle in deciding which format to store it in and also which particular product to use in the format category.

I'm REALLY interested to know what kind of data you personally record, whether your habits in recording have changed over the years, and what formats and products you use for your recording. Drop me an email in reply, comment on this blog entry on the website (http://songsofgratitude.blogspot.com), or comment on the facebook syndication.

Data Item Recorded, Format (analog/digital), Products

medical records, digital, google docs (Excel Spreadsheet)
nutrition, digital, sparkpeople.com
exercise--cardio, digital, dailymile.com
exercise--strength, analog, Eat Clean Workout Journal
work journal, analog, Franklin Covey Daily Planner
travel, digital, SongsofGratitude blog and travbuddy.com for longer entries
books to read, digital, pinterest
book reviews/notes, digital, SongsofGratitude blog
weekly menus, analog, Weekly Menu Planner
recipes to try, digital, pinterest
recipes tried and true, digital, Mastercook & publication to SongsofGratitude blog & pinterest
bible study/sermon/theology notes and musings, digital, SongsofGratitude blog
SAS projects and happenings @CSC, analog, SAS Projects notebook
meetings, analog, Cambridge Meeting Notebook
interesting system and SAS errors, digital, google docs (Excel Spreadsheet)
prayers offered and answered, analog, Prayer Journal
goals, digital, OneNote
certifications and educational achievement log, digital, OneNote
training/education study notes, analog AND digital, simple notebook for trainings done at work; OneNote for grad school classes
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
This definitely got me thinking about what I do/don’t organize. I’m sure I’m the last person you’d want feedback from, as I’m notoriously unorganized. However, for what it’s worth, I figured I’d pattern-match your list (which is embarrassing when I see how much I don’t keep track of in comparison):

• Med records: I don’t keep track of these, though I should. When I’ve needed past history for our family—either people or animal—I simply request a backlog of treatments from the dr./vet and eyeball trends from there. Probably not the most organized way to do things.
• Nutrition: I’m not sure why you’d keep track of this or even what you keep track of. Is this like how many glasses of water in a day or X pieces of toast?
• Exercise: Don’t keep track of this, and that’s probably why I’m not succeeding at keeping at it.
• Work: I use my Outlook calendar to keep track of events, meetings, deliverable deadlines. For meeting notes, I hand-write on a notepad.
• Travel: N/a
• Books to read: Don’t keep a list of this. If the book was important enough for me to want to read badly, I’ll remember it when I get through with the current one.
• Book reviews: n/a
• Weekly meals: we keep a monthly dry-erase board attached to the back of our pantry, so it’s easily viewable in the kitchen. Every weekend, we make up our meals for the week and the grocery list that goes with it. Then all we have to do is check the whiteboard to see what we planned for the day/meal, and can easily make changes when needed.
• Recipes to try: Because I check my email frequently, I email myself the recipe or link to the website I saw the recipe on. Later, when I want to cook it, I copy/paste the recipe into a Word doc. and keep it in a “Recipes” folder on my computer.
• Recipes Tried-and-True: While they’re also on my computer, I print out our “repeat offender” meals and keep a hard-copy of them in a recipe holder in the kitchen, next to the cookbooks.
• Bible study: n/a
• (in lieu of SAS projects) Story ideas/creative writing musings: I keep a small moleskine journal in my purse/bag to jot down. I use the inside of the front cover as a TOC that merely lists what the idea was, so I can look back at this journal later (among a stack of them, perhaps) and open the cover and be like, “Oh, this one had those vampire story notes. That’s what I was looking for.”
• Meetings: see Work above.
• Prayers: Don’t keep track of these. But I know a friend who uses Wunderlist on his iPad.
• Goals: Don’t keep formal track of these.
• Certs./Education: I update the Word doc. that has my resume.
• School: when I was in school, I’d keep hard-copy of my notes in spiral notebooks. While it runs through paper, it really helped me to go through the physical learning trick of writing things down as an additional way to ingrain it in my brain. Plus, I’m a kick-ass note taker so I could transcribe faster than I could type (b/c I kept wanting to format as I typed, which isn’t good when listening to a fast-speaking professor).
June 22, 2012 at 3:44 PM
Jenni Stephens said…
I have a handy medical record spreadsheet i created on google docs you are free to adopt for your use. It has spaces to record personal info, immunization history, doctor visits, medications, test results, etc, and it is here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxBkr9ujJ2pDZDliMmExN2YtNzdlOS00MzcyLTlkMDMtYjY0ZGFjYmU5NTkx

Nutrition= calorie counting (also tracks things like fiber intake and vitamins/minerals against the rda) and sparkpeople is pretty darn awesome for this - and free. Micki is on it as is Anna and a lot of folks.

For the books to read, in addition to recommendations from friends and such I usually copy over the Barnes and Noble best books of the year, the "top 100 books of all time" type lists, etc.

Like the story idea book.

If you don't keep track of your goals, it's hard to measure your progress against them or manage the steps involved (creating achievable substeps, scheduling those steps onto your calendar for completion, etc). Tracking goals is what takes them from wishes to accomplishments.
July 2, 2012 at 1:50 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Board Game Review > Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

I don't keep my finger on the pulse of all the independent Kickstarter campaigns running at any given time. There's just too much unique content being produced month after month for me to sift through everything. I leave that to those who write previews and reviews for a living (I am an IT Consultant for a living; I write reviews as a hobby because I'm passionate about board gaming). The only way an independent Kickstarter campaign is going to be on my radar is if the designer/publisher reaches out to me to let me know the campaign is running or if it's created a bit of buzz already in the key circles that I frequent. I definitely wasn't closely monitoring Kickstarter campaigns four years ago when the original edition of Middara   was initially funded. It was an adventurous dungeon crawl that promised to be so much more than an ordinary dungeon crawl. With options to run in campaign mode for an ongoing narrative or crawl mode for one off gameplay, it could work as a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Board Game Review: Anno 1800

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a...
2 comments
Read more

Board Game Review: Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated (spoiler free)

We’ve had our eye on Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated since its debut in 2019 from Renegade Game Studios. In our house, we love legacy games and we own most of the other Clank! editions, so it seemed like a good fit. Boy, was it ever! We finally got the game a couple of weeks ago, and immediately fell for it so hard during the first few minutes of the game that we played it nearly every day with our 11 year old twin sons, Max and Locke. In Clank! Legacy: AI , designed by Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen, players take on the role of employees at a small organization. At the beginning of the legacy campaign, the organization is in the process of applying to become a franchise of Acquisitions Incorporated, a megacorp famed for its for-profit adventuring services. We loved the narrative and appreciated the touches of authenticity,  like the franchise charter agreement.  We’ve played through other legacy campaign games over the past year where the narrative fell flat at tim...
Post a Comment
Read more