5 Things to Track to Raise Your Awareness Levels
#3 Time Spent Doing Activity
Mindfulness and enjoyment of the present moment begin with awareness. Noticing what is around us, what is good in everyday life and what truly matters to us. However, how do we begin to become more aware of things in everyday life?
The following five things to track help showcase the important things of daily life as well as having the ability to building a fantastic habit of tracking.
- Mood Tracker
This can work at any time of day, but perhaps is most successful at the end of the day. It can be as easy as writing one sentence of how you felt that day and when your energy levels were highest. Bullet journal mood tracking can be a fun and creative exercise as well, where you create a yearly or monthly mood tracker and color in the square or image daily.
Being aware of trends will help you to recognize and work with anything that you notice. For example, if for the past week, your energy has been low and your mood has been off, what is one way to bring yourself to a better mood?
Can you incorporate a daily ritual that makes you happier or spend time with people who lift your spirits? On the other hand, if you seem to be happier during a certain week, was there a change you did recently that is helping you to keep your spirits high?
2. Habit tracker
Any habit can be useful as a beginning way to track. Use this method for an activity you’d like to make into a habit or an existing habit you’d like to notice more.
By using a habit tracker, we use our motivation to complete a task and train ourselves to notice whether we are effective at it in regular practice. We can also notice the effect that our new habit is having on us. Is it really worth it to wake up early or do we feel groggy and tired in the middle of the day? This is a great learning tool for possible everyday habits.
3. Time Spent Doing Activity
This can work two different ways.
The first way is to document the amount of time we give to an activity, for example, writing. What are our best and most productive times? It can also help to track the amount of time we spend on less than desirable activities.
For example, how many hours do we spend scrolling social media or watching television?
Tracking can be a huge eye opener and doesn’t need much more than a simple tally sheet or a few words written down about the activity and amount of time spent. It can also help us to realize how much time we are spending on useful or not so useful activities and can provide motivation to change based on what we find.
The second way this can work is if we are willing to go through a few days and experiment. For example, if we tracked every half hour for three days, what would we find? Are we spending a reasonable amount of time on the activities that matter and if not, how will we change this? How much down time to we provide ourselves per day and how can we schedule more?
Tracking time spent helps to raise overall awareness of how much time goes into what we do with our lives. It is the ultimate way to track our priorities.
4. Three Things that Went Well Today and Why
I came across this idea while reading Happy at Last by Richard O’Connor, but I’ve seen it in other places also. Writing down three good things each day seems easy. However, it is a great gratitude practice.
The why portion of it allows us to be more aware of the factors behind what makes each good thing possible. Whether that is because of someone else’s kindness or a previous decision we’ve made, it’s good to know the reasons why. It helps us to reciprocate, pay it forward or make great decisions moving forward.
5. Thoughts
This can take a variety of formats. Some formats can take: morning pages, ten minute stream of consciousness or even just writing down the 10 most pervasive thoughts we had that day.
Each method certainly has its place in journaling. However, analyzing our thoughts on an ongoing basis helps point out problem areas and reframe any negatives.
To reframe- write the negative thought. Write out a positive thought that counters it and draw the correlation. When you notice the negative come up, replace that thought with the positive. It takes time, but this will allow for training ourselves to think more positively.
The thought tracking can also help by reminding us of important things. For example, if an appointment or phone call continually comes up, take the time to do it today. It’ll at least take a few things off the endless reels that are our minds.
These five, especially combined, will help us to become more aware of what is going on inside and around us. It helps us to notice trends in our lives- both negative and positive. It allows a framework for changing or just to be more aware in general.
