Mirror Tracker
Lately I've been taking journaling (or at least the principles I've learned from my journals) and brining them to the outside.
I've been interested in interrogating the relationship between knowing better and doing better.
What are the bridges and what might they look like?
I know I'm allergic to discipline (if it is defined by rigidly forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do for the sake of being arbitrarily "better").
I'm much more interested in design. That is, knowing who I am and working with that reality rather than forcing a new habit on myself.
(I know me, that's just not realistic).
Anyway, habit trackers.
They're normally designed where you'd track if you did what you're supposed to do.
Mine, on my mirror, tracks what things I actually did.
And here's the fun part,
they're not tasks.
They're categories of things that are important enough to me that I want to see if I'm actually doing them.
They are rooted in principles of what I want my life to look like.
I want to see the actual data. I want to see what I do naturally.
Knowing what I'm working with may actually influence me to do these things a little more.
They'll also help me be less hard on myself.
I feel like traditional tracking focus on what you didn't do and it turns accountability into an assault. It turn it into "did I fail?".
My reverse tracker makes me ask "what did I do?" and it reminds me of what I still have the opportunity to do. It reminds me of other ways I can bring more of a sense of meaning and an fulfillment into my life.
"What do I need more of?"
That framing is built into the tracker because in order to make a reverse tracker, you have to map out what's important to you.
It becomes about quality of life rather than chasing vanity metrics so you can feel like a good, real, productive adult.
It's: What's important to me?
Of those important things, what am I doing?
Now I see what I can do more of".
This is the part where I have to talk about the structure of it to make things more clear.
To make a reverse tracker you first have to:
Decide what's important enough to you to track.
Tally the category if you feel you've attended to that thing. (E.g. If I have a category called "Create" and I painted something today, I'll put a tally. If I have a category that says "Publish" and I shared something I created online, I'll put a tally).
Notice none of these are tasks like "wash dishes, work out". Those things are chores, not something that makes or breaks what I value life for.
At this point, you've listed a few categories of things that are important to you.
I also think the mirror plays a role too.
How? Because it is right in front of me and I see it daily. Every day, I'm reminded of the categories of life that affect its quality, if feel fulfilled, moved, etc. They are categories rather than tasks. They're not chore, threats, or something to amount to.
They're not even promises. If anything, they feel a bit like a wish.
"I wish to see a tally under Community, after all, if that wasn't something I wanted in my life, it would not have made the tracker!".
So every day, and every night, I see where in my life I'm contributing and where else I want and need to go...
Tally mark the corresponding categories each time you do something in them.
This is wonderful because I have to decide what counts within each category.
Do I consider cooking having "created"?
Do I consider gong for a walk "meditation?"
That deliberation I do before I mark is an exercise in me getting precise about what felt meaningful to me. It reveals if I'm satisfied rather than if I just got something done.
That's what's missing from typical habit trackers. They're just.... Tasks.
They don't have any emotional weight.
Sure, the goal each task is leading to may have an emotional weight. But that puts a distance between the task and the emotional pay off. You have jump through the willpower, disciple, force, and shame loops first before you can get that pay off. You have to go through the journey of tick marks on a chart before you get that pay off. You have to hit that ultimate goal.
In my reverse way, having attended to your life in a way that matters to you today is the goal and it is goal that you've apparently accomplished. The tracker is more like a high-five than a quota you must meet.
I get credit for what I do after the fact instead of pressure that I have to do it.
It also forces me to take ownership too. If my "Showcase" space stays blank for a long time, I see that an I can decide if I want to change it.
Being a "better" person doesn't have to mean getting my "stats" up, it can mean being honest about who I actually am, owning it, and finding fulfillment within that. Of course, it can also mean challenging myself to get those spaces filled.... It can also mean evaluating "why do I care about this anyway? Why isn't it happening? What does this thing actually mean to me?".
When was the last time you sat down and evaluated the relationship you have to your goals? Meaning, why do you want that anyway? Why? Why? Why it down some more.
Instead of treating myself like a robot who has to fall in line, I'm treating myself like a person and getting real about what's important to me, what I comfortably do, how can I do it, what's satisfying to me, if I want to change anything, and why.
My "future self" is a real person but that version of me won't exist without my present self.
My present self, in her feelings, in her business, in her fears, in her financial capacity.... She can't necessarily stop being who she is to force who she wants to be. My future is at the mercy of my present. I think the traditional habit trackers track betrayal to your ideal future (at least it does to me) and this method is for consultation with my current self and allowing my future to evolve based on what I can realistically and sustainability accommodate and what matches my values.
And that..... Is essentially it.
I just started doing this this week. So I'll return with other post on how it is going.
I just can already tell it has a lot of value because it is making me think of "habits" and "goals" differently and in a way that I suspect is honest and sustainable.
