Ask HN: Do you have a smart system/method to track things in your life?

I'm surprised that none of the mobile apps I tried will send me a notification prompting me to enter data. Instead I have to remember it myself, open the app, navigate through a few screens and finally enter a single data point. Ugh.

Instead I should be prompted to enter the data via a notification, and when I tap the notification the app should go to exactly the right place to enter the data. It should be: a notification pops up, tap notification, enter data, save. That's it.

E.g. I can type:

    today wake 8:30

I then have a bunch of scripts on the backend that can read the JSON file, display it in column form, graph it, dissect it, and so on.

For example, I can do

    series annotate wght -f annotate:Low-carb -t annotate:"End Low-carb" | graph

I think the problem with off-the-shelf solutions here is that these aren't flexible enough. E.g. at one point I went through and compared major life events to see if any of them had caused changes in my sleep patterns or weight. At the time I recorded the data (almost a decade now) I hadn't even thought of this, but it was very easy to build the functionality in later to match my current needs.

Ultimately, I consider data points like that very ephemeral, and it's almost useless after the fact.

I mainly use it to track expenses and random thoughts or links.

The bot's username is @gsheet_notes_bot, feedback and suggestions are welcome :)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TelegramBots/comments/wqkpm7/your_m...

I like that because it makes me aware of how much stuff I own and what I really need (because it shows you items you would have forgotten).

Most non-voice systems have too much overhead, and things like adding something to shopping lists while cooking before you forget are a hassle that disrupts what I'm doing.

I would recommend being more of a scientist: identify a specific issue, canvas the literature for some causal hypotheses based in what we already know, and then design the experiment. Or, ask a professional, i.e., a doctor.

Probably the most fuzzy but prevalent driver is inflammation or an overactive immune system. Blood tests will say if it's hyper-active, and panels can tell you if you're allergic to everything from gluten to types of seafood. (You can order them directly from Quest Diagnostics for ~$200-$600 in the US.)

wrt system, I use markdown both for journaling and for analysis. I reduce everything to headers, bullets, and tables. Then I use full-text search from the keyboard to find things, and parsing to process, e.g., searching for data under a given set of topics.

For document granularity, use some combination of workflow and deliverable. My WIP stream has preliminary evaluation in time order, but I glean results to deliverables -- like lab notes vs. papers.

For details, you end up with your own tag/format system. e.g., most of my urls are something like

- [name - description in {language or system} from {source} on {plaform or date} from {domain}](url)

It reads normally, and allow me to find e.g., matching items from a source.

Obviously, the killer app here is a personalized voice assistant, which chunks your information, instead of your having to fit into some system. I'd pay for that.

On one hand, I have my "lazy trackers", or things that are recorded automatically. Last FM for music history, the health info that gets aggregated into the Apple Health app, etc... These are things that get collected automatically, and I have scripts to automatically back them up to CSV format every so often. The collection tools themselves tend to have all the analysis features I care for, so I haven't done anything major with the CSV backups at this time. I'm generally cool with the automated collection stuff and have no interest in changing that dynamic while those methods remain available. I outsource what I can.

And then there are the things I log manually. The catch-all here is a personal journal that I do with daily markdown files with a timestamp for each time I write something in them. Over time, I have decided to break out specific things into their own markdown files rather than the catch-all journal. These include media notes, where I now capture thoughts on books / movies / games / etc in their own markdown files; and contact notes, where I write down memorable notes on interactions with my friends / loved ones so I can be the best friend / family member I can for those people. Those are all encrypted markdown files. The one spreadsheet I manually keep tracks the hours that I spend playing individual video games over time, which I've always found interesting even though I'm not a huge gamer.

As for the things I have chosen to break out from the catch-all journal, that has come as a result of querying those things so often that I find it easier to make purpose-designated areas for them. That's worked well for me up to this point, but in the future I want to have a catch-all text input area that collates everything into a timestamped "database" and then automatically scripts out appending those things to the appropriate place. I normally wouldn't bother with so much development overhead, and I did start out light; but this is a huge passion in my life that makes it worth the effort.

My current notion is to use the Drafts app for this, since I operate within the Apple ecosystem and that is a fully scriptable cross-platform text notes app within that ecosystem. I can enter whatever input parameters in plain text as a passing note, and that output can be automatically parsed into a master JSON or SQLite file or whatever that can then be parsed to output everything to the appropriate markdown files automatically. This is something I plan to mock up a test version of soon. I want do keep the markdown files up to date like I always have, mainly so that I can reference notes via mobile, which is a major review and consumption platform for me.