I Tried Tracking My Habits. Then I Found Something Better.
This whole thing started, as many things do, with a really solid PDF.
I love the idea of a system. A chart. A grid. A checkbox. A beautifully designed something that implies I might finally become the sort of person who drinks enough water, closes all her tabs, tracks all her habits, and has a deeply evolved relationship with Tuesday.
And so, wildly optimistic as I often am, I try it.
I download the app. I open the planner. I set up the spreadsheet. I tell myself, this time it’s going to click. This time I’ll finally be the kind of person who does all the things… and also somehow tracks all the things… and feels pretty awesome about it.
And you know what? At first, it works. I am killing it. I. Am. Doing. It.
But then, inevitably, life gets… lifey. I miss a day. Then a few. I forget to log something on a random Wednesday. I come up short on steps or water or whatever metric I’ve decided is the measure of a successful human being this week.
Suddenly, every empty box feels a little accusatory. Every unfilled line feels like proof of something. At some point, I look at the thing that was supposed to help me… and realize I feel worse.
So it joins the graveyard.
And then, a few weeks or months later, I find a new one. One that will definitely work this time.
(Spoiler: it does not.)
But, dude. It wasn’t that tracking didn’t work for me. (My brain loves checking boxes off and color-coding the hell out of stuff.) It was that I was tracking the wrong things, for the wrong reasons.
I had been using trackers to measure whether I was doing enough, being enough, keeping up enough. And what I actually wanted was a way to notice what was already rad in my life: a way to keep it, to remember it, and to say, this mattered to me, and not lose it three weeks later to the void.
I didn’t know this consciously, of course, so this next part happened entirely by accident.
One day, I wanted to keep track of the board games we’d been playing—what worked, what didn’t, which ones we kept coming back to. I couldn’t find anything that felt quite right, so I made something simple. Then I made it look good.
And then I got weirdly into it.
Then I made one for books. Then for shows. Movies. Video games.
And somewhere in there, without really trying, I fell in love with tracking again.
Not as a performance or as a way to fix myself or hit a new goal, but as a way to document a life I was already actually living.
Books. Board games. TV. Movies. Video games. The shows I bailed on halfway through. The ones I inhaled in two nights and thought about for a week. The random movie that flattened me on a Tuesday. (For the record: my favorite movies of last year were Nobody 2 and KPop Demon Hunters. No shame. No notes. We contain multitudes.)
I realized I hate how quickly things I love dissolve into I think I liked that?
So I started writing them down.
Yes,hobby tracking absolutely became another system. But it became a system that stuck with me because it made me feel good. I could jot things down, fill in grids, check all the boxes, color-code my heart out, and never feel bad if I missed a day or forgot to write something down. I could spend as much time on it as I wanted to, and it kept my thoughts on hand for Future Me.
So, yeah. I love a good, satisfying system. But the only tracking that’s ever stuck for me is the kind that doesn’t try to change my life. It just keeps a record of it.
My Brain, a Bookstore, and a Complete Lack of Supervision
Here’s a thing that happens to me with embarrassing regularity.
I’ll be in a bookstore—or online late at night with the kind of confidence only the internet can provide—and a cover will catch my eye. The title feels familiar. The author has that extremely persuasive aura of you love me, actually. And suddenly I’m one click away from buying a book I absolutely do not need.
That is how I almost bought Accomplice to the Villain.
Because in my head, I loved that series. Or rather, I loved the idea of loving that series. It had the right cover. The right vibe. The right whole thing. It felt like it should be my jam.
Then I checked my reading tracker.
Past Me had logged:
“3.5 stars. I don’t know… I wanted to love it but somehow didn’t. And the ending actually pissed me off.”
Ah. Right.
Not a favorite. Not a keeper. Not a series I need to keep giving second chances just because the packaging is cute. (I also apparently wrote: “I’d read the sequel, but only if it’s free because the author owes me that much.” Which feels fair.)
I’ve done this with authors, too. Kate Atkinson is a perfect example.
Years ago, I read one of her books and loved it so much that I mentally promoted her to Favorite Author status. Bought her books whenever I saw them. Assumed I was a fan.
Then, in 2022, I started reading my library A–Z. By the time I got to Atkinson, I’d read eight of her books and somehow ended up with four DNFs, two four-stars, one 3.5-star, and exactly zero five-star reviews.
So… why did I think she was one of my favorite authors?
No idea.
Without tracking what I read, I would’ve gone to my grave insisting she was a favorite while quietly not enjoying half her backlist.
And don’t even get me started on the number of times I’ve almost re-bought the same novel because publishers keep giving books full identity makeovers like they’re entering witness protection.
This is the kind of thing hobby tracking fixes.
It replaces I think I liked that? with Oh, right. I have notes.
Why I Keep Track of What I Read, Watch, and Play
When I say I track what I read, watch, and play, I mean I keep a record of the stuff I spend time with—the books, the shows, the games, the opinions, the five-star loves, the dramatic DNFs, the maybe if it’s on Kindle Unlimited titles.
And once you start doing that, something small but important shifts: you don’t lose your own experiences as quickly.
The stories stay closer. The characters stay closer. The game nights don’t all blur together. You’re not just remembering whether you technically finished something—you’re keeping your reactions, your preferences, your favorites, and your hot takes within reach.
So instead of vague memory soup, you’ve got entries like:
“DNF. Strong start. Then after episode 4… I swear they hired different writers.”
“Plays best with 3+. Setup is a beast. See notes on how to make it faster next time.”
“Meh. I kinda want to know what happens, but don’t you dare read the sequel unless it’s free on Kindle Unlimited.”
That’s the appeal.
Not just remembering what happened—remembering what you thought about it while it was happening.
The Timeline Hidden in Your Hobbies
A good tracker doesn’t just tell you what happened.
It shows you what your life actually looked like.
When I flip back through a year of reading or watching or playing, I can see patterns I absolutely would’ve forgotten otherwise.
One year I’m deep in a board game era—apparently every weekend involved punching cardboard out of fresh inserts (arguably the best part), snacks, and increasingly strong opinions about worker placement.
Another year I’m watching way more movies than usual. Some months are packed with books. Some are just a graveyard of DNFs and noble intentions.
And I love that.
I love being able to look back and see:oh, that was the spring I read a ton of weird fantasy.that was the year I apparently watched half of television.that was the season when every third book annoyed me for a completely different reason.
It’s not a highlight reel.
It’s a record.
And somehow that’s more interesting.
Turns Out, I Have a Type
When you track multiple hobbies, something insightful happens: your logs start spilling the tea on your personality.
You start tracking what you read, watch, and play, and at first it just feels like… keeping notes. Logging things. Mildly satisfying.
And then, without warning, it turns into a Sassy magazine personality quiz, except instead of answering questions like “What’s your dream date?” it’s asking:
What do you actually do with your free time?What do you keep coming back to?What do you think you like… versus what you actually choose?
And your answers are not theoretical. They’re sitting right there in your own handwriting.
You think you love big, complex Eurogames and a rulebook that reads like a legal deposition… and yet Dominion keeps hitting the table over and over again.
You think you’re always looking for new shows, but your TV tracker suggests a strong preference for comfort rewatches and “just one more episode of Love Is Blind” situations.
You think you’re selective about buying books, and then BookBub says “Free!” and suddenly you’re adopting seven new titles like a literary rescue operation.
None of this is a problem, by the way.
But it is… revealing.
Not in a “fix yourself” sort of way, but in a “oh, this is who I am” sort of way. And anyone who’s ever lost a Saturday afternoon on a personality type quiz knows exactly the sort of gratification I’m talking about.
And I love that.
Because over time, tracking your hobbies means you stop guessing. You don’t have to rely on vibes or memory or whatever version of yourself you think you are.
You can just look. And there you are.
Not an App. Not a Spreadsheet. Something Way Better (I Promise)
When I talk about tracking your hobbies, I’m not talking about building some elaborate life dashboard or maintaining a system that requires a minor in computer science or dodging a neverending assault of in-app purchases.
I mean something simple: a custom, choose-your-own-adventure place to log what you read, watch, or play—and what you thought about it.
In my case, that’s printable trackers I can use on paper or digitally: reading trackers, board game trackers, TV trackers, movie trackers… even tarot trackers to chart which cards I pull and when. It’s a satisfying system with pages with actual structure: grids, rating systems, checkboxes, little sections for notes but with enough design mojo to not feel like another bro’s beige spreadsheet.
And the best part is there’s no rules on how you wanna use it. Some days you can write everything down: full reviews, highlighted ratings, notes in the margins. Other days, you might just feel like jotting down the date, circling three stars, and moving on. Either way counts.
It works whether you want to spend two minutes on it or twenty. That’s the whole point.
And yes, technically you could do all of this in a notes app or a spreadsheet. But I learned very quickly that if something feels like admin, I will avoid it like it personally offended me.
A solid tracker doesn’t feel like work. It doesn’t judge you for skipping a day or not giving everything 110% every single minute of every single day.
It just feels as delightful as the time you spend with the hobby itself.
Why Hobby Tracking Keeps Earning a Spot in My Life
I’ve tried enough systems at this point to know how this usually goes.
Something works for a while. I get into it. I feel like I’ve finally cracked the code. And then, slowly, it turns into something I’m behind on. Something I’m avoiding. Something that makes me feel like I’m doing life slightly incorrectly.
Hobby tracking has never done that. Not once.
There’s no streak to break, no “falling off,” no moment where it quietly turns into a measurement of whether I’m doing enough.
It just… waits. It’s there when I want to remember something or when I want to look something up or when I’m standing in a bookstore thinking, wait, didn’t I already have an opinion about this?
And over time, it turns into something I actually use. Something that’s practical and genuinely helpful: a record of what I loved, what I abandoned, and what I keep coming back to for reasons I can now actually see.
And maybe that’s the difference.
Most systems I’ve tried try to tell me who I should be.
This one just shows me what I actually do.
If This Sounds Like Your Jam…
… that’s exactly what Play It Coolis for.
It’s a sampler pack of hobby trackers for books, board games, TV, movies, and more—a way to try tracking what you read, watch, and play without having to build your own system from scratch.
Think of it as a starting point. A test drive. A very low-pressure way to see if you like having your opinions somewhere a little more reliable than your memory.
Just be aware: once you start, Past You will absolutely begin leaving extremely strong opinions for Future You.
And honestly?
She’s usually right.
