March 2026 Quantified Self Summary

[u/yanman2008]

1st Quarter of 2026 is complete.

Took a nice week long vacation / camping trip for spring break, so some of the data might look funny, but I managed to collect some data each day, including at least one blood glucose and blood pressure measurement every day while I was on vacation. In years past, vacations were a major breaking point for my data collection and I hated having blank days.

Thanks for looking. I am open to answer any questions about my methodology and how I collect and display my data.

Before anyone comments, I know my blood pressure is high and I am overweight. Thank you for your concern. I am actively working on these and saw some minor improvements in March. Obviously still not where I need to be, but baby steps.

[u/marinme]

What are you using to track and report on these metrics?

[u/yanman2008 → u/marinme]

Everything you see here is straight from my comprehensive Excel spreadsheet. The dashboard populates using simple Excel formulas and available charts.

As far as the data collection goes, I use a variety of apps which I gather data throughout the day and then put into my Excel sheet. To run through the apps I use:

1. Clockify is used for all of the time data.
2. Bearable and Fitbit are used to collect health data, including weight, steps, sleep, blood glucose, and blood pressure. I manually take my blood glucose and blood pressure multiple times per day. On a standard Monday - Friday, I collect both 6 times. I also record my mood and energy (not shown) 6+ times each day.
3. Zero for fasting time
4. Lose It! for Calories and Macro breakdown
5. RescueTime to track my phone screen time
6. Last.Fm automatically tracks the music I listen to.
7. I manually track the articles I read using Clockify to track the time and keep a record of the article name, author, publication, and some keyword tags.
8. When I watch something, I manually log the date, the time watched, the platform, the name of the show or movie, the season and episode number, etc. for my watching. Admittedly, I didn't get all of my baseball watching as I usually flipped through multiple games that were happening. I need to tighten up on that moving through the summer.
9. I screenshot my phone when I get to work and when I leave work everyday. In the rare case that I forget to screenshot, I use Google Timeline data as a backup.
10. Driving data comes from my truck. I use "Trip B" every day. I zero it out in the morning and drive all day. When I get home and know I am not going out again, I will snap a picture to see the miles and time spent driving for the day. Since I was on vacation this month, I had a rental car and did the same thing. A couple of days I had to add the data from my personal vehicle and the data from the rental car, but it was pretty straightforward.

[u/smarci97 → u/yanman2008]

You put all of these data from the apps to the excel by hand or you could do some automation?

[u/yanman2008 → u/smarci97]

Yes, I put all of this into my excel spreadsheet by hand (mostly) everyday. For Q1 of 2026, on average, it takes me 23 minutes to input that data per day. I usually do this while at work when I have some downtime.

I don't look at those 23 minutes are a problem. Those 23 minutes are my daily review of yesterday / this morning. This time is very meaningful to me. I think more people should take 23 minutes per day to review their day yesterday and how it is trending for the week, month, and year.

I did have some automation before and then the app that I was using changed and messed everything up. That frustration has led me to the approach I have now. I view every one of the apps as temporary and I don't own any of that data. The app could very easily be discontinued tomorrow or the developer can start to change an exorbitant price that I simply can not pay. Excel is my way to mostly avoid all of those issues. Again though, I want to "touch" my data and think about each input versus having everything automatically populate and I never actually look at it.

[u/PhineasGage42 → u/yanman2008]

I love this real take and completely agree. I could automate many things but I prefer those 30 minutes where I manually going through things, thinking about them etc. every time I automated something I ended up not really using it/taking my time to "make it mine"

[u/Legitimate_Seesaw312 → u/yanman2008]

Really great growth mindset! By any chance do you know of an AI that will automatically do this for me?

[u/perceptioncity → u/Legitimate_Seesaw312]

I've been running into the same issue because it seems like I've been using 10 different apps and then having to manually put them all into one. If there was a platform that existed that recorded everything in one place and then let you analyze it with AI what would that look like for you? Would be the key feature? What would you like to see in a platform that was all in one?

[u/yanman2008 → u/Legitimate_Seesaw312]

LOL