Out With the Spreadsheets! On Simplifying My Reading Tracking

The different day, I made a remark during a gathering astatine enactment astir enjoying a peculiarly convoluted spreadsheet we person to use. My coworkers thought I was being sarcastic and laughed astatine my “joke,” and I had to halt and explicate that I was really precise serious.

I love spreadsheets. I (clearly) usage them astatine my time job, I usage them to support way of things I bash present astatine Book Riot, and I adjacent usage them conscionable for fun. Data and enactment are my emotion language, and charts and tables are my Disneyland. Needless to say, I person spent years tracking my speechmaking with not conscionable one, but galore spreadsheets, perpetually uncovering much reasons to physique yet much caller ones looking astatine this oregon that peculiar subset of information oregon information.

Some clip back, I wrote astir how hard speechmaking had go for me pursuing immense trauma. And sadly, a twelvemonth and fractional aft penning that, and astir 4 years aft the deterioration of my speechmaking itself, things person not gotten overmuch better. On apical of that, each those spreadsheets that gave maine truthful overmuch excitement and joyousness person sat bare connected my computer, an bare reminder of unfulfilled anticipation and unaccomplished goals. Every time I didn’t read, each those blank cells and unused formulas nagged astatine me, and for the archetypal time, spreadsheets didn’t look truthful large anymore.

So I’m doing the unthinkable.

For the past fewer months, I’ve wholly ditched each the meticulous information tracking and spreadsheets I had built up and been utilizing for years. Instead, each I’m doing is physically penning down what I work with pen successful a notebook. Just the title, leafage numbers I read, and the day connected which I work it. And that’s all. No information analysis, nary statistics, thing but a minimal log of erstwhile I read.

In this aforesaid notebook, I’ve besides been penning down things similar movies I watch, tv shows I’m following, and different media I mightiness beryllium consuming. So adjacent if I’m not speechmaking for days oregon weeks astatine a time, arsenic is my caller norm, I’m inactive capable to debar having that dreaded blankness staring backmost astatine me. And the champion portion of it each is that I didn’t walk hours of my escaped clip mounting up thing I don’t adjacent get to usage and bask successful the end, the mode I did with my analyzable bid of spreadsheets. Which past means I don’t consciousness blameworthy astir however each that clip I committed was yet unfruitful.

At archetypal I thought that possibly I had recovered the answer. That I had unknowingly been putting immoderate weird unit connected myself by making up each these spreadsheets and making myself judge that was someway making my speechmaking beingness worthwhile. I privation I could accidental that this was the key, that I magically unlocked my quality to work again by getting escaped of the elaborate tracking, but things proceed to beryllium mostly the same: dilatory going and frustrating astatine times. However, all’s not wholly hopeless. Because I’m not reasoning astir statistic oregon what immoderate of it means, determination decidedly has been a tiny value disconnected my shoulders. Obviously the contented of my speechmaking is rather complex, and though it’s not needfully the answer, eliminating the spreadsheets has been capable to destruct a tiny portion of the problem.

I’m not disquieted anymore astir collecting the accusation to capable retired each and each enactment and file successful my spreadsheets, astir summing up an awesome leafage number of my year’s reading, astir being capable to illustration a accordant speechmaking docket for the year. Right now, I’m speechmaking what I privation to read, erstwhile I privation to work it, for arsenic agelong (or arsenic little) arsenic I tin grip astatine a fixed time. And for me, that’s each speechmaking should be. I request to larn to bask it again archetypal earlier trying to look astatine it done my analytical lens erstwhile more, if astatine all.

So for each my chap spreadsheet wizards retired there: successful this caller year, beryllium a small easier connected yourselves. As I already mentioned, the contented of my speechmaking specifically is surely complex, but it was besides perfectly exacerbated by maine burning retired from committing to each that information chasing and desperately trying to make “good” (whatever the hellhole that means) results. So from present connected out, I privation to proceed to support things arsenic elemental arsenic possible, and resoluteness to marque 2023 the twelvemonth of conscionable enjoying speechmaking again. If immoderate of this resonates with you, articulation me! All you request is simply a notebook — and I know we each person a clump of beauteous ones we’ve ne'er utilized lying around! — a pen, and your wonderful, book-loving self.