Tracking focus, learning, mood with diet and a few other things

there are times when i feel focused and grounded and get things done. times when i have energy and stamina. but there are also times where my motivation is low, i can’t focus, and i can’t finish things. i can either except that these periods will come and go with no pattern or i can look for explanations.

my daughter has a wheat allergy and when she eats wheat by accident the symptoms tend to show up 3 days later. i suppose this is one reason the elimination diets are the way to really know about wheat. i am wondering if certain foods, supplements, sleep patterns are responsible for my mental fluctuations. i’m looking to find trends that i can further explore.

the big factors would be food, supplements, sleep, exercise, and alcohol.

can anyone recommend an app for this? i’ve seen a few that kind of fit the bill but haven’t settled on one yet. i would like to be able to get my data out of it at some point in a universal format so i might be able to use it elsewhere.

thx

1 Like

How frequent are these high/low motivation periods? Ideally, you’d try to keep any factors that you can control and measure constant for a while, and observe if your energy levels are still changing,

What apps have you looked at?

agreed. ideally i would. that’s what makes humans difficult to study. lots of variables unless i lock myself in a box. ha.

these periods are somewhat unpredictable. but in the weeks months range. what’s baffling is they don’t seem to have any relationship with events. more bio-chemical i think.

still i think some patterns will emerge over months. like most people, i forget what i was taking a month ago or what i was eating.

i looked at apps about 2 years ago and didn’t find anything useful. just today i found a QS blogger with a great post on apps but it’s years old and every app dead now. i’m going to search more now.

1 Like

ok, after spending about 2 hours the closest i could come was an app called KeepTrack.

my first impressions

i wish it had an easier way to set daily reminders. right now you have to set a reminder for each item. for example i have coffee, running, sleep, vit C. So i’d so reminders for them all. i’d like a reminder for all items maybe 3 times a day.

i like how you basically build it all from scratch. like the simple design. backup and export are easy in theory. haven’t tried.

i wish the items could just appear in a list where you taped a box and got like a dropdown menu. then i could see a lot more on one screen. would make logging easier. also custom color bg for each item not just a dot.

sorting option is cool since you can sort by last updated. helpful when one item is being updated a lot and others are not.

ah, i see the major drawback. there doesn’t seem to be any graphing…analytics on this. you export your data and do that yourself it looks like.

I think Mood Trackers: Anxiety Sadness (it’s an Android app) might be useful for this. It prompts you to enter data once an hour; and it asks questions about mood and energy level, what you did the past hour, how you slept, etc. It also tracks HR along with each entry.

Can I recommend a side project that myself and a small team have been working on?

We do mood, sleep, supplements, and productivity tracking (albeit with a bit of supplements / medication focus). Love to hear feedback - willing to take harsh harsh criticism too :slight_smile: Food tracking is coming, but honestly at least six months away - we want to make sure when we do it, we get it right (ie. gets macronutrients correctly) - ie. is it gluten free? Are iron-heavy foods impacting your sleep?

Our mobile app is coming up is being requested a lot and the team’s been working on that.

https://betterself.io - Code is fully open-sourced and you can export all your data and delete your account at anytime.

2 Likes