Supernifty – nifty stuff

Track It! is a free online application to help you track aspects of your life. Most popular aspects to track are mood, exercise and sleep.

Supernifty currently provides cycle analysis and correlation between trackers, to help you better understand yourself.

I received some interesting feedback regarding the use of Track It!:

I recently started using Track It to first monitor, and then control, my alcohol consumption. I seemed to be having a drink after work every night of the week, and thought that couldn’t be good.

Just the act of recording my consumption every day made me think about how much I was consuming, and made me start to set targets to reduce my consumption. I don’t think I was alcoholic, but I think dependence was definitely beginning to emerge.

I’ve reduced my consumption quite a bit, down to around 3-4 nights a week, and I’m certain it has made a big difference to my wellbeing. I’m doing lots more interesting things after work now, and last night something happened which really proved this point, and in fact made me write this letter.

I have a drawer full of odd socks. When an odd sock arrives from the wash, I usually search the odd sock drawer for a match, and if there’s no match, add it to the drawer. Last night I had another look at that odd sock drawer.

Numerous times in the past I’ve looked through that drawer for matches, and found none. But last night, I managed to match up almost half the odd socks! Some were inside out or whatever so it wasn’t immediately obvious, but the fact that I failed to do this in the past, in my alcohol induced haze, makes me wonder what kind of person I have been in the past, and what opportunities I have missed.

I wonder about my behaviour at work, and with friends, what other glaringly obvious things have passed me by. I wonder how in the past I was unable to do what now seems like a simple task.

The odd socks incident made me wake up and see how I have changed.

It made me think that the person from the past was some other person, not me … someone who couldn’t even spot matching socks!.

Hopefully, now I am on the path to a better life, and some of that is thanks to your tracking software.

I think that’s very interesting how much effect something can have on your overall outlook, without you even realizing it.

Below is the 6 month alcohol consumption graph for my correspondent:

As you can see, there is a noticeable drop in consumption, however, the biggest drop occurred as soon as the tracking started: the act of thinking about it each day got the ball rolling.

The comment about seeing a past version of yourself as someone else reminded me of one of my favourite books, Flowers for Algernon.

If you have an interesting use of Track It, or wish to comment on this story, feel free to contact us.

• Learn more about Track It!
• Start using Track It!

It’s fairly well known that long stretches at the computer without taking a break are unhealthy and often unproductive.

If you’d like something to remind you to take a break from work, and you use iGoogle, then try this work balance timer.

It’s a simple, free, customisable tool that counts down a specified number of minutes, then warns you when it is time to rest. It also informs you when it is time to start working again (d’oh!).

If you don’t use iGoogle, you should consider it as your home page. There are thousands of applications that you can install on your browser, which you can then conveniently access from any computer.