My Personal Tracker
What 16 Years of Journaling Have Taught Me
I have invested in 17 gap-closing companies as an angel investor and was a Managing Director at Backstage Capital, where we invested millions into underrepresented founders. Creating access to opportunity for people from all backgrounds is close to my heart.
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Once in a while, we meet a person we think is quirky. It could be the way they laugh or even the way they make you laugh. It could be the way they think or certain mannerisms they have. You might be one of those quirky people.
No one has ever called me quirky to my face. But I've kept a daily life tracker for 16 years, organised into eight categories and four sub-categories, and I run a personal review of it every six months. So, probably.
Where It All Began
In 2010, I graduated from university and secured deferred entry for a graduate consulting role at EY. I took this as a blessing in disguise, as I had a recurring dream that I wanted to travel and see the world. At that stage and age, I'd only been on a plane once, for my grandma's funeral in Ghana.
This inspiration to travel came originally from a place of envy during a work placement I did during a year out of university. During that work placement, two things were confirmed. The first is that I didn’t want to become an accountant despite studying that for my degree. The second was that everyone was sharing stories of all the adventures they had been on from Australia to Southeast Asia, and it fascinated me. I wish I could have contributed to the discussions, but I had no stories to share. They shared such vivid descriptions that I could visualise the beauty of the journeys they described.
As a parent of two young kids now, I realise how much my parents trusted me at 21 when I told them my plans to backpack to South America, and they gave me their blessing. I’m so grateful they were not resistant and instead encouraged me to feed my curiosity. I recall telling some of my closest friends in Tottenham, where I grew up. The initial response was that,
“People like us don’t do things like this.”
It was a foreign experience for my friends and I understood that. Literally no one we grew up with as friends had ever gone backpacking; it must have sounded so weird to them. In the back of their minds, they may have been thinking, “Andy’s changed,” or “that sounds so sick, love this Andy.” I’m not sure to be honest but they never put me off and they supported me all the way.
Similar to entrepreneurship, ignorance is bliss, and I never really knew what I was getting myself into. I bought my backpack, my sleeping bag, my essentials and a blank journal with a pen.
That trip was the first time I had ever documented my life on a daily basis for three months. My journey started in Peru, experiencing the Inca Trail and visiting Machu Picchu before descending to Bolivia to take panoramic pictures across the Salt Flats. From there, I trekked through the Amazon Pantanal wetlands of Brazil before slowing down on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro. I visited Chile, Argentina and Uruguay before concluding my trip and returning to the UK.
That trip represented so much self-discovery for me. I learned how to be more independent, for starters, as I had no one to rely on so I had to step up and be responsible for myself. Small things like deciding to eat healthy to looking after my goods, and staying vigilant in public places. I made friends along the way from a wide variety of backgrounds, Germans, Danish, locals in Latin America, and that taught me that we have more in common as humanity than what divides us. I also fell more in love with nature, with the planet, with preserving traditions and respecting culture. My biggest lesson was that growth occurs at the edge of my comfort zone so tracking where my curiosity leads me leads to my biggest leaps in learning.
Needless to say, I wrote on every page of that journal and ran out of pages. I sent the occasional email to my friends back home, full of excitement of all the new things I was experiencing. I just had to share it, I couldn’t keep it to myself.
That’s a small trait that has been consistent throughout my career as I create pathways to opportunities for people from all backgrounds to succeed as entrepreneurs or in careers. By looking back and connecting the dots in my journal, it helps me keep track of my inner compass, who I am and what I am continuously learning.
16 Years Later
My journaling practice has evolved. I now keep a digital journal I call “My Tracker.”
The main purpose of My Tracker is to track whether my daily behaviours map to the life I want to lead. I capture things in there such as feedback I receive after delivering a workshop, capturing a weekend run or even moments and memories from a family vacation.
It’s a regular practice I keep almost daily to slow down, reflect and capture what comes to mind. Whether that is a screenshot of a message, attaching a picture or pasting a link and writing a few thoughts.
Ok so here is where it gets geeky. Everything I capture has a Category and a Sub-Category (personalised to me).
Categories
🧘🏽♀️ Health & Fitness. Did you exercise? How did you eat? How did you sleep? Look at areas such as alcohol, smoking, posture, hydration, etc.
👨🏾💻 Work & Business. How fulfilled did you feel at work this year? If you run a business, how did it go?
🗺️ Friends & Community. Did you make new friends? How much time did you spend with your friends? Which friends had the biggest impact on your year? Did you get involved in any communities?
👨👩👧👦 Personal Life & Family. Did you spend enough time with your family? Any highlights? Do you have a partner? How did your relationships go?
🧠 Learning & Knowledge. Learning new things from books, videos, podcasts, courses and wider life
💡Ideas. Any new Ideas to add to the backlog, regardless if I act on them.
🙏🏾 Emotions & Spirituality. How did you feel today? Any particular ups and downs? Why? Did you take the time to connect with your inner self?
😶🌫️Higher Self. Your dialogue with your future self. Who you are AND are becoming
Sub-Categories
Wins. Celebrating the small victories.
Lessons: What you learned. Reframing setbacks as growth.
Actions: Things you want to follow up on or execute.
Testimonials: Any feedback you received from others.
Mid-Year & End-of-Year Reviews
Every six months, look across each category individually (for example, Health and Fitness) and capture the following:
What went well?
What did not work so well?
Based on what I learned, what next?
Number of entries in that category (good indication of whether to consolidate or delete an underutilised category)
This allows you to step back, spot patterns, and make intentional adjustments for the next season of your life.
Here is a template of My Tracker you can use for yourself :
If you do dare to take the plunge and use the tracker, don’t be rigid with it, personalise and make it work for you. From category labels to how you choose to capture things. Don’t feel like you need to honour this practice daily, but it helps to have a weekly nudge in your calendar, even if it is just 10 minutes.
The real magic occurs when you do Mid-Year and End of Year Reviews, which is where the ‘Ah-ha’ moments pop up time and time again.
I would LOVE to hear how you get on if you are quirky like me and give it a go.
Love & Light,
Andy