My Life Tracking Setup using Exist.io
It's been a while since I documented my life tracking or 'quantified self' setup. It's changed quite a lot so here is a run down of how, what, and why I track various data points of my day to day life.
Data
I collect data using the following services and devices:
Apple Health is the most important part of my automated data collection. My watch counts steps, tracks sleep, heart rate and more. I have an aging Withings Scale that somehow still works; this sends weight data into Apple Health. I also use LoseIt to track my diet which records into Apple Health.
I use Toggl to track time spent gaming, reading, driving and board gaming.
Last.FM tracks the music I listen to but the lack of an offical YouTube music intergration means I might drop this soon as the data is spotty and I don't think that Last FM has long left to live anyways.
These data points feed into Exist.io^. This combines, correlates and creates useful dashboards out of this data. I tag days I work in an office, and it tells me what impacts that has on my day. It's neat, and I've been a paying customer since 2017. If it sounds like something you'd like to try then use my referral link to get an extra month free. (I get a $2 credit)
Exist
Whilst I only use a handful of integrations offered by Exist.io^ there are so many more including Google Health (for android users!). Fitbit, Todoist, Stava, Trakt, Github. If you consider the free API (so easy even I managed to figure it out) then the possibilities are nearly endless. Over the years I have connected Monzo and updated the 'money spent' attribute, I wrote an Apple Shortcut to update Pages Read (these days I prefer time read as it is format agnostic. Manga pages are much quicker to read) and more. You could integrate Home Assistant and log the amount of times your door opened if you wanted to.
Exist.io^ has loads of 'attributes' ready to go. The official integrations work with these. You can also create custom attributes which is what I have done for time spent driving/reading/gaming/board gaming. In the app, you can also create attributes you can updata manually. An example of this is my 'coffee counter' as I am working on cutting down on caffeine intake over the next few months.
Once Exist.io^ has been happily munching on your data for a while it will start generating insights based on everything you've submitted.
I can see I have a better day when I am off work (obvious! but still good to see in black and white) and that my mood increases when I bother to get out of the house. I am fundamentally lazy so seeing this spelled out has and will continue to motivate me to get out of the house (when it's not raining!). I noticed that if I read before bed consistently I logged better sleep and so this helps in forming positive habits.
Time Tracking Setup
Toggl is used as the source of truth for time tracking. On iOS I use 'Timery' as it lets me make fancy widgets that start a timer for a specific book or game as I also like to record that data for later review.
The data from Toggl/Timery can be used within their respective apps to generate reports, but I need to take it a step further. Using the APIs for Toggl and Exist, I take the summary data for each project for today convert this into minutes and submit it to Exist if the time value is higher than the last value (to avoid redundant API calls to exist updating data that hasn't changed)
The python code is pretty basic as I am not a very good programmer and I am not ready to release it publically but drop me a note via email or mastodon and I'll send over a copy. Be warned....
'Time Spent Driving' is automated using Shortcuts. When my phone connects to Carplay, it triggers a Timery automation that starts the driving timer. When Carplay disconnects, the opposite happens. The only time this fails is when I have no signal. For those cases I also text myself a timestamp for when both actions happen to allow me to manually create a time entry if needed. I will create a blog post about this automation at some point but you shouldn't have any drama figuring it out.
'Time Gaming' is updating manually using Toggl/Timery on Mobile for Switch, 3DS, Xbox and other retro platforms. On PC, I use Playnite scripts to do the work for me which I wrote about previously
At the end of the year Exist will be able to produce overall numbers (I spent XXX hours gaming) and Toggl will be able to tell me many hours I spent playing Gamepass games, versus Switch games (which is handy to know if it is worthwhile renewing my Gamepass subscription in October 2025)
Get an extra month free
Sign up to Exist.io using my referral link to get an extra month free on top of your first month free (I get a $2 credit)