What I stopped tracking, and why each column came out

The sheet had nineteen columns at its worst. It has seven now. Removing twelve of them improved the sheet more than adding any of them ever did, and this is the entry I would point someone at if they only read one.

Column	Lasted	Why it went
Weight, daily	14 months	The daily number is mostly noise and I reacted to it anyway.
Mood, 1–10	7 months	The scale drifted. A 6 in March was not a 6 in September.
Steps	2 years	Duplicated the walk column and produced no decision I did not already make.
Water, glasses	3 months	I never once looked at it after writing it down.
Screen time, minutes	5 months	The number was accurate and useless; the one-word bedtime note replaced it.
Resting heart rate	9 months	Interesting, but nothing I did changed anything I could see over a year.
Stretching, yes/no	4 months	A habit I did not actually want, tracked to feel virtuous about intending it.
Meals cooked	6 months	Collapsed into the shopping habit, which is the thing that actually decides it.

The test I ended up using

A column stays if, in the last three months, I can point to a specific decision it changed. Not a feeling, a decision. Four of the twelve failed that test outright and another four failed it once I was honest about the word “specific”.

Tracking has a cost that is easy to miss because it is paid in small pieces. Nineteen columns took about four minutes an evening, which is fine, and about a minute of low-grade unease each time I skipped one, which was not.

The one I regret removing

Resting heart rate, slightly. It was the only column that was measured rather than reported, and now that everything on the sheet is my own account of my own behaviour, I have no external check on any of it. If I add anything back it will be that.

The one I will never add back

Mood on a numeric scale. Two full seasons of data that I cannot compare across months because the scale in my head moved. The one-word note I use now — a single word for the day — is far less tidy and far more readable a year later.

Not advice

Nothing here is a recommendation about what anyone else should measure, and none of it is medical.