Seven columns, and what each one is for

The sheet is one row per day. Every column has to earn its place by changing a decision, which is a rule I arrived at the hard way and wrote up in what I stopped tracking.

Column	Format	What it decides
Lights out	Time, to five minutes	Whether the window is drifting.
Woke	Time, to five minutes	Rarely anything — it is fixed by work — but it makes the first column readable.
Last thing before bed	One word	The only column that ever explains the first one.
Walk	Yes, no, or a place name	Whether I need a route for somewhere I am staying.
Strength	Blank or a session letter	Whether the week is retrievable on Saturday.
Caffeine	Cups, and the time of the last one	Nothing on its own; it is context for the sleep columns.
Word for the day	One word	Everything I cannot put a number on. This is the column I reread.

What I deliberately do not track

• Anything a device measures for me while I sleep. I tried it and spent a fortnight arguing with a number about how rested I felt.
• Weight, daily or otherwise. Fourteen months of that was enough.
• Food, in any form. I have no way to do it honestly and no intention of finding one.
• Anything with a streak counter attached, apart from the walk, which earned it.

The monthly read

On the first Sunday of the month I read the previous month’s rows and write three or four lines at the bottom. That is where every entry on this site starts. Without the monthly read the sheet is just data entry, and I abandoned it twice in the first year for exactly that reason.

Question I ask each month	How often it produces anything
Is anything drifting in one direction?	Roughly every third month
Did anything break, and what was different that week?	Most months
Is there a column I have not looked at?	Twice a year, and something comes out