How I track my life with Integromat, Airtable, Shortcuts and Timing (et al)

[Kutrinet]

1. THE FIRST MORNING ROUTINE

A) LIGHTS ON

I have an alarm to wake me up on weekdays about 6:50 am. I usually wake up before it, because my Philips Hue lights turn on before it. I have automated my Philips Hue lights to gradually light up 20 minutes before my official wake up time – I did this with Philips Hue app’s Routines > Wake up -time (? I use the app in Finnish, so these might not be the exact terms).

B) MORNING ROUTINE SHORTCUT

When I wake up, I take my iPhone X, say to Siri “Open” and it activates a shortcut that opens Simply NFC app. I then point a NFC tag on my bedside table and it opens a shortcut I call “MorningNight” (AamuIlta). Since it’s morning, the shortcuts opens my morning routine and does the following things:

1. Turns my bedroom lights to the brightest setting with a bluish tint (because Philips Hue app will just make them quite bright).

2. Runs a shortcut that starts Timing timer (?) called “Morning routine” and adds a note to an Airtable base called “Time management” (Ajanhallinta) that I started my Morning routine timer (and woke up).

3. Opens Oura app (for my Oura smart-ring), so that Oura app checks/updates my sleep info from the Oura ring.
   (Waits until I return to Shortcuts)

4. Opens Fitbit app so that Fitbit checks/updates my sleep info from my Fitbit Versa “activity watch”.
   (Waits until I return to Shortcuts).

5. Runs a shortcut that I have modified from a shortuct called Sleep report (can’t remember where I found it, maybe from Reddit?), gets my sleep info from Apple Health, shows it to me, asks for my Oura recovery score and adds the data to my “Time management” (Ajanhallinta) Airtable database.

6. Runs a shortcut that asks me to take my ADHD-medicine (and asks how much I take). Adds the medication info to “Time Management” Airtable base.

7. Opens Moodpath App so that I can record my mood. I’m just testing the app and will probably stop using it once my 3-month subscription runs out.

C) HRV MEASUREMENT AND MEDITATION

I just started measuring my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) after a two year hiatus, because I just started exercising regularly and feel that Oura Ring underestimates my HRV. HRV gives a good idea of how well your body is recovered from exercise/stress.

1. I measure my HRV using app called EliteHRV and my old Polar H7 heart rate monitor (strap). EliteHRV has an informative podcast about HRV and recovery as well. During the weekdays I usually measure my HRV while doing my morning meditation with Calm app.

If I first start the Calm app and then EliteHRV, then Calm meditation is paused when the measuring ends.

That’s why I first start the EliteHRV morning measurement with 2 minute heart rate stabilization period and after that start the Daily Calm (from a Pushcut notficiation that is triggered by the same shortcut that opens the EliteHRV for me).

After I’ve done the meditation and saved the daily quote photo to my photos, I return to EliteHRV and save my measurement.

I do this sequence lying on my back.

2. DAILY CALM MEDITATION

When Daily Calm meditation ends, I save the quote image that comes after the meditation by clicking “share quote” and save the image to photos.

Then I close the app and start a shortcut called “Export Meditation” (Vie Meditaatio) from a icon on the home screen. The shortcuts asks the name of the meditation and then my thoughts on the meditation. Then it gets the newest photo from my photo library (i.e. the quote photo), opens the sharing extension and tells me to export the photo with Dropshare. Dropshare comes with my Setapp subscription. When I upload the photo to Dropshare, Dropshare copies a link to the photo to the clipboard.

Then I upload all that information to my “Time management” Airtable base. The Dropshare link goes to the field “Photo link” and my “Tags” field is filled with terms “Daily Calm, Photo, OCR”.

I have a workflow in Integromat that checks every two hours my “Time management” Airtable base. If it finds a record with the word “Photo” in tags, link in “Photo link” field and and empty “Attachment” field, it gets the photo from Dropshare and uploads it to the “Attachment” field of that Airtable record. If the “Tags” field has also term “OCR” in it, it runs the photo through Google Cloud Vision, gets the OCRd text and attaches it at the end of my notes of the meditation.

I do that because it used to bother me that I couldn’t remember or find the quotes later.

Finally, the shortcut creates a new note in Day One app with the quote photo, the name of the Daily Calm and my thoughts on the meditation.

3. MENSTRUATION CYCLE AND HRV DATA

After my meditation I start a Shortcut that logs info about my menstruation cycle and HRV.

1. Shortcut opens Clue app, so that I can check what cycle day I’m on and add tags/notes there, if needed.
   (Waits until I return to Shortcuts)

2. Gets a file with the cycle day I have last logged and asks what cycle day I’m on, giving the previous day number + 1 as a default. There are days when I don’t log the menstruation day for a reason or another and I have to chance the day to 1 when my menstruation cycle begins again, but on most days the default number is correct.

3. Asks me to choose from a list the phase of my cycle: Period, before ovulation, ovulation day, after ovulation, PMS (about 5-7 days before period), I don’t know.

I have a hormonal IUD which means that I don’t get a proper period each month. And since I just turned 45 and am already in perimenopause (approaching menopause), my cycles fluctuate somewhat, so there might be days I’m not sure if I already had my ovulation or not, etc.

4. Asks for a comment about the cycle (if I have any).

5. Uploads my cycle info to Airtable “Time Management” base and sks if I want to give my HRV data.

6. If I want to give HRV DATA, asks for:

• my HRV
• heart rate
• HRV score
• RMSSD (the “raw” HRV measurement).

7. Uploads the info to my “Time management” Airtable base. I do this only after I’ve finished the meditation, so that I don’t stop the meditation flow for too long time.

8. BLOOD PRESSURE

About once or twice a week I measure my blood pressure with Withings Blood Pressure Wifi monitor while sitting in bed and upload the info with a simple Shortcut to Airtable “Time Management” base.

My ADHD medication could raise my blood pressure, but since it’s always low and rarely chances that much, I take the blood pressure mainly “because I can”.

[Kutrinet]

2. THE SECOND MORNING ROUTINE

What happens after this depends on how much time I have before I have to wake up my kids. But lets imagine that I woke up 6:30 when the lights turned on in my room.

A) BATHROOM, SCALE, WATER

At this point I get out of bed and go to bathroom (well, toilet, really). I have there another NFC tag that I read with my iPhone X. This runs a “Toilet” shortcut that offers me a list of options: Pee, Poo, “Bidé shower” (?), Teeth brushing.

Yes, I track my pee/poo because I want to see how my bathroom activity is linked to my weight. I’m in the process of getting back to my normal weight after gaining 6 kg (about 11 pounds) in two years, due to too little physical activity and aging.

Whatever I do is tracked again to Airtable base “Time Management” (which I accidentally call in some posts below “Time Tracking” base – the literal translation of “Ajanhallinta” is time management though).

I take a glass of water with me and go back to upstairs to my bedroom. I step on my Withings WIFI-scale, then read NFC tag on my dresser and get a list of options related to bedroom, including “Weight”.

I press that and open a Shortcut that first opens the Withings Health Mate app, so that it gets my weight info from the scale (while Shortcuts app waits me to return back to it).

When I return to Shortcuts, it gets my newly measured weight from Apple Health app, asks for a comment (like why I think the weight is in that morning what it is) and then uploads the information to “Time Management” Airtable base.

Then I drink the water and get back to bed.

B) MORNING PAGES IN REMARKABLE

I sit in my bed, having a bright light lamp (and the Philips Hue lights on blue-tinted bright setting) in front of me and write my toughts – basically a stream of consciousness – to my ReMarkable “paper tablet” device. I name the notebook as “PKyyyymmdd” – so for instance today my note was called PK20200118. PK comes from the word “PäiväKirja” – literally “Day Book” aka Diary.

I usually write about 3–5 pages, depending of the amount of thoughts I have and how much time I have. This technique comes from Julia Cameron’s book The Artists Way.

I save the diary but don’t yet export it, because I will write more to it in the evening.

C) FEELINGS

At some point after I wake up and before I go to wake up my kids, I run my “feelings” Shortcut, that asks me four things:

1. Feeling (from 1-5 where 1 means I feel somehow horrible and 5 means I feel in some way amazing)

2. Focus (from 1-5 where 1 means I can’t focus on anything and 5 means I feel I can have a laser-like focus)

3. Energy (from 1-5 where 5 is the most energy I can have)

4. To choose emotions from a long list of words I have grouped/sorted by the quality of emotion that makes sense to me).

5. Comment/thoughts related on my feelings at that moment.

This information is first send to my “Time Management” base at Airtable and then as a new note to Day One app.

D) MORNING PLAN

Next I run a shortcut called “Morning Plan”. Usually I do this after I’ve taken my kids to preschool/school, but if I still have time before having to wake up my kids, I do it right before I go to wake them up.

This Shortcut first asks for following things (in Finnish, the following translations are just rough translations):

1. “Today I want to feel…”
2. “The best thing that could happen today is…”

Then it gets a json-file where I record once a week/month my monthly and weekly goals/themes, shows me what those were and asks:

3. “I’m going to advance [these goals] by…”
4. “ToDos I remember right now…”
5. “Today’s most important goal is…”
6. “What can prevent me from reaching the goal is…”
7. “I’ll ovecome that obstacle by…”
8. “I’ll overcome that obstacle beause…”

Then the Shortcut shows me a text where it has all my answers written as full sentences (like: “Today I want to feel peace and harmony”) and asks if the text is OK.

I often dictate the answers, so if there are some spelling mistakes or such, I have a chance to fix them. Plus I feel that it is useful to read through the whole plan.

Then the Shortcut saves my answers as a json dictionary-file named with the date (today was 2020-01-18.json) to a “Plan”-folder at iCloud, sends the todos to Things app, the whole thing to “Time Management” Airtable base and creates a new note to Day One app with the full text.

E) WAKING UP MY KIDS

I wake up my kids by going into their room that has had its light turned on by Philip Hue about 20 minutes before they have to wake up. I turn on a bluetooth speaker and scan a NFC tag on the desk (again by telling Siri to “open” so that it opens the NFC reader app).

The NFC tag starts a Shortcut that recognizes that it is morning, makes the light in the room as bright as possible and starts a “Kids’ morning” playlist, that has their favorite songs. The music helps especially my preschooler to wake up and get up in a better mood.

[Kutrinet]

NOTES ABOUT MY MORNING ROUTINE (and tracking in general)

It took me about the 90 minutes to write down my morning routine – over a double the time it takes me to go through my actual morning routine.

There are several main reasons for me to track so many things:

1. By tracking I feel like I “catch” or “keep” certain elements of my life like I would catch a fish or keep a trophy. Otherwise, I feel like my life somehow just vanishes.

2. I like going back and looking at my old tracking results. I have tracked on and off my life since 2002 when I created my first FileMaker Pro database to track myself. At first I tracked my eating and exercise habits, weight and body measurements, then also sleep, menstrual cycle and yes, even poop. I just went back to look at my old EliteHRV measurements from 2015-2018 and remembered how stressed I really was in the spring of 2015, for instance.

3. Tracking helps me stay on task/track and get more things done. Like I wrote in the first message to this thread, having one database where everything goes, helps me to remember at the end of the day/week/month what I’ve done, thought, listened etc. On those days when I don’t track what I do, I get much less done than on those days I track.

4. Tracking helps me come aware of certain patterns and if necessary, change them. I didn’t track my eating habits and paid a little attention to my physical activity during the two years I gained weight. I thought that the weight gain was mainly hormonal – I am approaching my menopause after all.

It wasn’t until I started tracking my eating and paying attention to my energy expenditure (recorded by Oura ring and Fitbit Versa), that I realized that the main culprit for my weight gain was the drop in activity. This inactivity was caused by a couple of things, including a screenwriting project that kept me sitting by the laptop more than before that.

The good news was that my eating habits were still quite good, except that I got too little fiber, which gave me problems with pooping. So now I pay attention to my fiber intake and also poop.

5. Looking at my records gives me pleasure: I have a feeling I imagine some people get when they look at their collection of shoes, cards, books (or whatever people collect).

I have to go to do my evening routine so I will have to leave the rest of the story to another day, sorry. I hope you got some new ideas from these Shortcuts etc. already.

[Kutrinet]

During the day I use several ways to track what I do. Here are the basic triggers for various automations:

1. NFC tags that prompt different shortcuts.
2. Shortcuts Automation that runs different shortcuts if I open a certain app or if it is a certain time of the day.
3. Integromat App’s automatic export of locations I leave/arrive, calendar events I add to my calendar and contacts I add to my iOS contacts.
4. Timing + Integromat + Pushcut notification that asks every 30 minutes if I’m still doing what I said I was doing or to start a new Timing timer if I have none running.
5. Shortcuts on my home screen.
6. Location based Pushcut notifications.
7. Pushcut notifications triggered by previous shortcut or Integromat.

In the next messages I’ll share some examples of each category.

[Kutrinet]

OVERCAST EPISODE I’M CURRENTLY LISTENING TO AIRTABLE

I changed my iPad’s language to English so that I could share some of my favorite shortcuts with you.

Here’s one shortcut I spent a lot of time figuring out and that I’m quite proud of now that it works.

Whenever I open the Overcast app, Shortcuts Automation runs this shortcut that gets the share Url with the name of the Podcast and the Podcast episode as well as the location of the podcast I’m when I opened the app.

It then adds some tags etc. and sends the information to my Airtable Time Tracking base.

I get a Notification when I open the app:

Here’s the end result in my Airtable Time Tracking (Ajanhallinta) base:

This way I can see what time of day I’ve been listening to podcasts, as well as what I was listening.

I have another shortcut that allows me add comments – it is based on this shortcut, but also asks my comment. I run it manually.

This shortcut works only with public podcasts. I have a shortcut for the premium/private feed podcasts that I try to remember run manually at least once when I listen to them. In order it to work I have to copy the full contents of the podcast description to the clipboard and then run the “Export Premium Podcast” shortcut, that parses the same information to the Airtable as this shortcut does.

[Kutrinet]

NFC TAGS

I have several NFC tags around my home, one in my car, one in my key ring and two kind of necklaces.

They act as visual reminders to log actions and remove the need to remember dozens of Siri commands.

All I have to do is to say to Siri “open” (Avaa) or press “open” shortcut on the first home screen of my iPhone.

That command runs a shortcut that opens the “Simply NFC” app in the reading mode on my iPhone X. If I had iPhone 11, I could skip this step.

Here are some of the NFC tags I use.

1. In my car the left tag starts a shortcut called “car” (Auto), which presents me with menu of places I usually drive & “other” option. I’ll choose from the menu the right option and the shortcuts starts a new Timing timer and logs my departure to my “Time tracking” Airtable base. The right one runs a shortcut called “I came home” which starts a new Timing timer with the same name and logs my arrival to the Time tracking Airtable database.

2. Outside my bedroom I have three tags. The top one says “morning”, but actually turns on the day lighting scenario in my room. The middle one says evening and turns on the evening lighting and the bottom one says “turn off” and turns off the lights. It wasn’t until later that I realized I could just have one tag and a shortcut that would use “if”-step to determine what to do. Oh well.

3. Here’s the tag in the main toilet that prompts me with options to log my pee/poop, start brushing my teeth with a timer and log the teeth brushing, the use of bidét shower (the one you use to wash your crotch when you sit on the toilet) and cleaning of the bathroom. All this info will be logged to “Time tracking” Airtable base.

4. This tag is hidden under the shelf where I keep my day medication and supplements. It presents me with menu to log my ADHD-medication, my supplement or both. For medication it asks how much medicine I’ll take and for the supplements it presents me with a list where my morning supplements are on the top and the evening supplements are at the bottom. The supplements that I take both morning and evening are in the middle. Supplements are logged as comma-separated list to my Time tracking Airtable base.

In this photo are the following tags:

1. and 2. are my “necklace” NFC tags (2. is from the backside of the fox my kid made). They both trigger “Routine” shortcut that presents me with a menu to run the most common shortcuts I would run and which are not triggered by other NFC-tags. The fox-version I use when I go to meeting etc, but since it’s not super sturdy, I use the other one at home. I don’t use that in meetings because I don’t want to explain people why I have a tag like that hanging around my neck.

2. The NFC tag triggers the Car-shortcut in case I travel in someone else’s car or use public transportation.

3. Here’s the tag by my bed that starts in the morning my morning routine and in the evening turns off lights, stops Timing timer (if one is running) and logs to Time Tracking that I have started to sleep.

4. The NFC tag on the side of my kid’s desk starts in the morning the kids’ morning routine and in the evening the kids’ evening routine (I’ll write about these when I’ll tell you more about my evening routines).

5. The NFC tag in the hallway closet starts a shortcut with menu regarding the animals - which animals I fed or if I cleaned the cat’s litter box. It logs the result to the Time tracking Airtable base.

6. The NFC tag by the front door runs a shortcut with a menu that has options related to front door - logging walking the dog, arrival to home, turning on or of lights, if my kids just went out or came in and if I let the dog out or in. This information (except turning the lights off/on) is logged to Time tracking Airtable base. Some options start a new Timing timer.

7. The NFC tag on the fridge is the kind of NFC tag one can stick to metal. It triggers a shortcut with menu that offers an option to log food (more about that later), add items to shopping list, start timers to eat/feed the kids or spouse or cook or log to Time Tracking database that I put groceries away (after being to grocery store).

8. This NFC tag by my favorite chair starts a Timing timer called “Waisting time” and logs that info to my Time Tracking base as well.

—

I have also a couple of other NFC tags that offer menus to run different shortcuts, most of which log some kind of activity related to that space and in some cases start a relevant Timing timer.

I have ordered all my tags from seritag.com and program them with NFC Tools app.

[Kutrinet]

HOW I TRACK FOOD

I tracked for years the food I ate with a FileMaker Pro database I created back in 2002. In 2015 I switched to MyFitnessPal and used it on and off until last fall, when I got frustrated that I couldn’t really use shortcuts with it.

I did some research and eventually ended up switching to Yazio, a German based service. As an European I prefer the European companies who have to follow GDPR-law. They have been also quick to reply my questions and other requests and have been updating and improving their app several times during these few months I’ve been using it.

They seem to be popular amond Finnish people, since I can find almost all the Finnish food products I can think of. You can also create your on foods, meals and recipes and add at least foods (maybe even meals and recipes?) to favorites.

They have also an interesting section for healthy recipes, but I haven’t had energy to test those recipes yet.

I don’t mind at all for paying the products I like and use, so I paid for the yearly subscription.

In addition to adding the foods I’ve eaten straight from the app, I have created a shortcut that consists of “choose from menu” and “run shortcut” steps.

Yazio allows you to add your favorite foods as (Siri) shortcuts. The way it is done isn’t the most elegant there is, but it works.

Here are some screencaptures from the app and my “Add Food” shortcut to give you an idea how it works.

See the “add to Siri” -button:

Shortcuts created by pressing the “add to Siri” -button:

My “choose from menu” -based shortcut to add quickly foods and meals I eat almost every day. If I log that I drink black tea with milk (Musta tee maidolla), the shortcut also logs the caffeine amount to Apple Health.

The image below shows how it looks “behind the scenes” for that shortcut. The shortcuts in English are from my iPad and the one in Finnish (with Apple Health) is from my iPhone.

At the moment you can link Yazio to only one other service. I have chosen to link it with Fitbit instead of Apple Health, because that’s the main way I track my physical activity and because I use Integromat to get all my info from Fitbit API to Airtable anyway.

Yazio sends all the foods and their calorie, carbs, fat and protein content to Fitbit. I have asked them to send the fiber content as well and they replied on Friday that they will do so as soon as they can. Their explanation was that when they first set up the API link to Fitbit, Fitbit didn’t track fiber.

I get all my Fitbit data – including the foods and nutritional information Yazio has sent to Fitbit – once a day from Fitbit using Integromat + Fitbit API.

This information is then sent to two Airtable bases:

1. “Time Tracking” Airtable base receives my total calories, carbs, fat and protein.

2. “Eaten Foods” (syödyt ruoat) table at my “Tracking” (seuranta) Airtable base gets all the foods recorded to Yazio/Fitbit.

Here’s how my setup to get the Foods from Fitbit with Intergromat looks like:

Here’s a look at the list at the Eaten Foods table in Airtable:

(In another batch Integromat copies the total calories etc. to the “Daily Summary” Table at the Tracking base, but I’ll tell you more about that in another message.)

To set up Fitbit API with Integromat you have to login to dev.fitbit.com with your Fitbit login info and create an app that you’ll then access from Fitbit. Here are some screen captures to give you an idea how you might be able to do it (I don’t have energy and brain power to write a full guide about that).

All the other information is your personal information (I put my own website to links). Only this part is relevant for making the API work:

And here’s what you have to have at the Integromat side to make it work:

[Jjm]

Very interesting stuff!!! I need to get a new iPhone so I can use NFC tags. I have an iPhone 6s Plus still so they won’t work.

[Kutrinet]

Yes! I switched from IPhone 6S to IPhone X after I listened the Automators episode about NFC tags. I always buy used phones and paid only 500 € (about 550-600 $?) for a model with 256 GB storage. And you’d probably get IPhone 7 for much less.

[Kutrinet]

HOW I TRACK MY EXERCISE

I track my exercise with Fitbit Versa “fitness watch”. It doesn’t share its data with Apple Health and the exercise categories don’t match, so I came up with a workaround.

When I start exercising, I run “Exercise” (Treeni) shortcut, which:

1. Asks what kind of exercise I’m about to do.
2. Starts a new timer at Timing app.
3. Logs to my “Time management” (Ajanhallinta) base that I’m starting exercise.
4. Reminds me to start exercise in Fitbit.
5. Sends a Pushcut notification that says “End Exercise” (Lopeta Treeni) to wait for me to stop the exercise.

When I stop the exercise, I first end the exercise at the Fitbit and then click the “End Exercise” notficiation Pushcut sent me earlier (because it’s easier for me to find it from notifications than anywhere else).

This runs a shortcut called “End Exercise” (Lopeta treeni), that:

1. Runs a shortcut that stops the Timing timer/tracker that was running and asks how I’m feeling (the same shortcut I run in mornings – how good/focused/energized I feel, what feelings I experience and a comment about my feelings/mood).

2. Shows a Pushcut notification “Export Exercise” (Vie treeni) and opens Fitbit app on my phone, so that I can update the exercise info from my Fitbit Versa to the app and Fitbit cloud.

When Fitbit Versa has updated my exercise info, I click that Pushcut notification “Export Exercise” and it starts a scenario in Integromat.com.

Here’s the whole scenario in Integromat:

The Integromat scenario is triggered by Pushcut. Then it queries Fitbit API for the last exercise. Then it finds the record ID for that day’s Daily Summary record (to be added to exercise record to link it to Daily Summary table). If the exercise was Walking, it takes the “lower route”, if it was something else it takes the upper route that doesn’t deal with kilometers. (I don’t run, bike or swim.)

The rest of the steps are written on this image:

When the Intergromat scenario has saved my exercise info to Dropbox as json-file, it triggers a Pushcut notification on my phone (and iPad) that tells me that I can now export the details to Apple Health. I tap on the notification and start “Exercise to Apple Health” (Treeni Apple Healthiin) shortcut.

In the pictures the ones with English are from my iPad that doesn’t have Apple Health app, so there’s one screen capture in Finnish from my iPhone to show you what kind of things I log to Apple Health.

Since Apple Health has different health categories than Fitbit, the shortcut asks me to choose a new name for the Exercise.

So here’s how my exercise info looks like in Airtable. Notice how the exercise info is appended with my comments (Kommentti) and feeling/focus/energy rating from “Feeling” Shortcut. Those are also logged to “Fiilikset” table where I have all my Feeling-records.

[sliemeobn]

this is some seriously cool automation you have there! thank you for taking the time to sharing this.

I feel inspired already

[Kutrinet]

HOW I LOG MY RECEIPTS

I’ve been practicing logging my personal purchases for about a year now. I’m not still at a point where I would log all my purchases, but I do log most of the purchases I do in stores. The idea is that at some point I would have detailed log of all my finances and would then make better choices and be better at budgeting. Until then this practice helps me become more aware of my buying habits.

I have three Shortcuts for logging my expensis:

1. “Export receipt” (vie kuitti) that starts by scanning the receipt. I just changed the Shortcut to use the scan-function from Toolbox Pro (yes, I have the paid version). Below you’ll find the screencaptures of that shortcut.
2. “Export a finished receipt” is a variation of this shortcut and works with photos of receipts I’ve saved to photo library (for instance from my bank’s app).
3. “Export just an expense” lets me just log an expense without a receipt.

When I go to the grocery stores I use the most, Pushcut sends me a notification that opens the “Export Receipt” shortcut if I tap it. I have a NFC tag on my wallet that triggers a menu with all the three expense logging options and my Routines shortcut has also a submenu for the expense logging options. The easier I’ve made it for myself to run the shortcut, the more likely I’m to actually use it.

All this info is logged to my “Time Tracking” Airtable.

[Kutrinet]

And I haven’t even shared yet all the other ways I use Pushcut to either notify me of what Integromat does or to trigger other Shortcuts.

[Kutrinet]

USING INTEGROMAT IOS APP TO LOG THINGS

I really like Integromat’s iOS app that has solved a long time problem I’ve struggled with – namely having ability to log my “moves” during the day to a database without me having to do anything.

I have set up in the app dozens of locations I most often visit – and other random places are covered by larger “city” areas.

I have set up a scenario at Integromat-website that filters the entry/exit information sent by my phone and then logs to my “Time Tracking” database either “I arrived to [Circle name]” or "I left from [Circle name].

At first some of the updates did “hang up” in the app, stopping the queue until I deleted the one update. Since the recent updates the app has worked without a hitch.

Here’s how the filters work:

The app also sends a message to Integromat website anytime I create a new event in particular calendar(s). A scenario at the website then creates two logs for that event – one on the day/time I created the event to let me know that “I created the following event” and one on the day/time when the event actually is, so that I don’t have to log it in that day. Or if I end up canceling or not going to the event, I’m reminded that “this was the day the event was supposed to take place”.

I don’t meet that many new people, but I have the app log any new contacts I create to my “Time Tracking” database as well, just to remind me when I added that contact to the database.

I could send all the photos I take to Integromat as well, but don’t see a point doing that. I don’t use Apple’s reminders app, so that function isn’t in active use either.

[Kutrinet]

SHORTCUTS AUTOMATION BASED TRACKING/LOGGING

1. When I open either Messages, Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger, I get a notification that asks if I want to log with whom and why I am messaging. If the messaging (and the day it took place) is worth noting, I tap the message and run a shortcut that presents me with a list of most common people/groups I message. The list includes “other” option. If I choose that, I get to input the name of the person. Then the shortcut asks the topic/content of the message and creates a log in Airtable that includes the name of the messaging app I used.

2. Whenever I open the phone “app”, I get a notification that asks if I want to log the phone call. If I click the notification, I run a shortcut that is basically a copy of the messages-shortcut. I usually log just the most important calls.

3. Whenever I want to limit my social media use, I turn on a shortcut that lets me use Twitter/Facebook for 90 seconds after I open the app(s) and then presents me with the current day view of Things (todo) app.

4. Like I mentioned in my description of the Overcast app shortcut, whenever I open Overcast it logs the podcast I’m currently listening.

5. Whenever I open Audible app I get a notification that asks me if I want to log the book I’m listening or my progress. To share the book I have to use Audible’s "Share my Progress -function and a “Audible book info” shortcut from the share sheet. That creates a json-dictionary-file with books information parsed. If I have already exported the book I’m listening, the shortcut gets the json-dictionary-file for the book and asks me manually give the chapter and the location I’m at. It’s better than nothing but not as handy as Overcast’s sharing function.

[Kutrinet]

MY EVENING ROUTINE

Getting kids to bed

When I take my kids (10 and almost 7) to their bedroom, I open the Simply NFC app with my “Open” shortcut and read the NFC tag on the side of my kid’s table.

This starts the shortcut sequence (pictured below) that:

1. Figures out that it is evening (the otherwise step).
2. Turns off the lights in their room.
3. Starts playing “The kids’ evening” (lasten ilta) playlist.
4. Runs the “Put the kids to bed” (Nukutan lapsia) shortcut that starts a new Timing timer and logs to Airtable that I’m now starting to put the kids to bed.
5. Runs “Stroke kids” (Silitä lapsia) Pushcut notification.

I recently changed my evening routine to help me avoid all kinds of temptations like watching Netflix/HBO or social media in the evening. “Stroke kids” Pushcut reminds me of what I’m supposed to do in the evening. Notification’s title says “Stroke kids” and in the message area are the next steps after that.

The first thing I need to do is to stroke my kids a few minutes to raise their oxytocin levels and help them relax and sleep better (I’m into biohacking) – and of course make them feel loved.

Once I’m done with that, I tap the notification and get a new Pushcut notification that reminds me to export the photos of the day and do my evening check-up.

Export Day’s photos (Vie päivän kuvat)

When I tap the newest Pushcut notification, I start the “Export Day’s photos” shortcut, that shows me all the photos from that day. I choose the photos I want to remember from that day and then give a short description to each of them. First the shortcut shows me the photos one at the time, so that I remember what photo I’m going to comment on, then I add my comment and some tags.

Since Apple uses now heic-format and Airtable doesn’t do good job reading that format, the shortcut converts the photos to jpg. The photos are logged in my Time Management Airtable base with the time that they were taken – another way to help me remember what I did when during the day.

Meme-photos that I save to photos don’t usually have creation time/date attached to them, so the shortcut gives them time/date for Airtable.

After the shortcut has exported all the photos to Airtable, it creates a Day One post with the photos and the descriptions.

Finally, the shortcut asks if I want to do my evening review.

Evening review

Evening review (iltakatsaus) shortcut first gets the json-dictionary I saved in the morning when I did my “Morning plan”. It then reminds me what I planned and asks me to comment on the plans – did I feel what I wanted to feel, did I get my most important thing done etc. If I didn’t do the morning plan, I still get to answer the questions.

Once I’m done reviewing my morning plans, the shortcut asks me to rate my date on 1-5 scale (5 is best) on following dimensions:

1. Overall score for the day (Päivän arvosana)
2. Meaning(fulness) (Merkityksellisyys)
3. Clarity (Selkeys)
4. Productivity/Effectiveness (Tuloksellisuus)

I got this dimensions from a book one of my friends, Maaretta Tukiainen, has written (in Finnish).

Then the shortcut asks me more questions:

1. What I could learn from this day?
2. What I’m proud of or satisfied with?
3. What have I been grateful for today?
4. What was most fun today?

Then the shortcut saves my answers as a json file to Dropbox, logs them to Airtable “Time Management” base and creates a new Day One note.

After that Pushcut reminds me of the last steps of the day:

1. Brush my teeth, take my supplements and do my skincare routine.
2. Write to ReMarkable tablet my “evening pages” in the same file I wrote my “morning pages” in the morning (and have the tablet OCR my handwriting and send the result to a special email address, so that Integromat can log it to Airtable and I can copy it later to Day One).

Since I often spend some time with my spouse between those last two steps and don’t really need reminding of them (since they’ve been the same for a longer time), I don’t need any more notifications to remind me what to do.

When I’m done for the day, I open the NFC reader for the last time and read the same NFC tag I read in the morning. Now the same shortcut figures out that it is evening, turns off the lights, sets my phone on “Do not disturb” -mode, stops the Timing timers (if one is still running) and logs to “Time Mangement” that I’ll start to sleep.

While I’m sleeping, Integromat does a lot of housekeeping, but I will write about those routines some other day, because it’s my time to go to sleep now.

[Kutrinet]

HOW INTEGROMAT AUTOMATES MY LIFE

I’ve shared in the previous messages various ways Integromat is part of my various workflows.

It does also several automations “behind the scenes”.

Automatic updates to “Time Management” base

Here are some of the automations Integromat runs without my involvement and logs the information to my “Time management” Airtable base (where I collect all the actions I do over the day). Here are the actions it currently logs:

1. Official Facebook-page updates
2. My Instagram updates
3. Personal Facebook profile updates
4. My Tweets
5. When I check in Trakt.tv that I’m watching a TV Show/Movie
6. Uploads to my YouTube video channel,
7. When I email from my ReMarkable-tablet a diary (morning/evening pages) to a certain email address as a OCRd text

I have several other similar scenario-ideas I’m going to create in the near future, but unfortunately, I have my work and kids, home, spouse and animals to take care of.

Tracking base and Day Reports

I have at the moment several Scenarios that log information from “Time Management” (Ajanhallinta) database and external sources to my “Tracking” (Seuranta) Airtable base. This base has several Tables, including:

• Day Reports (Päiväraportit)
• Feelings (Fiilikset)
• Exercise (Treenit)
• Medication (Lääke)
• Toilet (Vessa)
• Events (Tapahtumat)
• Social media updates (Somepäivitykset)
• Symptoms (Oireet)
• Supplements (Lisäravinteet)
• Receipts (Kuitit)
• Podcasts (Podcastit)
• Audiobooks (Äänikirjat)
• Foods I’ve eaten (Syödyt ruoat)

From these the Day Reports is the main table – the others are mostly there to allow me to perform lookup-functions (like how many mgs of medication I took or how many times I pooped per day).

In Day Reports I have just one record per day and this record contains all the data I’ve collected during the day, summarized if needed.

At some point I’m going to create/design a PDF-report with Page Designer block with my Daily summary data, so that I could even make a book of all the data I track (where one page is one day).

Here are Scenarios Integromat runs to update the Day report at the Tracking base once a day:

1. Creates a new record to Day Reports right after midnight.
2. Gets the morning and evening weather from Dark Sky and adds them to Day Reports (I have separate fields for morning and evening temperature etc.)
3. Gets Oura ring activity reports and logs them to Day Reports
4. Gets Oura ring sleep and recovery reports and logs them to Day Reports.
5. Gets Fitbit’s daily summary information and logs it to Day Reports.
6. Gets all the Podcast and Audiobook updates from Time Tracking base and adds them to Podcasts/Audiobook tables.

I have also a Integromat scenario, that copies all the relevant information from Time Management base and creates new records with it in the following Tables at the Tracking base:

• Toilet
• Supplements
• Medication
• Feelings
• Symptoms (like headache, menstrual bleeding, Delayed onset muscle soreness, stomachache)
• Social Media updates

That scenario also updates the following information to the Daily Report table:

• Menstruation cycle (cycle day, cycle phase, morning temperature)
• My comment on sleep
• Heart Rate Variability (HRV) data (by EliteHRV).

Finally, I have a scenario that copies the following logs/records from Time Management (Ajanhallinta) to “Events” (Tapahtumat) Table at the Tracking base (Seuranta) – thus creating a log of things I’ve actively done, thought, experienced:

• Action I’ve logged to Timing timer/Time Management base over the day (like “working on a project x” or “taking my kids to school” or "Housework).
• Departures/Arrivals
• “Done” logs/records from Time Management base (like “emptied dishwasher”, “made my bed”, “let the dog out/in”) that are single actions and not tracked with Timing app.
• Thoughts/Observations/Ideas/Tips etc. I’ve logged to Time Management base (to remember them later) with a simple shortcut.
• Photos I’ve added to the Time Management database while running the “Export Day’s photos” shortcut during the evening routine.
• Comments I’ve written about Audiobooks.
• Daily Calm meditations (and my comments about the meditations)
• Feeling comments (without the grades/scores I give to feeling/focus/energy).
• Morning/evening pages (diary) from ReMarkable (as OCRd text).

Here’s how one of my two update-scenarios looks like:

First, it queries the Day Report database for the record ID of the day report I want to update (= the previous day’s report). Then it queries the Time Management database for all that day’s records. Finally, it filters the records and either creates new records in relevant tables or updates the Day Report table (in the Tracking database).

[Kutrinet]

FINAL THOUGHTS ON TRACKING AND MY SYSTEM

Above I’ve described the main principles and steps of my tracking process. There are several minor steps I didn’t go into detail (like how I track random thoughts).

The Time Management base (which I accidentally call Time Tracking database in some of the previous posts) is my daily log where I dump everything. I often use it during the day or the next day to remember what I’ve done, where I was at a certain moment, what did I promise or think, what was the name of the podcast I just listened etc.

I start a new Time Management (Ajanhallinta) base every year (basically just duplicate/clone the base, rename the old base and empty the new base).

Tracking (Seuranta) base is meant for long term use and for comparing different days/weeks/months. The individual tables make it easier to look at the trends as well.

This system is constantly evolving. In the past three days I began measuring my morning body temperature, just because I found the thermometer and found a good spot in my morning routine to take the temperature.

My goal is to remove all the friction from the tracking process and make tracking so easy and intuitive, that I can do it almost without thinking.

My tracking habit has evolved over time. I have weighted myself daily since 2002. I have logged my food on and off since 2002 – sometimes years at the time. I’ve written morning pages on and off for several years – probably since 2005 or so. And before that I used to write “regular diary” ever since I was a kid. I’ve tracked my activity and sleep with Fitbit since 2013 and Oura since 2018. I first tracked what I do and think in 2018 for almost a year. I’ve meditated almost daily for over a year.

I don’t try to start tracking multiple new things at once. I don’t expect to track everything every day. I trust that if tracking something (like purchases) is as easy as possible and feels relevant, I will start doing it more consistently over time. The act of tracking – and being aware/mindful what I’m doing – is the beef here.

Having logs/records to go back to and compare is just bonus.

Questions, comments?

I’m curious to hear your thoughts. What did you get from this? What do you want to try out? Do you want to know more details about some aspect I just mentioned?

[Nicole]

As a fellow ADHD data and tracking lover, you are my idol. Thanks so much for taking the time to document all of this.

[Kutrinet]

Well, you know how hard it is NOT to do something when you’re excited about it (like share your tracking system you’re so pumped about and no one around you understands with people who “get it”).