Here I am, writing from a coffee shop while trying to complete my 2023 personal annual retrospective, in April! I don't know what happened this year, but I kept postponing it.

I've been doing this kind of retrospective since 2020. As I was going through it, I realized that I am slowly becoming more data-driven thanks to completing one of these every year.

Running my own personal retrospective makes me think more consciously about the things I want to improve during the year and how I can effectively track my progress in each of them.

With each attempt, I continue to narrow down the essential metrics for improving different aspects of my life. In 2024, my main focus is health. However, how can I determine if I am successfully enhancing my overall health?

"A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought – they must be earned." - Naval Ravikant

Metabolic health

My long term goal is to build a strong and healthy body that enables me to actively play sports and enjoy outdoor activities with people.

In terms of measuring my overall health, I started focusing on what is called metabolic health.

Clinically speaking, metabolic health is defined by optimal levels of five markers:

• Blood sugar levels
• Triglycerides
• High-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol
• Blood pressure
• Waist circumference

I consider these metrics more as lagging indicators that show whether I am doing things right or not. They are harder to track so I plan to monitor them once a year during my annual health checkup.

However, there are also other metrics that can provide more immediate insights into potential improvements in my metabolic health. These metrics are what I think of leading indicators, and they include some usual suspects:

• Weight
• BMI
• Fat percentage
• Amount of sleep I get

My 4 key health metrics

This year, I decided to track and set targets in the following metrics.

Weight

My goal is to maintain my body weight around 80 kg while reducing my body fat percentage. How? By focusing on building more muscle. Muscle is health!

Muscle is more dense than fat, which means that if you've increased your activity levels but aren't losing weight, it may be due to the fact that you're adding lean muscle mass—a positive trend for your health in the long run.

To achieve this, I am working on expanding my knowledge about nutrition and being mindful of my daily food choices. However, I don't intend to go as far as meticulously measuring every meal I consume. Instead, I believe that relying on common sense and minimizing the amount of processed foods I eat are the crucial factors here.

Body fat percentage

My goal here is to build more muscle by changing my training routine from strength training to functional training. I have been going to the gym for years but I always felt that my training routine was not very effective.

• Strength training builds muscle strength through isolated exercises
• Functional training improves overall movement and performance in daily activities by targeting multiple muscle groups and enhancing coordination.

My goal is to reach 16% body fat. Let's see if I can make it happen...

Average steps

I spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of a computer. It's important for me to keep track of my daily activity levels. Movement is health! My target is to achieve an average of 9500 steps per day, both on a monthly and yearly basis.

To stay active throughout the day, I have been using a standing desk for several years. It allows me to switch between sitting and standing positions, encouraging movement during work. Additionally, I make it a point to leave the house daily and engage in extended walks at least once per week.

Average sleep

The last metric is focusing on recovery. It's possible to be on top of all the metrics we've discussed, but without giving my body enough time to recover, I won't see any meaningful progress.

For me, this means striving for an average of seven and a half hours of sleep each night. Instead of focusing on the quality of sleep, I simply track the amount. This is because most sleep trackers currently available aren't very accurate at identifying the various sleep stages.

Keeping tracking simple

Okay, I have my 4 key metrics, but what about tracking them? I need to design a system that is not very cumbersome and reduce the data capturing friction.

• Weight: This is the easy one. I track it at least once a month at home using a scale.
• Body fat percentage: I track it once a quarter using a special machine at the gym.
• Average steps and sleeps: My Pixel Watch 2 and Fitbit allow me to continuously track this with a decent amount of accuracy.

I quickly capture and consolidate all the data within the Fitbit mobile app. I can use their API to export the data and do my own data analysis with it if needed.

Departing thoughts

As I continue on this journey of being more data-driven, I need to keep an eye on what is signal and what is noise. I do this by carefully selecting the metrics I believe will help me stay motivated to constantly improve while still being effective and align with my long term goals.

How about you? Do you also have a few key metrics to keep yourself healthy that go beyond just keeping an eye on your weight? Share it with us in the comments.

Let me depart sharing one of my favourite motivational quotes about health.

A healthy body is where you have to start everything in life. If you can't build a healthy and strong body, what CAN you build in life? - Darius Foroux