# Build your metadata library
source: https://ift.tt/xICYSLb tags: #literature #northstar #projects #productivity uid: 202301291444 —
Tracking these activities has served as a helpful reference for when a friend asks me what I’ve read lately or for a good recipe. Everything is in one place. I was also surprised to learn that I made 96 new recipes last year, a number I wouldn’t have known, or even been able to guess, had I not tracked.
I want to do this - tracking the projects I’m working on and the hobbies I’m working on as a means to reward myself for doing them. This is absolutely something I want to prioritize this year.
Over the years, I tried to make tracking frictionless and rewarding. Each costs me seconds of my time or is fully automated:
This is my dream! I tried to do this with blogging, but it wasn’t frictionless enough. I definitely want to use this website as a reference for triggering these automations for myself. In fact, I could do this with the articles I read! And exporting my highlights #todo
I have found this iOS shortcut to GitHub issue pipeline to be ideal for data that doesn’t have an API, for when I want to pull data from many sources, and for activities I complete on or near my phone. I also like to avoid added logins. For example, while Goodreads is a known service to track books, it’s more than I want.
My private data repository builds a public site. I mentioned earlier that I tried to make the process of tracking rewarding — this site is it. Like checking something off a checklist, I have found a sense of accomplishment that makes me want to continue, to do more, to read more, to try a new recipe.
I think this would be me too. I’m glad I recognized this. Currently, I have a bunch of different source for tracking information - my own script for Things 3, Pinboard for articles, Goodreads for books, other random scripts for my personal notes, Fitbod for workouts, etc, but nothing that’s centralized. I tried out exist.io earlier because I was very intrigued by the centralization of it, but turns out it just didn’t work for me.