I love tracking things. It feeds my need to always be up-to-date on my progress. I feel that by knowing my status at all times, I can optimize my decisions at any moment to increase my productivity. Some may call that over-optimizing, but I believe it’s part of who I am and lets me perform at a high level while maintaining free time.
This happens on a bunch of levels, for example: In the morning, I’m tracking the train moving through the city until it reaches my stop to optimize when I should go to bed and wake up. At work I track my time and productivity to make sure I’m delivering and addressing any weaknesses. Building off of that, I track my career progress with my peers, mentors, and online communities to track my progress throughout my life. Knowing where you stand gives you clarity of thought, and clearly knowing your context lets you make quick decisions and keep moving.
Long story short, I like tracking everything and this post is about some of the tools I use to track my media consumption. While media consumption is rather unimportant, keeping it low-effort and accurate is important to make sure I moderate my consumption. It’s also useful to find trends in what I like and make sure I don’t waste my time watching sure-fails in the future. Building friendships off these lists also gets some ’efficient’ friends that happen to share your tastes. (disclaimer: you should have friends that have different tastes)
Anime
Anime goes first because it’s one of my favorite things.
I’ve recently switched platforms from MyAnimelist to AniList. MyAnimelist got bought out by a giant media corporation some years back, stopped development of their site (and actually shut down APIs causing public apps to unexpectedly break) while they figured stuff out, and only recently kicked back into gear with plenty more commercialization than before. Granted MAL started as a fan site with illegal streams, but since then I thought an anime list site with forums and basic ads would be ‘good enough’. Then the money came!
Anyway, AniList is created by the creators of AniCharts, an equally nifty website that’s been around for longer than AniList. Before AniList, sites like Kitsu/Hummingbird/Name-change-here tried to fill the void left by MAL but I always found them super heavy and a drag to use. AniList is also being picked up as a common alternative by many 3rd-party apps, which drives me to my next tool.
Taiga is awesome. It’s open-source and integrates with a couple of different anime list sites. I’ve used it for years, even back when MAL was open and supported. My favorite part about it is that it hides away the ‘slowness’ any new sites might exhibit from using modern web frontends. I can just click my updates a dozen times and the app takes care of the update on the website. Syncing behaviors are sane and the app is super-configurable. It also features integrations with many form of playing media on computers including streaming in browsers and native applications. This means you can just choose what to watch and have it auto-update in your site of choice.
TV
This is as good a time as any to switch over to TV, because the distinction between TV shows and anime barely exists while on this topic.
The big difference is I don’t have an equivalent of Taiga for TV shows, and I barely have a site to keep track of things. I’ve used Sidereel for some time, but it’s pretty slow. I probably trust the streaming sites like Netflix to keep track of new seasons for me and alert me, which I know is dangerous as their licenses go in and out.
The only real reason this section exists is to touch on my usage of Plex. For both anime and TV shows, myself and my friends manage some content and share access to each others libraries to expand our collections of old favorites and new releases. Streaming is provided (and limited) by your home internet bandwidth and there’s plenty of settings to encode content and improve the experience for different devices.
The interface is actually super slick and happens to be integrated into my TV as a first-class app. I basically have automatic downloads populating set folders, which Plex picks up and makes available to any device that connects to my library. Sunday mornings are a treat when I spin up the TV to find half-a-dozen new episodes of my favorite anime waiting for me.
Books
Books are a little better. It seems that physical media is easier to track because there’s an actual thing. The more digital something is the harder it is to hook into the suppliers.
For now, I use Goodreads. It’s important to specify ‘for now’ because Amazon owns it, so I don’t expect it will stay safe from monetization for long. I’m still a lightweight user so I think migrating would be easy, but I haven’t found a great alternative yet. Goodreads just has some stickiness because a few friends are on it, and in general the community is large.
Tracking progress digitally is possible on the site and via devices like Kindles, but I find manual tasks take up too much potential reading time. I can usually only fit in 15-25 minutes at a time while commuting, so it’s important to stay flexible and efficient. Physical books also have the great advantage of physically showing your progress.
Games
Games are almost as inconsequential as TV in this regard. Most legal games these days are coupled to fragmented ecosystems (Steam, Origin, Epic, Blizzard, etc, etc) which means any centralized attempt at tracking games usually falls short due to one of those platforms. Here, I definitely take the most organic approach and follow the news and friends to find what to play.
I do follow a few rules of thumb: Never pre-order, and almost never pay full price for a game. Large studios have pushed out a lot of junk over the last decade, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve paid a solid $60 only to discover I only received v1 of the game. I think it’s super important to judge a game on its actual launch and to never believe initial reviews, particularly from the large sites that frequently get access to games before they launch. They are incentivized to give good reviews since the industry supports their bills.
Game completion itself very subjective: Do you go for 100% or just complete the main quests? I also flip-flop between games. I’ll usually complete a Bethesda game to 100% compared to another RPG. A fun trick I have used is to use online guides as a way to track general progress. If the game has chapters (most do), you can compare the name of the chapter to the table of contents in the online (ex.). Even without chapters you can usually infer your location in the game, though be careful not to spoil something for yourself.
Music
I want to start by saying that I’m not going to be talking about my music library management which deserves a post of its own, but instead focus on physical media for this post.
I’m a vinyl guy. Again I could write a post about that, but I plan on accumulating a collection throughout my life and I need to keep track of what I have and what I want. Really, Discogs is a no-brainer and deserves its reputation. Both their website and apps are regularly updated and get faster, not slower. The marketplace is invaluable and probably the best place to buy records with a level of detail befiting any collector.
Their Android app has a barcode scanner which is great for finding new records and adding them to your collection. Admittedly tracking records can get a bit challenging when codes are re-used for different pressings, but Discogs recreates the authentic experience in their notes section where careful editors will leave notes to identify differences in pressings, usually by markings on the record or bonus goods (inserts, posters).
Finally, their wishlist is a great way to keep track of records you have your eye on, and Discogs will make sure to remind you of all the money you could be spending (configurable). Seeing price trends over time can give you the confidence to pull the trigger when that record you’ve been waiting for finally goes on sale. Not only have I snagged records at competitive prices by being first, but I’ve negotiated at record stores armed with the knowledge of what I want and what it costs.
As you can see, there’s room for improvement and I’ve definitely skewed efforts towards my two favorite topics (can you guess which?).
Do you have any tools or practices for tracking the media I struggle with? I’m always open to new suggestions and ways to save time, so drop a line below!