Life Data, Part 2

James Robinson • April 5, 2025

Tracking Life's Data, Part 2: Extremist Edition

I've written about my process for collecting and analyzing internal Life Data through time tracking-- but the next step is a bit extremist.


In today’s entry, I’ll share another step from my personal annual review process– which is a very inefficient task– but valuable nonetheless.


First, I create a stack of data, from one of my daily practices, doing Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages.


Every morning I wake up, feed the cats, turn the coffee on, then I write three pages in my journal. That’s it. I just get whatever is in my head and soul out onto the page.


I don’t re-read. I just close the book, then engage in my other practices– which are prayer, reading the bible, then some form of exercise.


However, four years ago I started to re-read the entries, document them in a spreadsheet, and look for trends, moods and tones . It's a new year's tradition at this point, completed during the last week of December.


It’s a long process because I fill 4 notebooks. Each of the notebooks contains 251 pages . I prefer the LEUCHTTURM 1917 notebooks because there’s a space for a table of contents, lines and page numbers, which makes documentation easy.


The Process


To do my Year In Review, I re-read, do a qualitative analysis of the tone, topics and my calendar, then I enter the findings in a spreadsheet. The categories I document are date, page number, theme (if there is one), a learning and I assign it a positive, neutral or negative for mood value.

Here’s an example from Book 1, 2022:



Book 1, 2022


January was tough that year. My stepfather, who raised me and with whom I had a difficult relationship with, was diagnosed with cancer. And my daughter was away at college, in an emergency room, with COVID and possible blood clots. There’s a lot of sadness and anxiety in these entries. I had my first blood clot in my calf earlier that year, so I was scared for my oldest kid.


2 weeks later, on page 197 , I documented other insights. Dad died. We were near him. In fact, I was on a zoom call with a funder on the minute of his last breath. Seeing my father ill , I started smoking again and craved being an underdog, to start over at something, to try something new.


2 months later, in Book 2, I found what was spiking joy– writing short stories and studying the craft. I also began to see creativity as a daily practice and started thinking about leaving my job. Perhaps the contemplation of mortality, based on the death of Dad, made me start contemplating other career and life choices.


And then later in May:



May 2022, Book 2


From the entry on page 158, I learned that Rachmaninoff brings me joy, as does the writer Lydia Davis, and I was grateful for participating in The Creatives Workshop by Akimbo and Seth Godin. Seeing my daughter graduate and reading a friend’s writing also struck joy.  However, on page 161, there were negative themes around work-- which I'll share at some point. As a result, a few weeks later I made the decision and left.


So why is this process important?


For me, it allows me to be more conscious in my decision making. I have good qualitative data as evidence for what brings me joy, what my challenges are. As a result, I gain more discernment.


In knowing this, I now know how to better spend my time, what challenges are worth engaging in and what challenges need to be avoided, just because it may be a waste of time and energy or the challenges don’t align to my 2026 goals.



As part of my coaching package, From Dark to Diamond, I help other introverted men to develop similar systems for collecting life-data in order help them make conscious choices instead of reactionary ones. If you want to learn more, email me at james@miningandshining.com or visit the miningandshinig.com website.

Remember, the first excavation call is free and I guarantee some insight.


Precious Metal Notes

Venturing into the Courage Gap, #1

By James Robinson • February 21, 2026
context In an earlier post, I wrote about the need for a self-inflicted sabbatical from educational leadership in 2024. The time-off allowed me to step back, read, study, think, and create at a level I've not known in years. Although we went without my salary for six-months, the data reflects it was also the most stress-free time in recent years-- likely driven by the walks, meditation, prayer and just leveling myself to a position of just learning again. The openness matters. During that time, I created a series of talks, titled The Courage Gap: Another gap in education that a consultant can't close. Originally, they were called "Career-Suicide Notebooks", the reason being my plan was to walk away from education all together. Instead, what I learned will inform my work for years. I've heard it said that Buddhist monks can see the world in a grain of rice. After being immersed in education for several years, I see the world in a school ecosystem. Often, schools enter my creative work and the way I think about creativity enters my work in schools. The first video is called 33% and it looks at the proficiency scores of 4th grade students on the NAEP Assessment. Additionally, it looks at the broad economy that works to maintain the status quo. It's a very performative video, very low-brow-- but it sets the context for the rest of the talks. Moreover, many of the issues can be extrapolated across sectors.

Lettuce Entertain You: Why Fluency Matters

By James Robinson • February 21, 2026
Lettuce Entertain You “Lettuce entertain you” is a classic line from an old reading assessment passage. When kids read it aloud, assessors listened for more than just smooth delivery—they hoped for laughter, or at least a chuckle, as a sign the pun landed. Too often, though, the reading was fluent but flat. No chuckle meant the joke flew right over their heads; students weren't picking up on the playful language. In one district, coaches and a principal were so eager for better results that they printed t-shirts featuring “Lettuce entertain you” with a cartoon head of lettuce. The goal? Prime students to spot the pun. It backfired into a perfect illustration of two broader lessons that apply far beyond reading: Fluency goes beyond word-calling and prosody—it's also about the fluency of ideas, vocabulary, and real understanding. Outcomes aren't a competition; chasing short-term wins can undermine genuine mastery. Fluency In reading instruction, we often emphasize how smoothly words flow from a student's mouth—rate, accuracy, expression. But we under-discuss the clearest marker of comprehension: real-time emotional responses. A laugh at a pun, a gasp at a twist, or a puzzled frown when something doesn't add up—these are the tells that a reader is truly processing and connecting with the text. Genre knowledge matters too. In a mystery or whodunit, fluent readers adjust tone for foreshadowing or suspense. True fluency integrates decoding, word knowledge, genre conventions, and quick comprehension. This isn't unique to reading. Fluency of ideas—the ability to recall and apply mounds of knowledge fluidly, under pressure, with little time to look things up—is a universal hallmark of expertise. A doctor in the ER doesn't have minutes to Google symptoms; they need instant recall of anatomy, pharmacology, differentials, and protocols to make life-saving calls. That's fluency in medical knowledge. A chef in a busy kitchen doesn't pause to consult recipes mid-service; they fluidly combine ingredients, techniques, flavors, and timing to plate perfect dishes under the heat of the line. That's fluency in culinary craft. An artist doesn't deliberate over every brushstroke in isolation; in flow state, they draw on a deep reservoir of techniques, composition principles, color theory, and intuition to create without hesitation. That's fluency in creative expression. States have experimented with measuring aspects of this in reading. Tennessee came close around 2020 with a foundational literacy fluency component on the TCAP ELA assessment (especially in Grade 2). It was a simple yet powerful timed task: students read short, grade-level statements and quickly marked YES or NO to indicate if each was true. In a minute or so, it gauged decoding speed, basic vocabulary, and instant comprehension—exposing gaps that many elementary programs overlook . See the snippet below: