media logging for freaks

warning: this one is extremely boring and neeky! read at your own risk!!!

do you have 100 shows you want to watch, but keep forgetting about? do you want to read every book ever, yet haven't touched one for months? this is a common problem. the primary reason, in my experience, is that you doomscroll too much. but that's its own special problem. the secondary reason might be that you are just unorganized! and this was me, but i have fixed this!!! so i'm going to try and help you fix it too!!

see, there are a billion sites and apps and ways of tracking what you watch. there's a reason that goodreads, letterboxd, my anime list and backloggery exist. but unless you're a huge movie buff or bookworm, i rarely see people who consistently use their accounts. so what are the reasons for this?

1. these apps/sites/methods are limited to the media format. if you want to categorize everything, you have to jump between tabs and have separate accounts for each, which is a hassle.
2. simultaneously too customizable and not customizable enough. there are several ways to organize what you do, but most likely the one you want isn't available, so you have to compromise. on the other side of the spectrum, all those other customizable options can be slightly overwhelming. it's discouraging.

these small inconveniences lead you to neglect tracking these shows, which lets you forget what you want to watch/read/listen to. it's not the worst problem to have, but it's definitely annoying, right?

okay, so here's the solution: a spreadsheet. and i know that sounds bad... but it's super easy. way easier to manage than you think. at first i started out small, with just "name" and "notes" columns. but i expanded it so i could record extra info, and made it as customizable as i liked.

i made a template if you cba to create it yourself. you can view and download it from here. here are some of the "fun" features included that you might not get from just any old media cataloguing app:

• "status" and "media" columns that contain dropdowns so you can easily pick without typos, and have all different types of media in one place. these are customizable too, so if there's some kind of media not already here (podcasts? youtube videos too? that's a little overkill even for me, but you can!) or status you frequently have that i haven't listed, you can add it super easily!
• a "priority" column that's colour coded on a scale of 0-100 on how important you think it is. you can right click the column header and pick "order from a-z" or "order from z-a" to list by priority.
• a few date columns. i know google spreadsheets has an inbuilt date format but it pisses me off so i made it (supposedly) easier to use by separating it by year, month and day. though it is more of a hassle to list entries chronologically this way (having to click "order from a-z" on three columns in the specific order) but if you know you watched something in february, for example, you can list the month column from a-z and search that way without having to scroll through irrelevant years.
• "notes", "link" and "author" columns. this way, you can organize media by author! remember what you liked/disliked about it! and go back to the exact point you were reading from, if you copied the link to the sheet first!
• obviously, you can add other columns that i haven't included, such as a rating system, or delete ones that don't apply to you. my point is, this way of cataloguing gives you the most possible control.

i know that this is probably way too much to bother with for some people. but i also know that there's a select minority who would really like something like this and maybe it just hasn't occured to them yet, because that used to be me! so i hope this is useful for someone.

thank you for reading,

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ callalillie ˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆