Media consumption logging

I like watching movies, listening to music, reading books and playing videogames. Personally, if I don’t stop and think about what I consumed, I will forget it in a heartbeat and move onto more exciting stuff.

I force myself to reflect by logging and noting what media I consume. There are several reasons as to why you would want to log your media consumption:

• Memory: By jotting down some thoughts relating to the media, you force yourself to recall the content which will allow you to remember it more easily in the future.
• Reflection: Recalling consumed media gives your brain time to think and reflect further on the material.
• Patterns: Analysing your logs allows you to find a pattern of your preferences or consumed content. This way, you can more easily determine what sort of content you enjoy, and what you should give a second chance.
• Goals: You can use the log to attain personal goals such as books read per year or for exploring new genres.
• Sharing: You can use your logs as a resource to recommend media to others.

You can also just use it to brag to your friends about your superior taste in media.

Sometimes it can feel like a chore or an intrusion, but whatever, you don’t have to put so much effort into it. You have to remember, however, that the log can be entirely private. I log the movies I watch and I rate them, but I never post a written review - at least online. I keep that for my personal notes.

How do I do it?

If you do not intend to publish your log, pen and paper or a note-taking program will do just fine. As expected, a ton of tools are available for logging every type of media consumption, and they augment your logs with the right covers, posters etc. These logging sites often have a social aspect to them too, but I always ignore it, as logging is only for my personal reflection. Here are a list of logging services I’ve used.

• Movies: Letterboxd
• Books: Goodreads
• Music: Rate Your Music
• Games: Infinite Backlog

And it goes beyond media really! Of course you know of hotel and restaurant reviews, but let me present:

• Beer: Untappd
• Wine: Vivino and Cellartracker I am not a huge wine person, so I haven’t used any of these.

I do actually use most of these, but I never stress about it. If I miss something, so be it. Another issue you may run into when logging, is your opinion changing. This happens often for me, and if I notice a log with a rating that doesn’t suit my taste, I will change it. For inspiration you can look at my most active log, my music log at Rate Your Music.

Keep in mind that these services likely have an interest in collecting the user data which you are effectively handing them, and this may be sold or leaked some day. While searching for greener pastures I found lib.reviews and open-source non-profit platform for reviewing anything, but it seems quite barebones and primarily centers around reviewing - something I’ve done very little of. Therefore, if I ever was to make my logging public outside the services presented here, it would likely be on this site.