Date-night fitness challenge automation
My wife and I wanted a fun way to stay accountable with our fitness goals, so I built a shared challenge that turns Garmin activity data into a weekly scoreboard, a date-night fund, and a small amount of competitive pressure.
The rules are simple. Each week, the person with the fewest Garmin intensity minutes contributes $50 to the date-night fund. Zone 5 training minutes count double, so harder training gets extra credit. Each person is also expected to complete two weight-training sessions per week, and missing one adds another $25 penalty. After four weeks, the winner chooses the date night and can delegate the planning and organizing to the other person.
That structure made the challenge playful instead of purely punitive. The “penalty” still goes toward something shared, and the four-week cycle gives the challenge a clear finish line before it starts again.
The system only works if the tracking does not become a chore, so I automated the boring parts. Scripts pull activity data from Garmin, sync it into Google Sheets, backfill historical activity, calculate weekly standings, apply the contribution rules, and send a daily email showing who is ahead, who is behind, and what needs to happen before the week ends.
Google Sheets became the visible scoreboard and rule engine. It keeps the calculations transparent enough that the challenge does not feel like a black box, while the automation removes the need to manually copy workouts, compare activity minutes, or remember to send updates.
The daily email is a key part of the design. It makes the challenge visible without requiring either of us to open a dashboard every day. That small reporting loop keeps the system present in normal life and makes it easier to adjust before the end of the week.
This is a personal project, but the pattern is transferable: define the behaviour you want, make the rules visible, automate the tedious parts, and turn feedback into something people actually pay attention to. In this case, the result is a fitness challenge that supports consistency, competition, and date nights without creating another manual tracking task.
Structured knowledge systems: Notion + Obsidian
I built a personal knowledge and fitness organization system using Notion and Obsidian to make health, training, and body-mechanics information easier to capture, structure, and reuse.
The goal was not just to take notes. I wanted a system where useful information could be found again, updated over time, and connected to future decisions. Notion became the structured database side of the workflow, while Obsidian became the long-term knowledge base for health, anatomy, movement, recovery, supplements, and body-mechanics notes.
The original trigger was a fitness challenge that provided an exercise schedule, but I wanted more than a simple list of workouts. I wanted to track weights and reps, reuse exercises in future routines, attach notes, add links and videos, and build a system that could evolve as my understanding improved.
Static notes were not enough. As I learned more about fitness, movement, posture, recovery, and the body, information would get scattered, repeated, or forgotten. It was difficult to turn what I had learned into something useful later.
In Notion, I created a structured fitness database system with separate areas for workouts and exercises. The exercise library acts as the stable reference layer, where each exercise can hold notes, links, videos, technique cues, and future updates. Workout routines can then reference those exercises without duplicating information.
This makes the system more useful than a simple spreadsheet or static program. A workout item can link back to a reusable exercise page, and that exercise page can continue to improve over time as I learn more.
In Obsidian, I use a separate health knowledge base for connected notes about the body, movement, recovery, supplements, and related concepts. Obsidian is better suited for cross-linking ideas, adding references, and building a web of knowledge where one topic can connect naturally to another.
The two systems serve different roles. Notion handles structured fitness tracking, exercise databases, workout scheduling, weights, reps, notes, links, and reusable exercise records. Obsidian handles long-term health knowledge, body-mechanics notes, linked references, concepts, and learning that benefits from cross-linking.
This project reflects how I approach information-heavy problems. I do not want useful knowledge to disappear into scattered notes or one-off conversations. I want it captured in a place where it can be retrieved, improved, and applied later.
The same mindset applies well beyond personal fitness. Engineering and project work often involve technical decisions, assumptions, lessons learned, stakeholder input, constraints, and repeated problem-solving. Information only has lasting value if it can be found and reused when it matters.
This system is personal in application, but professional in mindset: identify the friction, design a structure, separate reference information from action tracking, and build a workflow that improves over time.
