About

I'm Matt. I built rcordr because I'd spent years tracking my own performance and slowly realised that the tracking wasn't doing what I thought it was.

I'd kept spreadsheets going back more than a decade, across most of the things I cared about. Weight, sleep, training, revenue, reading, time spent on work that actually mattered. I was diligent. The data accumulated. None of it changed what I did.

The problem, when I eventually saw it, was that I was measuring without a structured way to act on what I was measuring. Tracking on its own is just record-keeping. It tells you what happened. It doesn't tell you whether what happened was the right thing, or what you should change.

I'd tried the apps too. Exist was the closest thing I found to what I wanted, and I rated it, but it was still missing the part I cared about most: the deliberate connection between a measure and the objective it was supposed to serve, and a structured review that closed the loop between the two.

So I built rcordr around the system I'd ended up using for myself. Objectives with measurable outcomes. A plan made of actions and habits. Lead indicators that show whether the plan is working before the result confirms it. And a weekly review that holds the whole thing honest.

The blog is where I think out loud about goal tracking, measurement, and the gap between effort and outcome that most tracking tools don't help you close.

Background

I've spent the last six years as a CTO, and longer in technology leadership roles before that, mostly in regulated environments like financial services and fintech. I've been writing software for about twenty-five years. I've helped get other people's startups off the ground, built my own, and grown engineering teams from zero to over a hundred people. These days I'm more interested in small, high-performing teams than in scale for its own sake.

rcordr is a side project, built alongside other work I do through Sidewrks. It's based in the UK.