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Ask HN: What personal metrics do you track?

15 points by iamgabeaudick ↗ HN
I read earlier in the Piano App thread comments, that the creator tracked the exact time he spent on each part of its development. I've also kept tabs on Feltron's work, and that of other self trackers.

And I want to start quantifying myself - at least for a while.

What do you track? And what do you recommend others track, too?

5 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] thread
davidcuddeback
If you're interested in this for the sake of software development, you might be interested in the Personal Software Process (PSP). It's an attempt to turn CMMI into a process that an individual software engineer can follow, and it comes from the same people that invented CMMI (Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Software_Process

jarsj
I track number of lines of code I write every month. I use statcvs which generates nice graphs over my CVS repository.
go37pi
Kevin Kelly has a blog dedicated to "self quantification" and has a bunch of interesting resources and thoughts on the process. For example, one interesting study he did was on the efficacy of caffeine on his daily productivity. The blog is worth a look: http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/
urlwolf
only three things. I draw a line on a calendar and try not to break the line. 1- what I eat. Have I eaten at least 1 meal raw? 2- writing. Have I written for at least 2 hrs? 3- additional item. Last month it was learning colemak (done). Doing 2hrs of company promotion was another month's goal. This month, it's learning scipy well (2hr day)
iamgabeaudick
Written anything? As in a note, or an email, or whatever? Or written something thoughtful and content-heavy?

Also, for learning colemak, what exactly do you track? How much time you spent learning each day, maybe?