Wow... I wonder how much time does logging of all those tasks take time? I'm not sure if I could do it since I'm switching among tasks all of the time. Manual logging of activities does take some time but I guess it it more precise than application that comes with some fitness wristband.
He said it takes one minute total, per day, using his app. Previously 10 minutes.
Just to share my experience, the time spent recording data often feels like it's worth it; there's a tangible reward that's more obvious after a while. At first it had novelty value but years later I recognize it as a distinct value separate from novelty. The act of recording by itself has a noticeable impact and anchors a feeling of self-control. (I use a sloppy tag-and-gather method though, not an app, which seems like it could be really fun to create)
I use a text file where entries have a start timestamp, end timestamp, and a description. I have a macro to automatically enter the timestamps. It takes about 5 seconds to make an entry and about 4 minutes if I'm doing all the entries at once.
I've recently began to take life tracking semi-seriously and mostly use "off the shelf" tools. A good all-around dashboard is https://exist.io/, capable of pulling data from multiple sources like RescueTime and various health-monitoring applications that come with smart watches.
Author here! I had searched around but didn't find any existing app that matched my requirements. A few that immediately come to mind:
1. I have sole ownership of the data
2. The data is stored in an easily parsable format (TSV)
3. Duplicating a recent activity takes one tap
4. Pie and area charts are displayed in the app
My app is open source and available on GitHub[1] for any Android developer to compile for themselves, but if there's enough interest I can also get around to packaging it up for the Play Store/F-Droid/etc.
Don’t think I have the dedication to track things similarly, but love the data. I use a Whoop fitness band to track sleep, vitals, exercise, and enjoy seeing all the data. Would be cool go log more than health, but that’d require some extra effort… :-)
To make this fast and easy, I developed the syntax described in this essay. It turned out to work pretty nicely. I have logged over 14,000 entries over the last 2 years.
Well, as they say: The issue with statistics is that you can never be sure :)
As I am not aware of any existing software to analyze causalities in such an irregular log, I started writing my own this year.
It is an interesting challenge. The approach I currently take is a visual one: I draw a chart on which every notch on the x-axis is a 24-hour interval. And two lines on it. One is the line where I did not do something (say take Vitamin D3) and the other line is where I did do it.
The y-axis is the probability of an effect (say having a headache) in that time interval.
The center of the graph is the 24-hour interval after the treatment. Then the 24-48 hour interval, then the 48-72 hour interval etc. And left to the center is the 24 hour interval before the treatment. Then the 24-48 hour interval etc.
So it would be a "perfect" graph if the two lines look very much the same before the treatment and very much different after the treatment.
Some treatment/effect pairs look promising, but so far, I don't have a result clear enough that I feel confident enough to publish it.
This looks similar to how I believe Nomie logs data behind the scenes. But it looks for keywords on the line and transforms them into data e.g. "Today I #walked(4)" gets coded in JSON as { walked: 4}.
> What you see is some of the daily data I’ve collected during the last 7 years of my life (2,498 days between 01/03/2014 and 01/01/2021) charted as basically as possible in order to allow global readings and comparisons. (A nice method is just to scroll up and down with the mouse cursor pointing to the time of interest.) I update it every January. I started to log some topics later on, and there is a period where I did not log mood for some technical reasons in mid-2015. I have a lot more data on medical issues, food, people, and daily activities, which I chose not to show here.
I did the same, but with a far less complex system. It's a markdown file synced using iCloud, where input happens using Apple Shortcut. Works quite well. Screenshots here [1].
I’ve done something like this in the past with a spreadsheet, but I recently fell out of the habit because of the overhead of taking a few minutes at the end of a long day and opening the spreadsheet up on my laptop. I’d like some kind of cross-platform life logging app that is equally usable for longform entries when I have full access to a good keyboard and quick notes when I just have a phone and a few seconds of time. Some kind of highly customizable rich schema support (long text entries + basic biometrics like self-reported sleep) would be ideal. Any suggestions?
I also looked up recently and realized it had been ten years of doing something similar. It’s fun to see what we did differently. Your daily activity data is amazing
I ended up moving towards the mental side, to see if I could measure aspects of flourishing and wellbeing, and more recently to see if any core attitudes about the world are changing over time.
If you’re interested, check it out for comparison:
Thanks for sharing - your story reads like a movie script! I'm lucky enough to not be worried about my health (yet) but maybe I should start tracking variables other than bodyweight. I'll definitely be coming back to your post for more inspiration.
It seems designed for people who want to bill their time, but works just as well for people who want to track 24/7. It takes some patience for a week to get into it, but now it's second nature.
While reviewing the data at the end of the week is useful, I've found the greatest benefit is requiring myself to choose how to spend my time. Getting distracted (e.g. browsing Hacker News!) requires the mental step of stating "Now I'm going to distract myself".
Not quite the same thing as the article talks about, but I’ve been semi-regularly journaling and note-taking for many years using various systems, ranging from Microsoft Word, to plain text files, to Tap Log, to OneNote, to Day One, to homemade CLI apps. Some semi-structured data like the article describes, mostly unstructured text.
Earlier in the year I discovered Joplin and I’ve stuck with it, enjoying its balance of structure and unstructure. If it had the instant-data-entry-into-CSV feature of Tap Log it would be perfect, but nevertheless I decided having one journal / personal data repository was better than having several, and set about importing all my entries from my previous system. I now have many, many thousands of entries spanning over nearly 25 years, and I’m happy to report that Joplin is coping well.
I tried to like Joplin, but it keeps annoying me that the files are not just plain md files server side, it's just a big mess. For that reason I use (for my admittedly much more spare usage) the build-in md editor and files from NextCloud.
It's a bit of a reach tbh. "jopa" (жопа) would be a crude way to say "ass". Then some schoolyard nicknames would sometimes have a suffix -lin or -in (-лин,-ин) as general creative addition to create nickname.
Unless I'm clueless about of some slang usage, or grandparent refered to some other Slavic language (not russian), "Joplin" (жоплин) doesn't mean anything directly.
- it's embarrassing to talk about your sex life, and maybe especially gaps in it, online?
- it's naturally private and people value their privacy, particularly online?
- people are so taboo about it that they don't even want to record it for their future self?
- it just gets lumped in with "sleep"?
- it doesn't take up a significant enough amount of time?
They also don't mention time spent pooping and peeing. Doesn't mean it's taboo. Might just not be useful information to track, unless you're trying to have children or to check how your sex life was affected after already having children.
Love and relationships and as part of those sex are such an integral part of life. It seems odd it's such a taboo in tech to discuss, or in this case measure it as part of a life log.
It simply isn't true that love, relationships, and sex are an integral part of life. It's true for many people, but definitely not for everyone. Lots of people are single. Many are celibate (for whatever reason).
I don't think there's a taboo regarding sex and relationships in tech. People can discuss whatever they want. OP is free to choose whether to log (or share) their sex data.
It would create a lot of awkward interactions for any of their ex's who see the data after it's published, or their family.
Easier to avoid it at least in the public copy. Though I'd argue even tracking it personally might cause issues if your new SO saw it and started to compare to past partners. Best to just leave it out entirely.
If the OP did have sex during this time, I expect it is filled under "people". It would be interesting to track, though. In particular, how much life is dedicated to the pursuit of sex vs actually having sex. I know that my time spent actually having sex has decreased from probably an hour per day to an hour per week. Not sure about time spent in pursuit of sex, though.
I wonder if this kind of logging follows the law of diminishing returns. The most of the value comes from the actual process of writing down what you have been doing and having an overview of the past days and weeks, but the stats of what you did, let's say, two months ago, don't add much value. So, the actual value of logging is in the discipline of taking the time and logging. Which means that, people, who would most benefit from this, will never be able to do it -- they lack the dedication.
I think the act of paying attention to your behaviour is the value. That can come from writing it down yourself. But if someone else writes it down and then you review it say Sunday night, then I think the value is there.
Awareness is important but I feel this kind of self-logging goes really too far in terms of efforts vs results.
Some people might feel that they are not in control of their life even after a month of logging. Some that they should optimize every minute of their life for "productivity".
I suspect doing some introspection with help from a psychologist could be much more effective for both types.
I had a list from every year from 1952, which I seem to have lost.
Anyways: First experienced memory on that list was when I realized winter was reoccurring thing in spring of 1955. I was sitting on a sleigh on water-covered skating field and imagined I was a boat. I then suddenly remembered that this has happened before, but very long time go, maybe half a life-time ago.
Wow, that's quite a long time. Why did you begin? Are you remorseful you can't find your lists? Did you transition to electronic formats as technology progressed?
Yes I had this list already in 1960's. Because of it I could still remember every year in 1976 when I had a computer in personal use. The list was still around on the first MSDOS-machine 1983, but I cant figure out where it might be hidden in various zipped DOS-directories. It might be even in some handy database format, but unreadable now.
A video camera 1984 solved the remembering problem totally. I know exactly what happened thereafter.
Anyways various archives seem to be more and more important with age, as human physical memory is only 7 years long. Thereafter there are only memories of memories, which often get twisted in the weirdest of ways.
Now I realized where the list is. It in HP100LX calendar/diary-format somewhere. Most of the wacky diaries of 1990 where written as notes in the calendar, but I printed them out in txt-files and dumped them into Internets. This is the prime example of this format: http://timonoko.github.io/bellabel.html which is almost readable after Google translate.
"Dream of an apartment separated from opera restaurant by a glass wall only" is the first good one..
That's the average. Some brain cells don't churn as fast (or maybe at all?). The memory-of-a-memory thing isn't on a 7 year scale either, but does happen. I don't remember the exact science, but I do remember the metaphor I came up with (evidence in my favor!).
Remembering something is like pulling a note out of a cabinet. It gets saved from the back, where the papers tend do degrade. Then, it gets put at the front. The trick is, the original note isn't put at the front. A copy is made. So remembering tends to reinforce, but also can change during this lossy copying process.
Jeez it was just a light-hearted comment. I think you can address your doubts about what I wrote with more kindness and less snark.
> None of them "churn".
By churn I mean "lose and hopefully be replaced". That definitely happens. Some brain cells die and are replaced, some live your whole life (or die first)[0].
The cabinet is just a simile for cued recall[1]. More recently learned/recalled items are remembered better (front of the cabinet)[2]. Recalling memories in a different context can change them[3], suggesting recall isn't a "read only" operation.
I've been doing a "3-positives about your life" every night for almost 4 years. I get up to 5 emails a night if I don't respond in time, then my response gets stored. I thought I could correlate them with major events in my life but the values were between -1, 0 and 1. I don't know if it even makes sense and sometimes I didn't take it seriously. Still it's cool it has been running for so long.
Anyway I didn't get really any insight from it so... idk if it's a waste of time or what. I still use writing a lot for personal thoughts/state management.
I was using Mailgun for the emailing/API and Raspi/Python/Apache/MariaDB for my stack.
I am aware using third party my stuff is passing through them, it's not super detailed just positive/negative sentiment with abstract context.
Yeah I'm not sure, I think it's natural to have ups and downs. But for me personally there's always something worrying me. I don't know if once I escape being poor "for good" eg. have money invested/don't have to work. If I will lose this constant anxiety.
I still struggle with the whole "altruism" thing like I help people but I also in the back of my mind have this feeling of "mine". "I'd be further in life if I was an asshole" etc...
I think productivity is also subjective... if you setup businesses/have passive income/don't have to work. If you don't do anything are you not productive? Anyway I know what productivity means for me (getting things done) but that's because I can't stop yet. Not that I want to stop but yeah. It's like I don't want to wake up/sleep 9-5 but I need to because I have a job.
I'm sorry, it sounded like you were averse to studying happiness because it would remove the ups and downs. I don't know what you wanted to say if not that.
haha, my soundtrack in life is the Lego song "Everything is awesome"
idk, this whole 'studying happiness' sounds like you're trying to trick yourself to be happy, but that's an ignorant take without looking for myself.
I know can really get down in the weeds, hierarchy of needs, Buddhism, philosophy, etc...
I think that as a sentient/alive being, your mind will always be on/running. And actually having problems like being broke distracts you from the fact that time counts down and you exist regardless of what you do. Mainly to stay alive and avoid pain.
Even if you have money and didn't have to work/have freedom, how long till you're bored. Anyway I have plenty of reasons to be happy you know like I have family in a third world country with parasites, barely have access to water, here I am paid to write code, running water, hot shower everyday, etc... I used to stack biscuits into a box for a job and hated myself, I changed it.
Life is not so bad (but it can be better, Wonder woman meme).
I spent much of my life without money, and I was altogether fairly satisfied and curious. I would often wonder, will I feel the same forms of loneliness, inadequacy, aimlessness, when I have money, as I do now without it?
Yes, I have.
Emotions are their own realm, and the time you spend observing and reflecting on them, as we are doing in this thread, is valuable.
> I can make everyday plans with greater precision, knowing exactly how many minutes I’ll need to shower or drive or buy groceries or do laundry or water the plants.
I used to think like this, I tracked how fast different routes took to work to optimize and decide. I optimized where I put what during laundry to make it less bothersome, and so on. But do you need 10 years of this? For me, after doing it a couple of times I basically got it.
A shower, I don't need to track it to know I can do it between 2-15 minutes. Or less, if I REALLY need to get going.
I've also built my apps, and used pre-built ones. But each time I've stopped, I haven't really missed it.
Counting in my head works too. When I aim to finish after 120 seconds (2 minutes) I'll wind up taking 300 seconds (5 minutes), but that's better than taking three times that long.
Right, you certainly don't need to track yourself for 10 years to figure out how long a shower takes!
A rough analogy: you can figure out from your HP bar how much damage you take from each hit, and it's probably worth doing so if you're going to be fighting these same baddies forever and have no other way of knowing, but the HP bar also serves other important purposes related to resource management: it gives you a sense of how you're doing overall, and it constantly reminds you that HP management is even worth caring about.
I'm fascinated by inter-personal differences in sleep patterns. Could you dive more deeply into what you learned about your sleep habits? For example:
1. How did you defined it - horizontal/unconscious/etc
2. Whether there are any 'outcome variables' it seems to cause
3. Whether your needs changed by age, or exercise level, or previous sleep duration (ie 'sleep debt')
Thanks for doing this! I always find them fascinating
1. For tracking purposes, I assume that I fall asleep immediately after putting my phone down. That's generally true enough, although sometimes I do find myself still lying awake and having to add a "Not sleeping" entry before putting my phone down again (for hopefully the last time of the night)! After my alarm goes off or as soon as I'm otherwise conscious enough to do anything, I mark "Sleep" as over.
2. It's not surprising that lack of sleep can get you feeling down. But since starting to track myself, I've been more conscious of the fact that whenever I'm feeling down, it's almost always after a night or two of bad sleep! I now take sleep a lot more seriously and ask myself first whether I've been sleeping well whenever I'm feeling down (as opposed to blaming other people, etc). This is especially important since I tend to ignore what my body tries to tell me.
3. The 7.5 hour average has remained roughly constant month over month for the entire decade. It's hard to say how much of an effect that other variables like exercise have since I always aim for 7-8 hours regardless. I do notice that if I get like 4 hours one night, I'll end up sleeping more than usual for the next night or two.
I see that you released it (thanks!), any idea why it starts to install, the progress bar goes to end and then it shows message that the app was not installed? Without bothering you too much with logs and stuff, if it's even available somewhere for not yet installed apps. Android 10 on Galaxy S9+.
Would you define yourself as being anywhere on the autism spectrum?
Sorry for the very personal question. You certainly don’t owe me an answer. I just find it fascinating how some people care a lot about tracking their lives and others (like me) do not. I’m curious how it relates to personality types.
Hmm I've always been hesitant to self-diagnose stuff like that, partly because it feels like potentially trivializing others' experiences.
I basically see myself as a garden variety introvert. I suppose that in an informal sense, I might be further along the spectrum than the median person off the street, but then again I suspect the same is true of many other software engineers - especially HN readers.
Without going quite to the extreme of the author, a good place to start understanding your habits is to use something like Xero to consolidate all your personal credit cards and bank accounts.
Not only does this give you a good idea of what you did each day, but it’s extremely beneficial for both budgeting and tax purposes.
The base plan for $10/mo does this. You can use Microsoft Todo to set the habit of consolidating every morning with your coffee.
I spent around $1200 on alcohol in the 2 year Melbourne lockdown, around $2000 on coffee, and a whopping $40 on entertainment venues (indoor sports, movies, tickets, etc). Aside this, I learnt that I spend less than I expected on eating out vs buying groceries, and all things considered it’s probably cheaper for me to rent a car permanently than own one if I want a nice car.
You might be interested in the free Personal Capital app which can juggle investment accounts, credit cards, and checking accounts all in one app. I tried a few of these including Wealthfront and Personal Capital worked the best for me. They make money selling financial advice so you might get a couple of phone calls early on, but they seem to have stopped calling me.
I recently found Stethoscope.js [0] which looks pretty neat and the plugin system is done using Javascript with a simple interface.
I've been looking to automate my tracking somehow for a bit, my best bet could be using the Google Fit API which already logs most of the stuff I want based on other devices I have (a smartwatch, for example).
My ideal setup would be something that can be self-hosted, exportable, and resilient, but haven't found the right recipe. I'm not good at logging things manually.
I thought about this just a few days ago and I thought I would like to ha e a personal assistant which tells my brain what Todo.
Like when I look at my watch it says 'work' and that should help me to allow myself to focus on work because I know my assistant will also 'schedule' news reading and other things.
Otherwise I'm constantly thinking and rethink ing what I want to do and end watching some yt because I'm to unmotivated at the evening to do something else.
Supporting this by visual cues around the flat with smart lights.
Of course just another, probably not working, tool for antiprocrastination.
With the stamina of the author (doing sport, playing instrument and keeping book for so long) I might not need a tool just his stamina :D
I thought of this too, but with scheduling as well. So I could add "buy gloves", and it will try to fit it into the schedule and optimise it for when I'd be close to a shopping centre (e.g. for flat visits or groceries, etc.).
Same for wanting to do 5 hours of exercise a week, around work hours. What to focus on within working hours, etc.
With Alexa and Google Calendar, we're pretty close already.
For me, having something visible constantly in written form looses it's meaning and purpose after a while. Sticky notes notes on the fridge for example simply become invisible.
But surprised how good the smartwatch vibration works for "time to move".
But just an hour ago I thought how I could tell Plex to stop playing and showing a screenshot to say 'its time, your show will continue in 30 minutes.' or the Amazon fire tv.
This is formidable. I used to track everything for 3 years with Toggl, quantitative productivity got to a point when I spent "productively" 80% to 90% of the day. From then on I decided to switch to qualitative and stopped tracking. Not so successful, I must admit, it's much more difficult to make it objective.
164 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 222 ms ] threadJust to share my experience, the time spent recording data often feels like it's worth it; there's a tangible reward that's more obvious after a while. At first it had novelty value but years later I recognize it as a distinct value separate from novelty. The act of recording by itself has a noticeable impact and anchors a feeling of self-control. (I use a sloppy tag-and-gather method though, not an app, which seems like it could be really fun to create)
I agree that logging is a great steering mechanism but I guess that you first must have a goal what you want to achieve.
Did you consider any existing apps before making your own? Are there any apps like this that are available for download?
1. I have sole ownership of the data
2. The data is stored in an easily parsable format (TSV)
3. Duplicating a recent activity takes one tap
4. Pie and area charts are displayed in the app
My app is open source and available on GitHub[1] for any Android developer to compile for themselves, but if there's enough interest I can also get around to packaging it up for the Play Store/F-Droid/etc.
[1]: https://github.com/artnc/chronofile
Don’t think I have the dedication to track things similarly, but love the data. I use a Whoop fitness band to track sleep, vitals, exercise, and enjoy seeing all the data. Would be cool go log more than health, but that’d require some extra effort… :-)
https://www.gibney.org/a_syntax_for_self-tracking
To make this fast and easy, I developed the syntax described in this essay. It turned out to work pretty nicely. I have logged over 14,000 entries over the last 2 years.
As I am not aware of any existing software to analyze causalities in such an irregular log, I started writing my own this year.
It is an interesting challenge. The approach I currently take is a visual one: I draw a chart on which every notch on the x-axis is a 24-hour interval. And two lines on it. One is the line where I did not do something (say take Vitamin D3) and the other line is where I did do it.
The y-axis is the probability of an effect (say having a headache) in that time interval.
The center of the graph is the 24-hour interval after the treatment. Then the 24-48 hour interval, then the 48-72 hour interval etc. And left to the center is the 24 hour interval before the treatment. Then the 24-48 hour interval etc.
So it would be a "perfect" graph if the two lines look very much the same before the treatment and very much different after the treatment.
Some treatment/effect pairs look promising, but so far, I don't have a result clear enough that I feel confident enough to publish it.
https://github.com/open-nomie/nomie5
> What you see is some of the daily data I’ve collected during the last 7 years of my life (2,498 days between 01/03/2014 and 01/01/2021) charted as basically as possible in order to allow global readings and comparisons. (A nice method is just to scroll up and down with the mouse cursor pointing to the time of interest.) I update it every January. I started to log some topics later on, and there is a period where I did not log mood for some technical reasons in mid-2015. I have a lot more data on medical issues, food, people, and daily activities, which I chose not to show here.
[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/giansegato/status/146896340342311...
I ended up moving towards the mental side, to see if I could measure aspects of flourishing and wellbeing, and more recently to see if any core attitudes about the world are changing over time.
If you’re interested, check it out for comparison:
https://lars.yencken.org/ten-years-of-measurement/
https://toggl.com/
It seems designed for people who want to bill their time, but works just as well for people who want to track 24/7. It takes some patience for a week to get into it, but now it's second nature.
While reviewing the data at the end of the week is useful, I've found the greatest benefit is requiring myself to choose how to spend my time. Getting distracted (e.g. browsing Hacker News!) requires the mental step of stating "Now I'm going to distract myself".
Earlier in the year I discovered Joplin and I’ve stuck with it, enjoying its balance of structure and unstructure. If it had the instant-data-entry-into-CSV feature of Tap Log it would be perfect, but nevertheless I decided having one journal / personal data repository was better than having several, and set about importing all my entries from my previous system. I now have many, many thousands of entries spanning over nearly 25 years, and I’m happy to report that Joplin is coping well.
- it's embarrassing to talk about your sex life, and maybe especially gaps in it, online? - it's naturally private and people value their privacy, particularly online? - people are so taboo about it that they don't even want to record it for their future self? - it just gets lumped in with "sleep"? - it doesn't take up a significant enough amount of time?
All of these depend on the person, of course.
People who value this type of privacy don't publish a decade of logs chronicling their daily life.
I don't think there's a taboo regarding sex and relationships in tech. People can discuss whatever they want. OP is free to choose whether to log (or share) their sex data.
Easier to avoid it at least in the public copy. Though I'd argue even tracking it personally might cause issues if your new SO saw it and started to compare to past partners. Best to just leave it out entirely.
If you're wondering where it could appear in the charts, any one of the Sleep/People/Exercise/Other categories would seem a possible candidate...
Is there anyone else with a better method?
Some people might feel that they are not in control of their life even after a month of logging. Some that they should optimize every minute of their life for "productivity".
I suspect doing some introspection with help from a psychologist could be much more effective for both types.
Anyways: First experienced memory on that list was when I realized winter was reoccurring thing in spring of 1955. I was sitting on a sleigh on water-covered skating field and imagined I was a boat. I then suddenly remembered that this has happened before, but very long time go, maybe half a life-time ago.
A video camera 1984 solved the remembering problem totally. I know exactly what happened thereafter.
Anyways various archives seem to be more and more important with age, as human physical memory is only 7 years long. Thereafter there are only memories of memories, which often get twisted in the weirdest of ways.
"Dream of an apartment separated from opera restaurant by a glass wall only" is the first good one..
I hate to be that guy, but... you have no idea what you're talking about.
Remembering something is like pulling a note out of a cabinet. It gets saved from the back, where the papers tend do degrade. Then, it gets put at the front. The trick is, the original note isn't put at the front. A copy is made. So remembering tends to reinforce, but also can change during this lossy copying process.
None of them "churn".
"The memory-of-a-memory thing"
That "isn't a thing".
"I don't remember the exact science"
You also have no idea what you're talking about.
"I do remember the metaphor I came up with (evidence in my favor!)"
I have no words.
"Remembering something is like pulling a note out of a cabinet."
Not really, no.
"lossy"
Please just stop.
"copying"
Memory is a "copying process"?
Please guys... please just stop.
> None of them "churn".
By churn I mean "lose and hopefully be replaced". That definitely happens. Some brain cells die and are replaced, some live your whole life (or die first)[0].
The cabinet is just a simile for cued recall[1]. More recently learned/recalled items are remembered better (front of the cabinet)[2]. Recalling memories in a different context can change them[3], suggesting recall isn't a "read only" operation.
[0] https://www.livescience.com/33179-does-human-body-replace-ce... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_(memory)#Cued_recall [2] https://memory.psych.upenn.edu/files/pubs/KahaMill10.pdf [3] https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2012/09/your-memory-is...
Anyway I didn't get really any insight from it so... idk if it's a waste of time or what. I still use writing a lot for personal thoughts/state management.
I was using Mailgun for the emailing/API and Raspi/Python/Apache/MariaDB for my stack.
I am aware using third party my stuff is passing through them, it's not super detailed just positive/negative sentiment with abstract context.
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
- https://hubermanlab.com/the-science-of-gratitude-and-how-to-...
Yeah I'm not sure, I think it's natural to have ups and downs. But for me personally there's always something worrying me. I don't know if once I escape being poor "for good" eg. have money invested/don't have to work. If I will lose this constant anxiety.
I still struggle with the whole "altruism" thing like I help people but I also in the back of my mind have this feeling of "mine". "I'd be further in life if I was an asshole" etc...
I think productivity is also subjective... if you setup businesses/have passive income/don't have to work. If you don't do anything are you not productive? Anyway I know what productivity means for me (getting things done) but that's because I can't stop yet. Not that I want to stop but yeah. It's like I don't want to wake up/sleep 9-5 but I need to because I have a job.
Happiness seems simple to achieve to me, do the opposite of what makes you unhappy unless you need something like medication.
idk, this whole 'studying happiness' sounds like you're trying to trick yourself to be happy, but that's an ignorant take without looking for myself.
I know can really get down in the weeds, hierarchy of needs, Buddhism, philosophy, etc...
I think that as a sentient/alive being, your mind will always be on/running. And actually having problems like being broke distracts you from the fact that time counts down and you exist regardless of what you do. Mainly to stay alive and avoid pain.
Even if you have money and didn't have to work/have freedom, how long till you're bored. Anyway I have plenty of reasons to be happy you know like I have family in a third world country with parasites, barely have access to water, here I am paid to write code, running water, hot shower everyday, etc... I used to stack biscuits into a box for a job and hated myself, I changed it.
Life is not so bad (but it can be better, Wonder woman meme).
Anyway I'm just rambling here
Yes, I have.
Emotions are their own realm, and the time you spend observing and reflecting on them, as we are doing in this thread, is valuable.
> I can make everyday plans with greater precision, knowing exactly how many minutes I’ll need to shower or drive or buy groceries or do laundry or water the plants.
I used to think like this, I tracked how fast different routes took to work to optimize and decide. I optimized where I put what during laundry to make it less bothersome, and so on. But do you need 10 years of this? For me, after doing it a couple of times I basically got it.
A shower, I don't need to track it to know I can do it between 2-15 minutes. Or less, if I REALLY need to get going.
I've also built my apps, and used pre-built ones. But each time I've stopped, I haven't really missed it.
I just put a big (so I can read it without my glasses) battery operated (no electric shock risk) cheap (cuz I'm cheap) clock visible from the shower.
A rough analogy: you can figure out from your HP bar how much damage you take from each hit, and it's probably worth doing so if you're going to be fighting these same baddies forever and have no other way of knowing, but the HP bar also serves other important purposes related to resource management: it gives you a sense of how you're doing overall, and it constantly reminds you that HP management is even worth caring about.
1. How did you defined it - horizontal/unconscious/etc 2. Whether there are any 'outcome variables' it seems to cause 3. Whether your needs changed by age, or exercise level, or previous sleep duration (ie 'sleep debt')
Thanks for doing this! I always find them fascinating
2. It's not surprising that lack of sleep can get you feeling down. But since starting to track myself, I've been more conscious of the fact that whenever I'm feeling down, it's almost always after a night or two of bad sleep! I now take sleep a lot more seriously and ask myself first whether I've been sleeping well whenever I'm feeling down (as opposed to blaming other people, etc). This is especially important since I tend to ignore what my body tries to tell me.
3. The 7.5 hour average has remained roughly constant month over month for the entire decade. It's hard to say how much of an effect that other variables like exercise have since I always aim for 7-8 hours regardless. I do notice that if I get like 4 hours one night, I'll end up sleeping more than usual for the next night or two.
I've just uploaded a new APK that should hopefully work!
https://github.com/artnc/chronofile/releases
Sorry for the very personal question. You certainly don’t owe me an answer. I just find it fascinating how some people care a lot about tracking their lives and others (like me) do not. I’m curious how it relates to personality types.
I basically see myself as a garden variety introvert. I suppose that in an informal sense, I might be further along the spectrum than the median person off the street, but then again I suspect the same is true of many other software engineers - especially HN readers.
So generally no, but technically maybe? IANAD
Not only does this give you a good idea of what you did each day, but it’s extremely beneficial for both budgeting and tax purposes.
The base plan for $10/mo does this. You can use Microsoft Todo to set the habit of consolidating every morning with your coffee.
I spent around $1200 on alcohol in the 2 year Melbourne lockdown, around $2000 on coffee, and a whopping $40 on entertainment venues (indoor sports, movies, tickets, etc). Aside this, I learnt that I spend less than I expected on eating out vs buying groceries, and all things considered it’s probably cheaper for me to rent a car permanently than own one if I want a nice car.
I used a non connected Android app before, but since I moved to a phone without Google Play support, I'm writing my own app.
https://github.com/artnc/chronofile/releases
I've been looking to automate my tracking somehow for a bit, my best bet could be using the Google Fit API which already logs most of the stuff I want based on other devices I have (a smartwatch, for example).
My ideal setup would be something that can be self-hosted, exportable, and resilient, but haven't found the right recipe. I'm not good at logging things manually.
[0]: https://stethoscope.js.org
https://github.com/artnc/chronofile/releases
Like when I look at my watch it says 'work' and that should help me to allow myself to focus on work because I know my assistant will also 'schedule' news reading and other things.
Otherwise I'm constantly thinking and rethink ing what I want to do and end watching some yt because I'm to unmotivated at the evening to do something else.
Supporting this by visual cues around the flat with smart lights.
Of course just another, probably not working, tool for antiprocrastination.
With the stamina of the author (doing sport, playing instrument and keeping book for so long) I might not need a tool just his stamina :D
Same for wanting to do 5 hours of exercise a week, around work hours. What to focus on within working hours, etc.
With Alexa and Google Calendar, we're pretty close already.
But surprised how good the smartwatch vibration works for "time to move".
But just an hour ago I thought how I could tell Plex to stop playing and showing a screenshot to say 'its time, your show will continue in 30 minutes.' or the Amazon fire tv.
Might be doable with writing a Kodi plugin.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28896170
It sends an email a day and I just respond to it, and the response is stored in an Sqlite db.
It's not a log, exactly, but could be used as one as I can respond multiple times for the same day.
But I use it to store not just what I did each day, but also my thoughts, or my reactions to things I read, or little things I learn, etc.
It took a little getting used to at first, but in the last 30 months I have never missed a day.
Although it's not the main use, it's fun to be able to tell friends, with near certainty, when exactly we did what.