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Ask HN: How Many Of You Track Personal Data? If So, Have You Seen Benefits?

4 points by ISeemToBeAVerb ↗ HN
Lately, I've been slightly fascinated by this trend of personal data tracking espoused by people like Tim Ferriss and sites like "Quantified Self". I'm curious about how many people here at Hacker News indulge in this practice. If so, how have you found it to be helpful? Do you have any tips to impart to the community?

4 comments

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kirillzubovsky
Personally, I haven't tracked my time as I find it very frustrating to be "clocking" every step. That said, I've seen quite a few people using https://www.rescuetime.com/ on daily basis; supposedly it helps.
ISeemToBeAVerb
I agree that some of these services can be tedious to use. I think that's part of the reason I'm curious about the potential benefits of dedicated use. In other words, are the specific numbers important enough to warrant the investment of time it takes to track your habits with such granularity?
SyneRyder
I use Rescue Time, and I've seen some benefit. Specifically, I closed my Facebook & LiveJournal accounts after I saw how much time I was spending on them. But you don't need RescueTime to figure that out ;)

Vitamin-R for Mac ( http://www.publicspace.net/Vitamin-R/ ) has tools for tracking concentration levels throughout the day/week. Currently it's showing that my concentration is worst on days when I exercise. That was a surprise.

Tracking data is interesting, but it's easy to spend too much time looking at the data instead of deriving value from it.

kitt
I have a journal / everyday book where I record probably way too much data: what I eat, where I go, when I sleep, what aches and pains or health issues I experience, where I drive, what I spend and how, what dreams I have, odd number sequences I notice, when where and how intensely I exercise, and really, another couple dozen intensely personal things that I started tracking because I wondered about the trends.

While I started tracking everything because I was hit with a bad migraine that came out of nowhere and I couldn't trace back to my normal triggers, I expanded what I track because I find the data incredibly fascinating and very handy to have. When I go to the doctor and he asks, "When did this start?" I can look it up. When the scale goes up, I know how many calories I've eaten, how much exercise I've had, how much sleep I've managed, and where most of my stressors are. A low protein diet can trigger depression, so I look for enough protein in my nominally vegetarian diet to make sure I'm getting enough, and adjust as needed.

I have a low-tech approach, but think about moving to a digital version so that I can integrate other data (fitbit data and sleep quality, in particular). The key to consistency is motivation. Once you've been doing it for a while, wow, not doing it is uncomfortable. Find something that works for you (phone app, moleskine, etc.), even if it's just an index card that you jot notes down to scan and OCR them later. Whatever you use, you have to have it with you at all times to be effective (which is why a phone app might work best for most people).