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The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

technori.com

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Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#11

Post by bergie »

sheraz wrote: post #4

Meh. This quantified self business is just the next iteration of herbal remedies, Chinese medicine, and all that other pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo out there. You might as well add your astrological sign to all these apps. This is yet another area where people are attempting to layer technology on top of a problem that does not exist.

Sure, it will be used for selling a lot of snake oil, like anything related to health or productivity.

But at the same time, we're surrounding ourselves with so many sensors that for the first time in the history of mankind we can really "data mine ourselves". This may bring up interesting discoveries.

In the early days of science some kept strict logs about everything they did with the same goal. Now this can be automated.

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#12

Post by npsimons »

kiba wrote: post #6
bhousel wrote: post #2

I've found that I'm actually a lot happier not tracking all this stuff about myself. I was tracking my sleep, my running, my eating, my stress, my time, etc. Then a few months ago decided that I needed to focus more on living life and less on just checking in to it.

My problem is that the tool I used isn't automatic. I just got too tired of pricking my skin for glucose tracking, noting down my weight, and resetting my pedometer everyday.

Things are getting better in this regard; more and more biometric devices are getting bluetooth connectivity:

http://personalheartmonitor.com/sensors.html

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#13

Post by npsimons »

bhousel wrote: post #2

I've found that I'm actually a lot happier not tracking all this stuff about myself. I was tracking my sleep, my running, my eating, my stress, my time, etc. Then a few months ago decided that I needed to focus more on living life and less on just checking in to it.

I think that finding your optimal level of data tracking, or even ramping it down after building a habit is key to these sorts of things. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff, really. The thing is that the cost side is being changed by the fact that much of the data collection can be automated these days, and hopefully the analysis side can be automated as well, so that you don't have to focus as much on the numbers.

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#14

Post by npsimons »

I'm torn, because QS is something I'm interested in and something I think many could benefit from, but at the same time this article reads like an advertisement, especially since it suspiciously lacks mention of well known alternatives. You could argue that they only mention what they think of as "the best", but I would argue that most of these tools put far too much of your information into other peoples' hands. As an alternative, at least for biometrics, consider the following list of bluetooth enabled devices which can be used with software that doesn't upload your data to someone else's servers:

http://personalheartmonitor.com/sensors.html

I'd also have to recommend org-mode in Emacs, at least for time tracking. I know it's not "mobile", but I use it on my phone to track all sorts of things, and since the format is plain text, I can slice and dice in any language I want, no third parties needed.

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#15

Post by edanm »

Interesting. I just started trying out BeeMinder myself, which seems like a good tool to both track things about yourself, and commit to changing your behaviour.

They kept mentioning the "quantified self" and I didn't know what they were talking about.

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#17

Post by sheraz »

kiba wrote: post #5
sheraz wrote: post #4

Meh. This quantified self business is just the next iteration of herbal remedies, Chinese medicine, and all that other pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo out there. You might as well add your astrological sign to all these apps. This is yet another area where people are attempting to layer technology on top of a problem that does not exist.

Meh. This quantified self business is just the next iteration of herbal remedies, Chinese medicine, and all that other pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo out there. You might as well add your astrological sign to all these apps. Why would you think that? If anything, the self quantified movement is all about thinking scientifically to improve yourself. Gathering data, analyzing, designing experiments, generating hypothesi…

You make the assumption that people will use the scientific method with this stuff. The more likely scenario is that people will optimize for a single number (VDL/HDL, weight, or other) and miss the whole point.

The attitude that we can simply "optimize our life" is reductionist, arrogant, foolhardy. You will spend more time optimizing your numbers than you will living your life. But hey, at least you have the data to back it up :-)

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#18

Post by SatvikBeri »

npsimons wrote: post #13
bhousel wrote: post #2

I've found that I'm actually a lot happier not tracking all this stuff about myself. I was tracking my sleep, my running, my eating, my stress, my time, etc. Then a few months ago decided that I needed to focus more on living life and less on just checking in to it.

I think that finding your optimal level of data tracking, or even ramping it down after building a habit is key to these sorts of things. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff, really. The thing is that the cost side is being changed by the fact that much of the data collection can be automated these days, and hopefully the analysis side can be automated as well, so that you don't have to focus as much on the numbers.

Right. How much you track and what you track is extremely important. For example, I was massively more motivated to exercise after I started actually tracking my performance. I'm a skinny nerd and my goal was to gain muscle mass, and on previous attempts I'd given up in frustration after I didn't gain any weight over several weeks. Rationally I knew the exercise had to be having an effect but it was still demotivating.

But when I started tracking I found that while my overall weight wasn't changing, my percentage of body fat was dropping, indicating that I was in fact gaining muscle. It's not like this was technically new information, but seeing the numbers triggered some sort of response in me which made it very easy to keep going to the gym.

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#19

Post by npsimons »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #18
npsimons wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that finding your optimal level of data tracking, or even ramping it down after building a habit is key to these sorts of things. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff, really. The thing is that the cost side is being changed by the fact that much of the data collection can be automated these days, and hopefully the analysis side can be automated as well, so that you don't have to focus as much on the numbers.

Right. How much you track and what you track is extremely important. For example, I was massively more motivated to exercise after I started actually tracking my performance. I'm a skinny nerd and my goal was to gain muscle mass, and on previous attempts I'd given up in frustration after I didn't gain any weight over several weeks. Rationally I knew the exercise had to be having an effect but it was still demotivatin…

This is a prime example of how QS is supposed to work. Many people talk about deliberate practice, but the truth is, you can't practice deliberately unless you are tracking what you want to change. Of course, the other half of deliberate practice is knowing the most effective way to induce change, but much like in programming, how do you know it is working if you aren't tracking/testing it? Temet nosce.

Re: The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self

#20

Post by marmalade »

What would be nice is to find a decent site/app for tracking food intake. That is one area that I would love to track but the current landscape of apps for it are lacking.

MyFitnessPal's UI is pretty bad but seems to have decent data if you can find it.

Fitbit's UI is nice but the food database and lookup is atrocious.

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