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I put my whole life into a single database

howisfelix.today

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Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#61

Post by fxwin »

gardenhedge wrote: post #53
lejalv wrote: post #38

A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying. Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.

Isn't this a drop in the ocean? Why would any 'normal' person forgo flying? How much CO2 emissions have 'world leaders' produced going to summits, or Taylor Swift and her fans flaying to concerts or war flights?

Why do anything for the greater good at all then? (Also there's a big gap between "forgo flying" and "fly every 2 weeks for 7 years")

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#62

Post by ej31 »

The value rarely shows up where you expected it to.

I kept a rough log of my sleep and mood for about a year with no specific goal. Mostly forgot about it. Then I had a weirdly bad few months and went back to look — turns out there was a pretty clear pattern I would've never noticed in the moment.

Maybe the framing of "was it worth it" is the wrong question. It's less like an investment with a return and more like keeping receipts. Useless 99% of the time, then suddenly you really need one.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#63

Post by revolvingthrow »

stevekemp wrote: post #10
brodo wrote: post #4

The takeaways at the very bottom of the page are valuable: > Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting f…

I had a similar epiphany a few years back when I started wearing a step-tracker/sleep monitor. It was kinda interesting to see how many times I woke up, or track hours, but to be honest I realised after a few months that when my tracker said "You had good sleep", or "You had bad sleep" I was already aware - I woke up smiling, or grumpy depending on how I'd done. I didn't ever look at the data and think "I want to go…

Eh, I found several interesting things from various tracking tools. Take a nap? Sleep is destroyed this night. Exercise in the evening? Same. Not something I’d pay attention to without noticing the chart afterwards.

There’s also the motivation factor. I’m not sure of the total %, but I certainly did some exercising just to fill the daily goal. Nothing life-changing, but for the price of a cheapo apple watch se once every 5 years or so, more than worth it.

It’s not unlike simplistic time tracking on my iphone. I spent a lot of time on bullshit websites. Obviously I knew it was happening, but the sheer magnitude was surprising. It’s akin to acute pain letting you know there’s a health problem vs something brewing in the background that you are vaguely aware of, but have no motivation to truly care about - one is far more noticeable than the other

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#64

Post by Noaidi »

nicbou wrote: post #35
ismailmaj wrote: post #7

In my experience, tracking objective things like "nutrition" and "sleep hours" is immensely useful to reflect on what went wrong, and tracking subjective things like "mood" or "stress" is useless given hedonic adaptation or heavy swings that make problems obvious, and not need tracking. What's key is be able to visualize metrics easily on the data and frictionless data entry, I've got a decent setup with iPhone Actio…

I think it's good to track mood swings, because it makes you notice them. After a while it makes you call out your own BS.

As someone with Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type, if you are not diagnosed with a mood disorder, tracking "swings in you mood" when you have no clinical disorder seems like a disorder of its own.

I have had people tell me they were "manic". Then I showed them videos I took when I was manic and they see what I mean when I tell them they are not manic.

We have come to a place where we do not want even normal fluctuation in mood, and that is a illness of its own, but it is a cultural illness.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#67

Post by [deleted] »

glemmaPaul wrote: post #44
lejalv wrote: post #38

A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying. Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.

yeah America treats flying as like taking a bus, so I am not at all surprised

[deleted]

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#68

Post by sdwr »

andsoitis wrote: post #43
koliber wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being aware, and being aware that you are aware are very similar things that are subtly different. I was aware that alcohol affects your next day, even a little. That's because people always say that alcohol is bad for you (surprise surprise). I heard this, so you could say that I was aware. I generally thought about this as "a hangover is bad for you." and was somewhat dismissive of the "even a single drink has a ba…

> an impact that I could feel nonetheless. I needed to do some light stats and a lot more journaling to build this awareness. If you could feel it why beed the stats?

It's like any good cryptographic challenge - easier to validate the answer than to come up with it from scratch

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#69

Post by afc »

cj wrote: post #41
nkrisc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you didn’t spend hundreds of hours on it, so when it did happen to be useful it seemed like an outsized benefit. I would wager that for most people, most data about themselves will be useless and not worth collecting. Of course you can’t know what data will be useless or not, so unless the cost of collecting it is minimal or nil (wearing a smart watch, writing down your weight each day/week), it’s probably not wo…

Like anything else, I think it comes down to having a good use case. I've gotten deep into weightlifting/bodybuilding over the past couple of years, and that's the kind of hobby where micro-optimizations and data tracking can have a pretty big impact on results (and sort of necessary, you can't fly blind with things like diet, especially) E.g. I track and weigh everything I eat, take body measuraments on a weekly bas…

How long have you been tracking? Can you share an insight you've had from your data?

I've been weight lighting for ten years and initially tried to track things (down to how many reps I did of which exercise, with how much weight) and quickly came to the conclusion that is want worth it for me.

Re: I put my whole life into a single database

#70

Post by Ajedi32 »

nkrisc wrote: post #25
noemit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counter example: I've been wearing an Apple Watch for close to 10 years. I've tracked my weight as well along those years but nothing crazy like OP. The Apple watch tracked plenty. I had some strange symptoms and two doctors insisted I had a weak heart and potential heart failure. This was shocking! Turns out I do have a really "weak" rhythm, but heart failure is when your heart is progressively getting worse in it…

But you didn’t spend hundreds of hours on it, so when it did happen to be useful it seemed like an outsized benefit. I would wager that for most people, most data about themselves will be useless and not worth collecting. Of course you can’t know what data will be useless or not, so unless the cost of collecting it is minimal or nil (wearing a smart watch, writing down your weight each day/week), it’s probably not wo…

Right, but you don't necessarily need to spend hundreds of hours to capture most of this; the data is already out there. If there were a tool that could collect it all in one place and give you insights with minimal effort that would be pretty neat.
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