This morning I came across an article that listed the best new apps of the month and on that list was the Reporter App. A few months ago this app was brought to my attention and I decided that the $3.99 price tag was too steep for an app, but something about it left me feeling intrigued. After coming across the Business Insider articled, I decided to give in and download the app. I mean how harmful could it be to know exactly what percent of the day you’re doing work? How interesting would it be to truly quantify your life through random sampling? After downloading the app, I proceeded to rave about it to my friend who is, or was, a lifelogging aficionado. After confessing my love, and borderline addiction, for tracking every aspect of my life through the Fuelband, Sleep Cycle app, and now, Reporter App, he told me he had to uninstall all of his lifelogging apps. Why you may ask? One word. Anxiety.

Lifelogging is nothing new. It started with something as simple as checking in on FourSquare and listing the books you’ve read on GoodReads. Then came the activity and sleep tracking with gadgets like the FitBit and apps like Sleep Cycle. Now there’s even gadgets like Memoto and Durr. Durr alerts you every five minutes to keep you on track and the Memoto attaches to your shirt and takes a photo every two minutes. The surge of productivity and healthy living articles has made lifelogging that much more appealing. I love knowing everything about myself, being able to track my new personal records, and having the resources to remember everything that I do on a daily basis, but could we be taking this too far? Are we letting our apps control our lives? What is the next new thing going to be? We are already starting to notice how bad our technology addiction has gotten, so just how bad will this addiction be ten years from now? Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’ is starting to seem more and more relatable as time goes on. We’ve already become creatures who hide behind our phones during dinner with friends and who see more of our text message screen than the environment around us. As much as I enjoy lifelogging and quantifying my productivity, I am beginning to realize how detrimental tracking every aspect of our life could really be to the human psyche. Is the increase in productivity really worth feeling stressed out, anxious, and unhappy?