My Tracking Toolkit
Keeping Track of the Tracking
The Quantified Self movement is something that I heartily embrace. As the days go by the tracking of things that happen every day is a good way to take small glimpses of progress and goals to help have a better idea of what is going on. Data is fascinating and being able to generate and collect it is usually the sticking point. Every now and then it is good to check in on the tracking to see what is working, so now it’s time to take a look at the toolkit that is working for me now as well as an exciting new addition to the tools that I use.
For automatic tracking there are two things that are with me all the time: my Fitbit and my iPhone. Both of them track the steps I take as well as how much I am moving. The Fitbit collects it all automatically and it syncs up so the data is always being updated. To track steps on my phone (as a backup), the excellent Pedometer++ app uses the M7 chip ion the iPhone to collect the data and provide a quick way to check in on the steps.
All of the other tracking is a bit more conscious and manual and the big bucket where most of the data goes is collected and stored in Nathan Yau’s beautiful and simple Your Flowing Data. Using Twitter direct messages to collect information, it provides a simple and free-form way to collect almost any information using tags. In that I currently track coffee, oatmeal, beer, wine, weight, films watched, yoga, and baking. It uses a simple syntax, so if I wanted to record having a coffee I would send the message drank 1 coffee #clever #home. The hashtags used with coffee are the brewing method and location. Then when checking the data on the web site you can see how many coffees were brewed using the Clever method and where.
Since there is a lot of repetition in entering these things, the excellent Drafts iOS app provides a great way to have a collection of text snippets that can be quickly sent to Twitter for tracking. It also is great for writing things and sending them to almost any other app as well.
Every morning I weigh myself using the Wii Fit board and record the weight. Ideally this would be automated, but that is something for down the road (probably with a Withings scale). Then it is time to record the coffee drank and oatmeal eaten (if it is a weekday). At this point it is kind of redundant to record the oatmeal, since it’s such a regular occurrence, but that is just one more part of the routine where there is very little thinking involved.
For more conscious goals related to health and changes to make, Lift is there with me to provide a way of tracking goals and whether things are being done. Right now the active goals are to take 10,000 steps a day, spend 30-60 minutes reading, to exercise, to meditate, to ride my bike, to walk the dog, to weigh myself, to write 750 words, and do yoga or stretching. It’s easy to set up and check in there and there is nice automatic feedback as well as nice little interactions with people who are part of the Lift community.
Tracking films happens with Your Flowing Data and in a more public way using Letterboxd. With Letterboxd it is possible to keep a diary of films you watched and that is the most public way of seeing what I’ve been seeing. With the data they have from each of the films a report is generated on the year in films with interesting stats about the breakdown of films by genre, actors, and directors. It’s a good way to see what you have been interested in.
To write every day, 750 Words has been at the centre of that routine for years. It’s where most of the first drafts for blog posts are written and it is where this post started as well. It’s simple and a place to visit every single day for some private writing and reflection every day.
The newest addition to the toolkit is the Reporter iPhone app. Growing out of Nicholas Feltron’s pioneering work on tracking and visualizing his lift in yearly reports, this new app from Feltron, Drew Breuning, and Friends of the Web randomly quizzes you about what you are doing and records that information along with data from the iPhone sensors to give a snapshot of what you are doing. The data is private and stored on your phone (and optionally backed up on Dropbox) and you can add whatever questions you like. This is allowing me to collect a bigger set of data and a few days in it is something that I really love.
The current questions provide a nice snapshot of what is happening during the day and random reminders help to collect the information throughout the day to make sure nothing is missed. The sensors can track how many steps taken, the number of photos you have taken, the weather at your location, as well as the ambient noise levels. It only takes a few seconds to report, and it’s adding a lot more information to my collection.
The true value of data grows over time, and the key to getting it regularly is reducing the friction of collecting in. The process of recording it shouldn’t interrupt what you are doing and the information that you collect needs to be important to you. You may not be interested in tracking the same things or as many things, but it is comforting to be able to look back and see patterns and remember what we do every day.
