Lifelogging

I’m getting back into the idea of lifelogging. It marries two of my favorite things: productivity and metrics.

For those not familiar, it’s basically a combination of metrics about your life. Here are some examples:

• Exercise

• Happiness

• Air quality

• Weight

• Diet

This stuff can be captured manually, but part of the culture is finding the best ways to do the capture automatically. This is a big part of what the whole "wearable" market is going after.

Anyway, it’s something I’m going to be getting more and more into I think. The idea isn’t to make it the focus, but rather to have the data to look at (and adjust based on) when I want to.

It’s also enjoyable to compare your data to your friends’, and to use it to challenge each other and/or keep them motivated.

Other examples of activities where this becomes more clear could be things like:

1. Writing a chapter a day for an upcoming book

2. Going a week without going over your calories count

3. Losing 25 pounds

Whatever.

The point is that you will have data about your life that you can then make adjustments based on and share with others.

I’m starting with MyFitnessPal, which takes in data from Withings Scales, allows you to capture your food intake, your level of exercise, and makes the data highly visible via the web and through the mobile app.

Let me know if you want to connect.

[ Feb 23, 2014 ]

Notes

1. I’m really looking forward to the iWatch from Apple. I think it’ll likely be the first device I can actually use.