Last week I agreed to participate in a Quantified Self Research Study that was being done by IIT design students. The research study involved a lot of self reflection about why and how I started getting involved in the Quantified Self movement and what I've learned. Here were a few of the major questions that I had to think through and reflect on:
What do you track and why?
I started off using the health & wellness QS gadgets that track
steps and sleep, like the FitBit, but I got into other forms of self-tracking
because I was going through the business school application process and I
wanted to start keeping track of my goals, tasks and productivity, since it was
a busy time for me balancing projects at work with community activities and
still finding time to hang out with friends and work on my applications. At the
same time, I also wanted to track how I was spending my time and the activities
that I enjoyed doing because one piece of advice that I kept hearing from
others who had been through the process was to spend a lot of self-reflection
time because it would help make it easier to write the essays which included
topics like "What matters most to you and why?" This led me to start
looking into ways I could track mood and happiness, so I started searching for
other types of Quantified Self applications that I found either on the QS
website or through word of mouth.
I also started using applications like RescueTime, which would give me a
productivity score each week based on how much time I spent on applications
like Excel, Word and Powerpoint vs. reading the news on the web or checking
email. I needed some way to keep myself accountable and on task for getting my
work done and I found it helpful to see a breakdown of the time and
applications I was using to get my work done.
What have you discovered?
Most of what I discovered in terms of my productivity ended up being
common sense and I already knew the answer, but it was good to see the data to
back it up. For example, I had an idea of how many hours a week I would spend
working, but with RescueTime I discovered that my productivity averaged in the
80% range vs. 50-60% for other RescueTime users and I spent significantly more
of my time in Excel and Outlook vs. other users.
From TrackYourHappiness.org, I learned that I’m almost equally balanced
between how happy I am when I’m focused on work vs. when I’m interacting with
other people. That helped me realize that I’m more balanced between
introversion and extroversion than I would have thought. The data also showed that I tended to be
happiest when I was either catching up with friends in person or on the phone
or on Saturdays while I was volunteering for the mentoring program I'm involved in. I actually used this last insight to help me
write my business school essay on the fact that what mattered most to me was
mentorship in the form of both being a mentor for others and appreciating the
mentors that I had.
Have you changed anything as a
result of your tracking?
Even though I’m now finished with the business school application
process, I’ve continued the process of tracking and still try to write and
self-reflect each day, since I still find it helpful to review what I’ve done
and what I want to accomplish the next day.
Also, since I’ve learned that I’m more productive in the mornings than
at night, I’ve shifted my schedule to wake up an hour earlier at 6am because I
find it easier to focus and make sure that certain tasks get done first thing
in the mornings rather than getting put off until the afternoon or evening.
In addition to mentoring on Saturdays through Minds Matter, I’ve now
also taken on an additional mentee through the Network for Teaching
Entrepreneurship and have been more involved in advising local Chicago startups
because I’ve realized that’s how I most enjoy spending my time outside of work.
I would also say I’m now more aware of things that have a large effect
on my mood and energy level. I’ve been more consistent about fitting in a
workout every morning no matter how short it is because otherwise I’ve seen my
energy level decline earlier in the day and have I’ve needed more than one cup
of coffee to keep me going.
Overall, the self-tracking data has helped me become more aware of
what’s important to me, what I enjoy doing, and how balanced the time I spend
is between aspects such as work, friends & family, community and health
& fitness.
Did you start out of pure
curiosity, or with a goal in mind?
It was a combination of both. I started out in order to keep myself accountable
for the goals I had set for myself, both in terms of health & wellness and
productivity. I wanted to keep track of what I was working on, get into the
habit of regularly writing and self-reflecting as well as just remember the
things I had done or the places I had been that I enjoyed the most.
