#personal analytics

Data Game

Trunkr

Data Design project on Personal Analytics.

This project works at the intersection of Industrial Design + Data + Mental Health

New Post has been published on http://www.jamierubin.net/2015/03/31/manifesto-43-improving-my-quantified-self/

Manifesto 43: Improving My Quantified Self

When it comes to quantified self, one question I frequently hear is “how can this data really help me”? It is a good question, especially since there are huge volumes of data about ourselves available, and it may not be obvious how to put it to use. I have used quantified self data to improve my writing, and help get more exercise, but it seems to me there is more I can be doing to use this data to improve.

I had been thinking about this a lot leading up to my birthday last week. As I approached my birthday, I began to think about the general areas of my life that I would like to improve, and see if there was a way that I could take advantage of data to help me make the improvements. So I put together a simple document in which I began to list the following:

The areas I wanted to improve

A simple statement or instruction to frame the improvement

An initial notion for how I might measure the improvement.

I called the document my “Manifesto:43.” I thought it might be interesting to others, so below are the major areas, along with the “instruction” I gave myself to keep in mind.

I have more detailed thoughts and actions in each of these areas, and I’ll tackle them in separate posts over the next few weeks, but for now, here are the major areas I’m looking to improve.

Play

Play with the kids whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Walk

Prefer walking over other modes of transportation where practical.

Write

Write every day, even if only for a few minutes.

Eat

Make healthy choices.

Disconnect

Make efficient use of online resources. Avoid unnecessary activity.

Simplify

Use the best tool for the job, but avoid overlapping tools.

Save

Look for opportunities to save more.

Relax

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

There are some overarching themes here. These things can be grouped in different ways to reflect overall priorities. For instance, grouping together “Play”, “Disconnect”, “Simplify” and “Relax”, you have what I think of as “family time.” Improving in those four areas helps improve family time. Grouping “Walk”, “Eat”, and “Relax” are all health-related.

For each of these areas, I produced simple examples of actions that I can take to make the improvements I am looking to make. I’ll drill down into those in a separate post. I have also attempted to identify quantifiable ways of measuring the improvements. In some instances (e.g. “play”) it is pretty hard. In others (“walk”, “write”, “save”) it is pretty easy. Some of the actions are one-time and others are ongoing. I’ve already taken some actions and although it is too early to say how well these changes are working, I am pretty happy with my overall framework for thinking about these things.

At last, this final installment takes place between August 22,2014 and October 12, 2014…..

OmniContext Working Productivity

After 3 months of training, I was seeing progressive improvement in my distances, energy levels, and time reductions based on my self-tracking data from Fitbit Flex and Runtastic. Now I was curious about some external changes during my last month of training. I expected that the final "push" before the big race might affect my work – life balance and even perhaps my sleep patterns.

I began monitoring my work productivity through OmniContext Personal Analytics, which allows me to see a variety of factors that determine my daily efficiency in certain tasks; including my mobility, internet usage, and work intensity for each task.

This final viewpoint was intended to gauge my personal work productivity as my physical training intensity increased. It could be argued that as our lives become encompassed with more and more goals, it can be difficult to find the appropriate work-life balance.  In this case, I had a particular goal to train myself for an event, however I wanted to maintain my ongoing/ daily goals of working productively and socializing outside of work.

It should be noted that these results are based on my customized routines, working habits, and daily lifestyle. However, even if just serving as an example, it serves as an exceptional snapshot method of seeing how self-tracking is individually customized around your precise needs.  

A few examples of my personal productivity analysis:

Self-Assessment after work completed -My overall mood spanning over the 4 weeks prior to the race showed an increase in motivation, followed by a sharp drop a few days prior to the event.  I would imagine that a bit of anxiety played a role in this outcome.

Most frequented work place -My work place did not change as I find my best working habits are confined within the office and not at home surrounded by possible distractions. This entirely depends on each individual's working habits and environment. Even though my work could essentially be done from any location, my own personal analytics tells me that I a most efficient in the office amongst my peers.

Most frequented social place -During last few weeks of training, my social outings became less and less frequent and the places visited did not vary too often. My data recorded off of my mobile device easily showed that staying-in at home became a recurring event throughout the work week.

Daily Work Activities -My personal analytics overview showed me that my daily activities remained fairly balanced between documents, internet use, and communication. I was glad to know that my training outside of work had little to no effect on the organization of my time spent while working.

Distance Travelled -According to my personal analysis, my overall daily distance travelled declined during the last month once a significant variable was removed from my routine. Due to a series of unfortunate events, I found myself without a car come mid-September. Despite the increase in my commute time from 13 minutes to 39 minutes, my work distance commute dropped from 24 km to 19.6 km due to the bus route. However my overall distance dropped even when considering travel outside of my commute to work. 

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During the final week of preparation, I decided to halt my exercises and running, and focus only on eating healthy and daily stretches. Even though I now had more time during the day, I found myself less available to socialize and less productive in achieving my daily tasks. Originally I thought because of the extra time in the mornings and evenings that I would be more available to participate in social activities. However my attitude and focus was apparently a bit scattered. Looking back on these findings, I believe it was because of the hype associated with the race, being the most intensive obstacle course in existence. This idea alone made me physically tired. Perhaps when certain tasks (such as preparing for a difficult race) are critical enough, we are unable to focus or work efficiently on other tasks at the same time.

In the end, all of my hard work and motivation paid off as I am still alive after completing the 16 km race with over 30 brutal obstacles. The medal I received at the end was well deserved and the whole experience is another piece of data I can use to better myself for next year's race. At the end of this 6-month endurance training, thanks to self-tracking I am able to know with confidence that I trained progressively well, became more physically fit, while at the same time maintaining a balance in my personal work productivity. All of these factors are important to me as a young professional interested in fitness, data, and all-around work efficiency.  In today's society of Big Data, there are so many questions we should be asking about ourselves and finding the answers. Self-tracking is a surefire way to truly get to know ourselves down to the smallest detail, and with this information, optimize our lifestyles to our fullest potential.

Check out OmniContext Personal Analytics to keep your everyday goals aligned and ensure an efficient work-life balance. 

Read Part 1 of 3… Read Part 2 of 3…​

Training requires more than physical fitness.

Once again, the following takes place between May 1, 2014 and October 12, 2014…..

Some basic stretching, a motivational speech, a few battle cries (AROO! AROO! AROO!), and the epic battle had begun. My most powerful weapon at this point was not a sword, nor a spear, nor a shield. In fact, my main thought at this moment was the information that I had acquired the 6 months prior to the event. My sword was my data, my spear was my tracking/analysis of that data, and my shield was my mentality and courage supported/ provided by this information. You can watch several videos on YouTube telling you that training for a Spartan race requires exercising every day, all day, all the time, that only the best physically fit persons are able to succeed in one of these challenges. This is not entirely true. 

Having completed the challenge with 12 other companions, I asked their point-of-view in regards to their respective training sessions and what they thought were the most important factors. Almost all of them will say that it comes down to a few simple things: mental determination, and being able to properly balance your time between working and rest. Too much of either of these would result in some type of disaster or injury.

Back to my results of using personal analytics to during my training sessions:

Runtastic for SPECIFIC TRAINING SESSIONS

Objectives with Runtastic Application:

- Distance travelled in sports

- Training Duration (30 – 60 mins vs 60 – 90 mins)

- Calories Burned

- Types of activities completed

- Mood after training

I decided to use Runtastic to record my training sessions only. Whereas Fitbit constantly measures your every movement, monitoring patterns and trends 24/7, Runtastic is an app that you begins recording when you say "go" and ends when you say "stop". These short sessions of tracking encouraged me to make the most of my time being recorded. I also enjoyed Runtastic's community options, being able to see what exercising activities my friends and those around me are doing. My initial training sessions were limited to 3-5km, and not lasting more than 30 minutes per session. Runtastic told me that I was burning between 350-400 calories at this rate….there were 400 calories in that croissant I wolfed down that morning. I clearly needed to step up my endurance and intensity level if I was going to be ready for the Spartan Race. Through making small incremental improvements of each session, by September I was running 11-13km and burning 800-1000 calories per session. These trainings were now constantly 60-90 minutes minimum. Lastly, as would be expected with anyone's transition from "sedentary" (couch potato) to " highly active" (spartan) lifestyle, my motivation went from zero to extremely enthousiastic as my training became more frequent. 

Results:

I found that the Runtastic App can serve a very different purpose than my Fitbit Flex or other similar wearable. Whereas wearable tech keeps a track record of your every movement virtually 24/7, the Runtastic App allows you to focus on and encourages interval training sessions due to its concise periods of monitoring your information. Once again, the push notifications after continuous periods of inactivity definitely encouraged me to keep going. Personally, the option to easily share your training sessions through Twitter and Facebook boosted my self-esteem and boosted my motivation to persist for all of my followers.

Be sure to follow Part 3 of my Spartan Analysis, covering my final overall results between Fitbit, Runtastic, and OmniContext, and how each contributed to my work productivity and improved my performance in training.

 Also, check out OmniContext yourself to start, self-tracking, discovering your own trends, and making personal improvements.​

The following takes place between May 1, 2014 and October 12, 2014.

I heard rumors. Small buzz talks of pain, sweat, excitement, tears, adrenaline, and the challenge of a lifetime. These were talks of the Spartan Race; a 13K intensive obstacle course that has become a colossal event in the United States. I had learned that the event was coming to my area and began hearing the voice in my head saying "It's time". It was time for me to get off the couch and test my limits.

October 12, 2014 will be a date I remember for quite some time. This past weekend I had the opportunity to partake in one of the world renowned Spartan Races in Circuit Paul Ricard, France.  As it happened to be the same weekend as my birthday, I recruited some good friends of mine to do it with me, thinking it would be a fun way to spend the weekend. I signed up for the obstacle race 6 months ago and at the same time decided to start self-tracking my movements. I wanted to see my incremental improvements (if any) as I approached the race. I also wanted to measure my productivity while physically training, trying to create a good balance across exercise, sleep, and my work and social life. Now that I have made a full week's recover of stiff muscles, aches and pains in places I didn't think were possible, I have now had the chance to review my results and the progress I made throughout my training, analyzing the fluctuations of my daily activities up until the day of the big race.

And so training began. I used a number of trackers to gauge different vantage points of my progress, knowing that different applications focus on different features. After conducting some basic research, I decided to use Fitbit Flex to track my steps, caloric intake and sleep patterns, Runtastic to monitor my actual training sessions, and OmniContext Personal Analytics to see the effect my physical training would have on my work and social life.

Fitbit Flex Findings:

Summing up my results of a six month venture of intense physical training, I begin my 3-part blog series by analyzing my first results of my FitBit Flex self-tracking:

Through my FitBit tracking I was able to monitor my weight loss, going from 198lbs to 180lbs. My calorie intake when I started was around 3000kcal, however I was able to see that most of this would be considered junk food. At the end of my training my calorie intake dropped to around 2300—2500 kcals, however I had substituted much of my junk food with healthy sustainance items. I set a weekly goal of 70,000 steps. Fitbit provided me with a graph showing that my activity level increased dramatically from a "sedentary" lifestyle to "very active" with 4-5 training sessions per week. These daily, weekly, and monthly updates served as a great motivational tool to not give up, no matter how bad at times I felt like falling flat on my face and collapsing. ​

  Within these statistical feedbacks, I found myself setting small goals and encouraging myself to do better. For example, I noticed that I was often taking stairs instead of elevators just for the sake of reaching the 70,000 step weekly goal. I received a variety of badges as I achieved different platforms of accomplishments, inspiring me to persist. I feel that these push notifications are a major asset for self-trackers such as myself.

My sleeping patterns in the beginning were very irregular. I had difficulty sleeping, tossing and turning throughout the night. Countless nights of waking up at 3am and unable to fall back asleep…..insomnia was a demon that I was constantly battling. I saw that I was spending about 9 hours in bed, but only getting approximately 5 hours of sleep per night. Although it may seem like an obvious effect, once I began training I noticed a drastic change in my sleeping patterns. With regular exercise sessions of 4-5 times per week, my time spent in bed remained the same, however I increased my actual sleep time to relatively 7.5 hours per night.

Results:

The Fitbit Flex turned out to be a useful tool in tracking my weight loss, calorie count, sleep patterns and trends, and encouraged me to continue in my efforts through daily push notifications. For self-tracking purposes, it was very interesting looking back and trying to identify the variety of factors that had an effect on my overall progression throughout my training.

What is self-tracking and how do I get involved?​

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Recently a friend of mine asked me to explain this new hype about self tracking, the quantified self movement and where to start if she wanted to get involved. With buzz words such as self-tracking, quantified self, lifelogging, personal analytics, it may seem complicated, however I have boiled it down to 5 easy steps for anyone to become a self-tracking aficionado:​​​

How to Become a Self Tracking Aficionado.pptx