

Ask HN: Do you track data about your life? Has it helped or led to insights? - blinduck

Do you track data about your life over time? I&#x27;m thinking about things like weight, bodyfat%, sleep hours, food eaten and productivity?<p>What software do you use to do so? Has it led to any interesting results?
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tangentcity
I was recently at a Quantified Self meeting in Amsterdam. I met the most
fascinating bunch of people, but the chief insight came from hearing his
friends give a tribute to the late Seth Roberts at the end of the seminar. The
take-home lesson there is that you don't need to wait for results of
complicated and expensive controlled clinical trials, but you can experiment
on yourself, observe the results, and adjust accordingly. Myself, I have
enjoyed wearing a Nike FuelBand, which did bring home the difference walking
around talking to people during a day at the office makes in my general
fitness (step count) and well-being (subjective). The Withings WiFi scale has
been huge to track the effects of exercise and a Paleo diet. A normal scale
would have told me that my weight hasn't changed in the 9 months I've changed
those habits. The body impedance read from the Withings scale gives noisy but
overall reliable body-fat data, and that shows me I've exchanged 10 lbs of fat
for as much muscle. I've also noticed that a few days with less than about 5
hours of sleep will send my body fat creeping back up. Invaluable and
extremely reinforcing in a positive way.

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thomasmeagher
I use an iOS app called, Reporter ([http://www.reporter-
app.com/](http://www.reporter-app.com/)). It prompts you with push
notifications to answer a set of custom questions throughout the day- Are you
looking at a screen? Who are you with? Where are you? How many cups of coffee
have you had?

The reports also capture "background" data using the phones sensors: number of
steps, temperature, volume, elevation, phone battery, etc.

Its great for lightweight tracking and all the data can be exported in CSV or
JSON formats. Reporter can definitely help you track sleep hours, food eaten,
and productivity (weight and body fat % can also be captured).

I wrote an article about the 500 reports I've captured over the last 107 days:
[https://medium.com/p/c4454b9d8456](https://medium.com/p/c4454b9d8456)

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blinduck
Thanks! Definitely gonna check this out.

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nreece
I've been tracking my time, finances, health etc. for a little while. Wrote a
blog post about the benefits of 'personal analytics' earlier this year:
[http://www.nilkanth.com/2014/04/11/will-you-take-100-now-
or-...](http://www.nilkanth.com/2014/04/11/will-you-take-100-now-or-200-in-a-
month/)

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crazypyro
Not sure if you have seen it, but every once in a while people post a link to
this guy's blog where he attempts to track a large number of body/life
statistics everyday. The name of the site eludes me though. It was really well
made and designed. Maybe someone can help me....

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strick
[http://feltron.com/](http://feltron.com/)

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crazypyro
There was another one that was posting their stuff for free, although less
detailed. The site was heavily designed.

~~~
npp5048
I think you're talking about [http://aprilzero.com/](http://aprilzero.com/)

