> I can make everyday plans with greater precision, knowing exactly how many minutes I’ll need to shower or drive or buy groceries or do laundry or water the plants.
I used to think like this, I tracked how fast different routes took to work to optimize and decide. I optimized where I put what during laundry to make it less bothersome, and so on. But do you need 10 years of this? For me, after doing it a couple of times I basically got it.
A shower, I don't need to track it to know I can do it between 2-15 minutes. Or less, if I REALLY need to get going.
I've also built my apps, and used pre-built ones. But each time I've stopped, I haven't really missed it.
Counting in my head works too. When I aim to finish after 120 seconds (2 minutes) I'll wind up taking 300 seconds (5 minutes), but that's better than taking three times that long.
Right, you certainly don't need to track yourself for 10 years to figure out how long a shower takes!
A rough analogy: you can figure out from your HP bar how much damage you take from each hit, and it's probably worth doing so if you're going to be fighting these same baddies forever and have no other way of knowing, but the HP bar also serves other important purposes related to resource management: it gives you a sense of how you're doing overall, and it constantly reminds you that HP management is even worth caring about.
Would you define yourself as being anywhere on the autism spectrum?
Sorry for the very personal question. You certainly don’t owe me an answer. I just find it fascinating how some people care a lot about tracking their lives and others (like me) do not. I’m curious how it relates to personality types.
Hmm I've always been hesitant to self-diagnose stuff like that, partly because it feels like potentially trivializing others' experiences.
I basically see myself as a garden variety introvert. I suppose that in an informal sense, I might be further along the spectrum than the median person off the street, but then again I suspect the same is true of many other software engineers - especially HN readers.
I'm fascinated by inter-personal differences in sleep patterns. Could you dive more deeply into what you learned about your sleep habits? For example:
1. How did you defined it - horizontal/unconscious/etc
2. Whether there are any 'outcome variables' it seems to cause
3. Whether your needs changed by age, or exercise level, or previous sleep duration (ie 'sleep debt')
Thanks for doing this! I always find them fascinating
1. For tracking purposes, I assume that I fall asleep immediately after putting my phone down. That's generally true enough, although sometimes I do find myself still lying awake and having to add a "Not sleeping" entry before putting my phone down again (for hopefully the last time of the night)! After my alarm goes off or as soon as I'm otherwise conscious enough to do anything, I mark "Sleep" as over.
2. It's not surprising that lack of sleep can get you feeling down. But since starting to track myself, I've been more conscious of the fact that whenever I'm feeling down, it's almost always after a night or two of bad sleep! I now take sleep a lot more seriously and ask myself first whether I've been sleeping well whenever I'm feeling down (as opposed to blaming other people, etc). This is especially important since I tend to ignore what my body tries to tell me.
3. The 7.5 hour average has remained roughly constant month over month for the entire decade. It's hard to say how much of an effect that other variables like exercise have since I always aim for 7-8 hours regardless. I do notice that if I get like 4 hours one night, I'll end up sleeping more than usual for the next night or two.
I see that you released it (thanks!), any idea why it starts to install, the progress bar goes to end and then it shows message that the app was not installed? Without bothering you too much with logs and stuff, if it's even available somewhere for not yet installed apps. Android 10 on Galaxy S9+.
