I made an Apple Watch App and then Shortcut[2] to record by voice how I spend my time and write it to my calendar. The goal was to make it so easy (<10 seconds) to record when and how I spent my time that I would record even every time I went to the bathroom. I did it consistently for a few weeks and just couldn’t bring my self to continue, I was recording only ~40-50 activities per day and I still felt burden by such detailed self examination. What did I learn? That I was playing a lot of Xbox with my son and too much alone. That the free form text I was recording needed categorization and keyword analysis to even hope of being useful and that I really love spontaneity and aimless wandering, curiosity, and learning—but ultimately what a weight it is to do such detailed analysis of one’s own self. I do still some times have dreams of doing something similar with all of my Google data[1] at some point maybe bringing both ideas (recording how I spend every minute and full Google download) together for analysis and self awareness.
