[HN Gopher] What data on myself I collect and why (2020)
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What data on myself I collect and why (2020)
Author : karlicoss
Score : 151 points
Date : 2021-02-06 11:13 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (beepb00p.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (beepb00p.xyz)
| 1996 wrote:
| > How: many shells support keeping timestamps along your commands
| in history.
|
| > E.g. "Remember all your bash history forever".
|
| It would be far more important to get $? to get the rate of error
| of the commands you type (ex: typo) and use that as an indicator
| of poor mental acuity (ex: bad sleep, stress, ...)
| karlicoss wrote:
| Interesting idea! I suspect I'd need to use shell far more
| often than I do currently to get anything conclusive though.
|
| But I guess it's possible to infer error rate even from past
| data by looking at closely spaced commands wish short
| Levenshtein distance.
| 1996 wrote:
| It depends on your workflow. I'd say your approach is
| interesting, but it's mostly driven by availability of the
| data ("searching under a streetlight") except for your sleep
| monitor (however, being an under pillow solution, it's not
| essentially different from the accelerometer data from a
| smart watch)
|
| I would suggest you invert the logic: design objective (ex:
| mental acuity), conclude on what things you want to track
| (ex: time slept, cups of coffee per day, time you drink it,
| errors in shell) and get the data accordingly, spending as
| necessary (ex: smart coffee maker? or maybe a smart plug that
| can let you infer when the machine is being used from the
| wattage drawn)
|
| As for data tricks, L distance is a good one, yet not
| applicable for shell, as it's sensitive to the string length
| so you would need correction. Also, it's missing the
| essential metric: did the command work? Only the error return
| code will give you that.
|
| TLDR: think about what you want, but before that think about
| why you want it. Collecting useless metrics is another form
| of data hoarding.
| karlicoss wrote:
| Yeah, it's a good point, and I'm indeed a bit guilty of
| hoarding data I can't immediately process.
|
| However, the problem with the 'objective first' approach is
| that it's gonna require _a lot_ of data to draw meaningful
| rigorous conclusions from small interventions, so I 'm
| making sure to 'secure' the data first, and then gradually
| process it.
|
| But also, it's a challenge in itself -- I'm automating a
| lot, sharing my system and trying to interoperate with
| existing tools, in the hope that my work can be useful to
| other people and make quantified self easier for them.
| [deleted]
| 1996 wrote:
| > in the hope that my work can be useful to other people
| and make quantified self easier for them
|
| Careful, you risk making a mistake driven by "warm-fuzzy-
| feelings"!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26045256
|
| Anything you do, do it only for yourself.
| simonw wrote:
| Have you considered loading this stuff into SQLite in addition to
| keeping the raw exports in files on disk?
|
| Being able to query your personal data with SQL can get really
| interesting. I've been using it for my own version of a personal
| data warehouse, described here:
| https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous...
| karlicoss wrote:
| Yep! In fact I've tried interoperating with Datasette (e.g.
| shared here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25090643 )
|
| One secret sauce is using 'automatic' caching of data in sqlite
| -- this allows both for faster access and having an additional
| interface for the data as a collateral
| https://github.com/karlicoss/cachew#readme
|
| Still need to polish this a bit, but ultimately hoping to
| properly plug into Datasette, I'm impressed by its data
| exploration capabilities!
| uaas wrote:
| Have you maybe compared Emfit QS to a customer-grade tracker like
| Fitbit directly?
| karlicoss wrote:
| Yeah, I also have a Garmin watch, so wanted to write a script
| to properly compare the data for a while. From the few spot
| checks (e.g. actually comparing 20 select days against my
| manual records)
|
| - heart rate and respiration rate match pretty closely (kind of
| expected I guess)
|
| - Emfit is noticeably more accurate at detecting asleep
| time/awake time. But even so, sometimes emfit doesn't detect
| that you've woken up and just lying in bed with the phone.
|
| - 'sleep phases' at a glance don't match well. Definitely need
| a comparison script to do any stronger claims. In addition, I'm
| still not sure if sleep phases actually mean anything at all
| (for my body, anyway), need to do more analysis about it.
|
| - Emfit detects HRV, which doesn't seem to correlate with any
| of my subjective feelings. However, it does seem to change
| after exercise, for example.
| tomaszs wrote:
| What we need is a law that obligates companies to enable
| scheduled auto export to a given URL
| https://github.com/tomaszs/RightToBeRemembered/blob/main/REA...
| friggeri wrote:
| Over the past few years I've thought about building something
| similar to Home Assistant, but for human centered data and APIs
| vs home centered. Essentially a shared bus on which different
| data sources could be plugged into a standardized format, on
| which people could build dashboards and automations. Never got
| around to doing so, because sidetracked by other projects, but if
| others are interested in teaming up I'd love to work on something
| like that (email in profile if anyone wants to start this)
| t0ughcritic wrote:
| How will you graph it all or draw correlations ?
| karlicoss wrote:
| For graphing: different data requires different
| representations, so I'm figuring out how to do it in my
| dashboard project: https://github.com/karlicoss/dashboard
|
| For dashboard, I started with health related data, because feel
| like other stuff (like 'histogram of my tweets' would be
| amusing, but not super useful immediately), and don't really
| expect any interesting quantified self insights from it.
|
| I'm gradually figuring out 'generic' ways to compute, plot and
| examine correlations, e.g. here
| https://github.com/karlicoss/dashboard/blob/708eb183130de31e...
|
| In general I'd like to have some automatic system which can
| consume all of my data and suggest interesting correlations in
| almost unsupervised way.
|
| (got more notes/possible implementations on it here
| https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/projects/dashboard.html#mtvtn )
| johnwyles wrote:
| I feel like the QS space needs a suite not unlike Home
| Assistant where you can plugin multiple integrations to these
| various services and begin collecting data relatively simply.
| Have you found anything in your travels that is mature enough
| to extend or spend time enhancing?
| karlicoss wrote:
| I still need to incorporate Home Assistant into my
| infrastructure, so not sure if I understand the analogy
| exactly.
|
| But basically I think the answer is 'no' -- there are so
| many different 'APIs' (quoted because often there aren't
| proper apis, you have to scrape, export manually etc.),
| that very few people attempted to unify it.
|
| I have some thoughts on how such system could work like,
| described here https://beepb00p.xyz/sad-
| infra.html#data_mirror and here:
| https://beepb00p.xyz/exports.html . The export tools I
| wrote are the first order approximation of this vision --
| seems robust enough for me so far, so now I'm working on
| connecting it to other tools and looking to cooperate with
| other people.
| neolog wrote:
| I think Altair would make these plots easier.
|
| https://altair-viz.github.io/
| [deleted]
| hluska wrote:
| I got heavy into tracking personal data after spending a week in
| a cardiac unit in July 2017. My own tracking efforts have lead me
| to the absolute best physical shape I have ever been in.
|
| My weight went from 340 pounds (hence the cardiac unit) to 160. I
| have gotten into ultramarathons and lately, triathlons. Strength
| wise, I managed to drop 180 pounds while increasing my strength.
|
| It is amazing what the mind can do if you prime it with the right
| kinds of metrics.
| johnwyles wrote:
| For those browsing here there is a common term for "tracking
| personal data" this called "Quantified Self". If you are
| interested in it as a n00b like I am this will greatly help
| start your search into the hobby. There are a lot of people
| doing it out there and a bunch of outdated or abandoned
| projects. I have yet to find a modern one that does for QS what
| Home Assistant has done for home automation and data
| collection.
| hluska wrote:
| There is an excellent subreddit dedicated to QS -
| /r/QuantifiedSelf/. I learned one heck of a lot from that sub
| when I started out and there are some seriously intelligent
| people there. I've stood on the shoulders of those giants for
| 3.5 years.
| elorant wrote:
| Care to describe what devices/programs you're using?
| hluska wrote:
| Sure, I would love to but I'll warn you that this sounds a
| little fucked up (because it is). I was writing code and was
| two days from launching a startup when my heart went to hell.
| I called our local Healthline and was told to call 911
| because "you are having a heart attack" but I'm a moron so
| decided to drive myself to the hospital.
|
| (I want to start with that story because I got myself into
| that mess by being a moron and figure that it's important you
| don't think this came from a place of intellect - it was 99%
| fear, trauma and trying to overcome the stupid defaults that
| got me into that mess in the first place.)
|
| The first day that I got out of the hospital, I had to move
| back in with my Mom. I decided to go out for a walk and was
| in such a bad place that two little old ladies (one of whom
| had a walker) actually smoked me on the path back to my Mom's
| area. I was remarkably close to killing myself after that
| experience and in all truth, if it wasn't for my daughter
| (she was 18 months old at the time), I would not be here to
| write this. My GP referred me to a psychiatrist.
|
| My psychiatrist is an amazing man and an incredible athlete.
| He suggested two tools that could help me with my cardio
| recovery but that have also been extraordinarily useful for
| my mental health. He recommended a Masimo fingertip oximeter
| and a training band by Polar.
|
| The Polar training band is/was amazing. My first Polar was an
| H7 with an XXL band. Now I use an H10 with a small band. I'm
| not sure that I would choose the Polar again if I was
| starting out now - at the time, my psychiatrist suggested it
| because I could find a band that would fit in between my
| massive gut and the band of fat around my chest that used to
| lead coworkers to tease me about my bra size (I was assigned
| male at birth and continue to identify as male so that was
| not complimentary. It was funny at the time but quite sad to
| think about now.)
|
| Program wise is where this story starts to get a little bit
| fucked up. Remember the first paragraph where I told you that
| I was writing code when my heart went to hell? Well, that
| really fucked me up and I quite literally could not write
| code or even sit in front of a computer. Computers have been
| my biggest love and practically my sole hobby since I was a 7
| year old with a bad stutter. Suddenly, that was replaced with
| the most unbelievable fear whenever I would open up a text
| editor or even sit down at a keyboard.
|
| Consequently, at first I started using mobile apps and ran
| everything through my iPhone. But as I started to recover and
| as my psych meds, therapy and other psychiatric help started
| to kick in a little more, my brain started to come back.
|
| I have a marketing degree and really like data so as my brain
| started to come back, I started noticing correlations between
| cardiac metrics and purchasing activity.
|
| That was strange. In a sense, my capitalism came back and I
| saw an opportunity. But, at the same time, I was a patient
| and doing cardiac rehab/support with ten older adults from my
| Mom's community. This sounds weird to anyone with a healthy
| heart but I'm a firm believer that whoever coined the term 'a
| broken heart' had had a cardiac intervention. It feels
| exactly the same and I had this group of older adults who
| cared enough about me to check in on me, come by and make me
| go for walks or even just sit and watch baseball with me.
| Consequently, I was never able to turn that opportunity into
| a business, but it gave me an idea about some code to write.
|
| So, I started writing my own fitness tracker. At some point I
| might release it because it's been damned good for me. The
| first version is unbelievably sad and I have one hell of a
| lot of trouble reading that code over now. It was somewhere
| between a suicide note and a eulogy for my former self but
| that minimizes how brutally sad some of my variable and
| method names were. My favourite example is fatFuck.name =
| Greg.
|
| That project turned into rehab and through the years I have
| kept adding to it. At first, it was purely about rehabbing my
| brain so I could write code again and maybe graduate to a
| point where I could comfortably refer to myself as user.name
| and heck, maybe even remove the word 'dead' from all my
| method names. But as it has grown, it has turned into a
| really good tool for teaching myself how to think in terms of
| healthy defaults.
|
| Here is where stuff gets really fucked up sounding so if
| you've made it this far, good for you! I don't know if the
| app I wrote has actually helped me or if I hacked myself. I
| am deeply obsessive, to the point that when my psychiatrist
| did my OCD screening, I went home and rewrote my resume
| because the screening materials described my talents better
| than anything else I had ever written. When I build anything,
| I test it obsessively. In this case, to test it, I had to
| live it and 3.5 years later, I have a six pack, no love
| handles, two marathons down and an ultra in my imminent
| future.
|
| Tracking nutrition against performance metrics yielded the
| most powerful results of all. At first, I started by writing
| down what I ate and then tracking my macros. I learned that
| what I thought was 2000 calories was actually closer to 4000
| calories. As I started paying more attention to macros like
| protein and carbohydrates, I found a great feedback loop
| where eating healthier foods resulted in improved athletic
| performance. As my athleticism increased, I was able to work
| harder and then started tracking my moods against that data.
| That created another feedback loop where the better I ate,
| the harder I could exercise and the better I would feel.
|
| At this point, 3.5 years later, I actually have healthy
| defaults. It sounds insane, but I genuinely have healthy
| defaults. The way I eat, the foods I eat and even the
| textures I enjoy have completely shifted around.
|
| The only downside at this point is that I'm rather skeptical
| of most of the wearable industry. I've seen way too many
| metrics that make my capitalism tingle in funny ways. I know
| that I could enhance tracking with other tools but at this
| point, I'm pretty obsessed with reading their privacy
| policies and speaking as a patient instead of an
| entrepreneur, I don't think the marketing industry needs (or
| deserves) this type of data.
|
| I feel like I've missed a lot. At some point, I'll put
| everything together into written form and do a better job of
| this reply. Sorry if this was disjointed!!
| fsflover wrote:
| > I'm pretty obsessed with reading their privacy policies
| and speaking as a patient instead of an entrepreneur, I
| don't think the marketing industry needs (or deserves) this
| type of data.
|
| Perhaps you might like PineTime, the open-source
| smartwatch.
| hluska wrote:
| I really like PineTime and a friend of mine has one.
| Unfortunately, when I tried it on, it's just way too big
| for my wee tiny little wrists. I wish that I had a
| picture to show you - it is genuinely funny.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I read your skepticism of the wearable industry but i'm
| curious what you think about the generic smart watches?
| I've been similarly burnt by numerous wearables but the
| Apple Watch continues to impress, especially the latest
| one. I noticed you dont have mentions of the Apple Watch on
| your side -- is that a personal preference? did you
| evaluate it as a sensor set?
|
| My only qualm with the Apple Watch is the lack of add/on or
| API to actually allow getting data from it in a non-Batch
| manner. Any suggestions?
| hluska wrote:
| I'm a really bad person to ask about watches. At my
| current weight/body fat, my wrist circumference is less
| than 6 inches. Watches, even a woman's size, look
| absolutely goofy on me. Imagine a little kid playing
| dressup and wearing his dad's watch. That's me in a
| watch!! :)
|
| And yes, I am exactly that vain. It's another problem. :)
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| This was a heavy read but, thanks for sharing.
| hluska wrote:
| If you want to talk to someone, my email is in my
| profile. We can keep it totally anonymous if you would
| like or I can give you my phone number if you want to
| talk to a human at 4am.
| HealthNeed wrote:
| I'm used to a cold harsh internet. Your kindness has
| meant a lot to me. Thank you!
| hluska wrote:
| You know friend, I have seen a lot of software developers
| die before their time. While drugs and suicide claim more
| than I want to recall, heart health has claimed a lot of
| amazing people.
|
| If I can be of any help, even the smallest, most fleeting
| bit of help, it's paying back a lot of amazing people who
| looked out for me. Worst case scenario, laugh at me. Best
| case scenario, maybe we can prevent a few premature
| deaths.
|
| My email is in my profile. Feel free to reach out if you
| ever need a human and thanks for your kind words. It's
| scary to talk about this stuff (so I don't do it more
| often) but feedback like this is really encouraging. :)
| elijaht wrote:
| Just wanted to say congrats- I've lost around 15 pounds over
| the course of the year and found that very difficult. I'm sure
| I'm not the only one who has told you this, but you should take
| incredible pride in that.
|
| This question might miss the point because I'm sure a lot of
| the data interacts, but if you had to pick one metric/data
| collection system to track- what would you choose?
|
| Edit: Also- what baseball team :)
| hluska wrote:
| First off friend, 15 pounds is amazing and life changing.
| It's incredibly hard. Every single pound is an accomplishment
| worth celebrating because let's face it, it's a hell of a lot
| more fun gaining weight than losing weight.
|
| As for your question, that has actually changed quite a bit
| over 3.5 years. In the beginning, it was purely about my
| heart because I didn't want to die. Now if I could only track
| one thing, it would be protein volume and amino acid profiles
| versus the intersection of raw athletic performance and
| recovery time. If I want to set a PB, I can usually hack that
| with nutrition. If I want to increase my weekly mileage, I
| can always hack that with nutrition. But at this point, I can
| only do one of the two (or else I poop my pants).
|
| Edit - I forgot the most important question. My two favourite
| baseball teams are the New York Yankees and whoever is
| playing the Boston Red Sox. :)
|
| Edit 2 - I wish that I was joking when I said 'or else I poop
| my pants' but I'm not.
|
| Edit 3 - If I just wanted to create a baseline for how fit I
| am, I would likely use either burpees per minute or perhaps
| how far I can walk on my hands. Walking on my hands is a very
| good predictor of everything from swimming to running
| performance. Or maybe I'd use how many pukers I can bang out
| in two minutes? A single puker is one chin up followed by one
| burpee, both with perfect form. If I ever want to train
| people, I should come up with a better name than a puker but
| hey, I talk about pooping my pants on HN so what have I got
| to hide?? :)
| texasbigdata wrote:
| If possible, can you share how the non-mass metrics have
| trended? RHR, HRV, VO2 Max, respiratory rate, etc, whatever you
| got.
|
| Had a smaller health concern as well and did about half the
| work you have...wondering how much value comes from being able
| to jog a few miles to completing a distance event. Empirically,
| of course and ignoring any psychological / self-worth
| principles: on a effort per heart improvement metric, how much
| is that juice worth the squeeze, because running a triathlon
| seems very very hard.
| hluska wrote:
| First off, triathlons kind of suck. Everything about them is
| bad and if given a choice, I would only run. Thing is, I have
| a very small build and when I was over 300 pounds, even
| walking was a lot of impact. Running was impossible - I
| simply did not have the dynamic strength to run with any kind
| of form. So, I got into biking and swimming as ways to
| improve my cardiac health without the constant pounding.
| Problem is, I hate swimming or more accurately, I don't like
| drowning. So if I don't have events to claim, I won't do it.
|
| I'm still a significantly better runner and don't think I'll
| ever graduate up to a full Ironman. I have never even done an
| official triathlon, only self measured events. But having
| biking and swimming as part of my fitness package have been
| incredibly valuable. Swimming, for example, has done amazing
| things for my lung capacity (though again, it's not the
| swimming, it's my aversion to drowning). :)
|
| Now I'll give you some raw numbers.
|
| My resting heart rate has gone from a weekly average of over
| 90 to a weekly average of under 50. Simultaneously, my heart
| rate variability increased significantly. Raw numbers with
| HRV are a little misleading since it varies so much, but I am
| 43 years old. At the beginning of my odyssey (I had just
| turned 40), I had the HRV of the average 70 year old. Today,
| my HRV is way above average for a 20 year old.
|
| Oxygen saturation is interesting. I went through a battle
| with covid in December and the nurse practitioner commented
| that she had never seen anyone as sick as me with such a high
| oxygen saturation level. When she asked me how I cared for
| myself, I told her that I had been working on speed all fall,
| doing sprints and running hills. Her reply was that she was
| going to start running up hills everyday on her way home from
| work.
|
| My cardiologist talked me out of trying to actively track and
| monitor VO2 max. He explained that while it's a decent
| metric, I'm unlikely to be accurate enough at home to gain
| anything from it. Back when I used to get regular stress
| tests, I had a good number every 3, 6 and then 12 months. At
| my current fitness level, there isn't a particularly good
| reason to give me a stress test other than personal curiosity
| and the really fit, incredibly competitive health care worker
| who actually chirps me out after my stress tests. Next
| official marathon, I'm beating his ass by thirty minutes.
|
| Mind if I share something that both my cardiologist and
| psychiatrist have told me? I'm not the typical cardiac
| patient. Instead, I'm deeply obsessive to the point that
| after my OCD screening, I went home to rewrite my resume as
| the screening did a far better job of explaining my talents
| than anything I had ever written. There is no particular need
| to take things as far as I have. I'm just 'special' and not
| necessarily in good ways. A lot of my fitness has come out of
| fear and if I could spare you anything, it would be to spare
| you that fear.
|
| Heart problems are emotionally hard. If you want to talk to
| someone relatively young who has been there too, my email
| address is on my profile. We can keep everything anonymous if
| you'd like to feel more open to talk. I've been through a lot
| and friend, I've seriously got your back.
| spekcular wrote:
| Regarding the accuracy of home VO2 max measurements, Garmin
| claims to have a watch that's 95% as accurate as a formal
| VO2 max test (with oxygen mask on a treadmill). I would be
| surprised if other good brands (e.g. Apple watch) are much
| worse.
|
| If you want to go low-tech, max distance run in 12 minutes
| is a good proxy; see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_test.
| hluska wrote:
| It has been a few years so maybe the technology has
| improved. My cardiologist explained that the Garmin
| technology only gets that level of accuracy if their
| calculation of max heart is accurate. With my conditions,
| he felt that my max heart rate calculation would be off
| by far enough to make it next to impossible to optimize
| based off of that data.
|
| I'm in significantly better shape now. The next time I
| see him, I'll ask about VO2 max again - it's the only
| metric that my metric obsessed triathlon/running friends
| talk about that I don't have a timeline for.
|
| Now all I need are wrists big enough to wear an actual
| adult sized watch.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| You note "How: sensor syncs with phone app via Bluetooth"
|
| Did you write this app custom? Are you selling the app? Any
| open-sources suggestions for a "concentrator app" like this?
| hluska wrote:
| I don't want to make money off of this. Rather, it's more of
| a service to other people. When I was in a dark place, a lot
| of amazing, beautiful, selfless people brought me into their
| lives and made me feel like a human again. I have trouble
| with the thought of selling anything.
|
| I did write the iphone app but it is quite simply the worst
| fucking mess of code I have ever written. I wasn't doing very
| well in the brain when I wrote it and holy hell, it needs a
| lot of love. I just wanted to be able to dump raw numbers and
| work with them on my own, but somewhere along the lines, I
| became really really really dumb. I'll fix it and let you
| have it if you want. You can do whatever the heck you want
| with it.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I would love that! I'm happy to clean it up. I think the
| "concentration" is the worst problem in everything. There
| is so much sensor data around the house. Sometimes I use an
| RPI as a concentrator, but that obviously limits the
| audience.
|
| A smartphone app (iphone or android) would at least reach
| half the world. If you have a github/etc link (now or
| later) for others to fork off, that would be awesome! You
| could post it on this thread.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > My weight went from 340 pounds (hence the cardiac unit) to
| 160.
|
| From one Internet Stranger to another, DAMN, good job! OCD or
| not, losing close to 200 pounds is a hell of an accomplishment.
| I'm down just a bit over 50 since May 2020, with an eventual
| goal of <185. It is also heart issues that inspired me (though
| my cardiologist says my symptoms are actually benign, I get
| PVCs so often that they make me anxious, which causes more
| PVCs, and so on). Being in my mid-40s with a BMI closing in on
| 40 and anticipating an early demise was very motivational.
| Still hard sometimes to be good, but every day is a new effort.
|
| I'm just seriously impressed to hear of your success. It's
| inspiring!
| hluska wrote:
| Friend, dropping 50 since May 2020 is amazing! You're kicking
| ass. PVCs are a damned scary feeling - that fluttering is
| something that I would have gladly gone my entire life
| without experiencing.
|
| I was basically where you are, BMI and I and friend, I
| believe in you completely. However, you're going through PVCs
| and dealing with that anxiety so I'm going to share something
| a little dark. I really firmly believe that whoever coined
| the term 'a broken heart' to describe the loss of love had
| had a heart condition too. They are so close, emotionally and
| even physically.
|
| Point being, you're going through a lot and if you need a
| friend to talk to, my email is in my profile. If you're
| anything like me, waking up in the middle of the night (4am
| was my hour) might be pretty rough. I'll give you my phone
| number and if you need, call me at 4am and we'll have a talk.
|
| I believe in you so much that if you're interested, I'll hold
| off on qualifying for the Boston marathon and wait for you.
| Even if you don't want to run it with me, come to Boston.
| We'll celebrate how far we have both come.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| That is incredible. Good job on you, truly!
|
| I'm usually quite skeptical on the whole quantified self thing,
| but if it fits your personality type it can be a big help to
| get you started at least. I'm old fashioned, I track my weight
| and workouts in a paper notebook and periodically enter my
| weight into a spreadsheet so I can spot any upward or downward
| trends.
|
| Do you think you could continue your new lifestyle if you
| ceased tracking all that data?
| hluska wrote:
| I was very worried about that when I started but strangely,
| over the last 3.5 years, I have developed what I call
| 'healthy defaults'. I notice this the most with how I shop
| for groceries and eat in restaurants. Through tracking
| things, I have been able to form some very strong habits.
| Ultimately (for me at least), getting into shape and staying
| fit is about constantly keeping the habit and maintaining
| healthy defaults.
|
| Exercise is another area that has just become habitual. It
| started off as something I really hated but as I got more fit
| and started optimizing my nutrition, I got into an incredible
| feedback loop. The better I eat, the harder I can exercise,
| the more fun I have and the better I feel after. That creates
| a really strong feedback loop with my productivity - I can
| get more done now in six hours fit than I could accomplish in
| 10 hours fat.
|
| I think it would be very hard for me to go back but it's
| worth trying out. I might give up the app for a few months
| and see what I can do without it. If I've merely swapped
| addictions, it's positive (for me) but my tracking regiment
| is bad.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I've found that forming habits is the key as well. At the
| start you need all the help you can get until whatever you
| do becomes part of you. I didn't have such a long way to go
| as you did, but having had a BMI of well over 25 I know it
| can take you a while to get to where you want to be.
|
| If you told me three years ago I would be able to lift
| almost two and a half times my body weight, I wouldn't have
| believed you. I'm no star athlete, but I'm having fun doing
| it. That's what matters.
|
| Habits and enjoyment.
| hluska wrote:
| Two and a half times your body weight?? Holy crap friend,
| from a BMI of over 25 to that??? My hat is off to you -
| that's absolutely amazing.
|
| Is that a deadlift?
|
| I'm 100% with you - it is all habits and enjoyment. It's
| so hard to grasp that until you've been through it and
| somehow I feel like we lose a lot of amazing athletes
| every year because of that disconnect. I don't know but
| when I see someone with a BMI of over 25, I see
| incredible athleticism. Heck, at that point, life is
| exercise.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Yeah, that's a deadlift, by far my best lift.
|
| I forgot who said it but the quote says "I've never seen
| a fat guy with small calves". I've tried to see how many
| times I could squat 60kg, I stopped at 28 because the
| burn was just too much. And that's just one set, I can
| rack it and walk away, you can't if that weight is you.
| hluska wrote:
| You're a really good person and I am enjoying this
| conversation. Thanks for sharing this - it's really cool
| how much we have in common.
|
| My former fat boy calves are my biggest ally as a runner.
| Running hilly courses is particularly fun - traditionally
| fit people can usually beat me on flats but I am very
| fast on hills. Heck, I was once big enough that every
| single day was hill day.
|
| 28 reps at 60kg is amazing. I'm going to try that out - I
| like deadlifts too and that sounds like one heck of a lot
| of fun.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Congratulations! What you accomplished takes some serious
| discipline. Even with metrics it couldn't have been easy.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| This is ... the future.
|
| I am going to start off with a few this week - well done and good
| luck !
| andrewnc wrote:
| I love the idea of personal data analysis. In fact, I recently
| wrote a book with that premise called "Everyday Data Science".
|
| I just wrote about it in another thread, but it seems relevant to
| the discussion here.
|
| I definitely agree that you can really take control of your life
| with a bit of data and some not so fancy analysis.
|
| In the book I shared the story of an old professor of mine that
| tracked a personal health marker from yearly screenings. The
| threshold for concern was "4 ng/ml". His numbers were always
| right around 1. However, there was a super noticeable trend up to
| 2.5 and 3. The doctors all waved it off because it was still
| below the magic "4" number.
|
| However, when he showed them the graph of historic data, they
| rushed him to a specialist and detected (and removed) cancer.
|
| I think data collection and personal analysis for day-to-day
| stuff is vital and fascinating. Thanks for sharing :)
| karlicoss wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Yep, one of the motivations for me is learning & establishing
| health baseline. For example, with blood tests it's unlikely
| that I'll be able to infer any interesting correlations (at the
| very least because you can't do them every day, with the
| exception of glucose/ketones perhaps). However I'll know what
| is 'normal' for my body and if something breaks, hopefully will
| have some clues.
| WeepinStolzham wrote:
| Never go Full Stephen Wolfram.
| h0p3 wrote:
| Just wanted to say, I'm a fan of your site (even directing my
| offspring to think about your work). `/salute`
| WephenSolfram wrote:
| Never go full Stephen Wolfram.
| fjfaase wrote:
| In that past ten years, I have been recording my daily activities
| in Moleskine daily planners. I am using the small size daily
| planner with one page per day. I always carries it with me. The
| main motivation to start doing it, was to fight the feeling that
| time is going faster and faster. It takes me about a quarter of
| an hour per day. I do not record every things, just the things I
| think a worth recording. I do track all of my movements. I have
| thought about recording everything in a database, but never come
| to it. For some time, I have been tracking my travels with Google
| Earth. The last year, I have started doing this again for for
| walking and biking 'trips' I make. I do not do it for any
| purpose, but now that I have started this habit, I am afraid I
| will stick to it. In some occasions, it has been of some resolve
| some questions, but in other instances, my notes where not
| detailed enough. I do use my personal website to track certain
| events. I wonder whether it is worth collecting large amount of
| data and thinking that in the future it might be of some benefit.
| If it is worth investing some energy now to record it in an
| organized manner, it might be of some use in the future.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I want to do something similar, and load it in a place like
| snowflake. I say "like" snowflake because its annoying that they
| have a $25 a month minimum, otherwise it's already nicely suited
| to be a personal data warehouse!
| simonw wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I've been building my version of
| this on top of SQLite: it's incredibly cheap. All you need is a
| writable disk somewhere. I started with a $5/month VPS.
| benmanns wrote:
| BigQuery charges per query and for storage which might work for
| you. Where did you see the $25 minimum for Snowflake?
| harporoeder wrote:
| BigQuery or Snowflake seem rather extreme for anything I
| might consider personal data. Even logging as many things as
| in the article a local sqlitedb and your preferred backup
| solution would get pretty far. It might be easier to setup
| nice dashboards with a cloud product though.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| I can see the appeal. Those services might be designed for
| petabytes of data analysis, but the flip side is that you
| have something ready to go with little maintenance.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| You can pretty easily store most of these data in any database.
| Don't need something like Snowflake - postgres stock can handle
| about any analytics queries, especially if you're not writing
| too much.
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