Ask Slashdot: Do You Find Self Tracking Useful Like Stephen Wolfram Does?

New submitter Manzanita writes "The domain of personal analytics, or 'Quantified Self,' is rich with interesting things to measure and many hackers have started projects. But they will only take off if it is sufficiently easy to gather and use the data. Stephen Wolfram has collected and analyzed a lot of his personal data over the last 20 years, but that is far beyond what most of us have the time for. What do you find worth tracking? What is ripe for developing into a business?"

Been tracking real wages going down for 30 years

[elrous0]

Does that count?

Traffic patterns

[uigrad_2000]

There are lots of ways to go for my daily commute. Just because one is faster one day doesn't mean that it always will be.

Yes, I have kept logs for my travel times. I figure that saving a minute a day definitely adds up over the course of a couple of years.

No

[Anrego]

Not generally driven by efficiency, but happiness.

I guess theoretically the data could be used to increase happiness, but I'd rather use my tried and true method of:
- doing things that I know make me happy
- investigating things I suspect will make me happy
- avoiding things which will not make me happy
- maintaining balance in the necessary evils and mitigating negative aspects (career properly balanced between enough money to be happy and job that while I don't dance out of bed in the morning, I generally enjoy).

That said, different things make people happy. Some people are efficiency junkies. Some people are financial junkies (everyone knows at least one obsessive day trader who doesn't make much money, and knows it, but still spends every free moment playing in the stock market).

Re:Not tolerable for the average person

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually had one of these moments.

I wrote a quick perl script that scanned through my IRC logs and graphed how much time I spent on there. I did it mainly as a joke (was also graphing some other channel regulars) but the numbers actually led me to do serious thinking about how I was spending my free time. I still spend a lot of time on IRC (I recognize it as something I enjoy and have little guilt about it) but I've also got into other hobbies as a result.

Re:Not tolerable for the average person

[Anrego]

Generally agree, but I'd throw out there that sometimes enjoyment turns into habit which turns into routine. I agree one shouldn't feel guilty about "wasting" a bunch of time on anything they enjoy.. but I do think it's a good idea to from time to time take a good look at what one spends their free time doing.

I know I've fallen into the whole daily routine hole .. and it's surprisingly hard to recognize / climb out of.

General health

[mrjb]

I find general health worth tracking. For a while, as part of my new year's resolution, I had a spreadsheet to track my body weight and blood pressure as well as to keep a log of everything I ate and drank and the amount I had exercised. I also had columns where I'd score my subjective well-being and stress levels, and one for general comments. Some interesting findings were that, unfortunately, exercise had a positive effect on my blood pressure. I also found that my stress levels strongly correlated with my alcohol intake the night before. Nothing like some first hand experience to learn something. Later on I found out that the hormone cortisol is responsible for those stress levels and yes, released when taking alcohol. I'd hardly call what I did solid science, but it is nice to find out when solid science confirms your own feeble efforts.