Getting Started with

Self-Tracking

The 3 Questions

• What did you do?
  • → What tools do you have access to?
• How did you do it?
  • → Active or passive tracking? For how long?
• What did you learn?
  • → Motivation.
    • Curiosity?
    • Specific improvement in a health or behavior outcome?

Tools

Researching Tools

• Is it designed for you?
• Data export?
• ...and the usual suspects:
  • cost
  • ease of use
  • community
  • etc.

Tools I Use (or Have Used)

• diabetes devices
  • continuous glucose monitor (CGM)
  • fingerstick blood glucose meter
  • insulin pump
• general purpose
  • Daytum
  • your.flowingdata
  • Notational Velocity (nvALT fork) + Simplenote (for syncing)

Tools I Use (or Have Used)

• health-related
  • TargetWeight
  • MonthlyInfo (menstrual cycle)
  • Happiness (mood tracking)
• sleep
  • Sleep Cycle
  • Zeo

Tools I Use (or Have Used)

• money
  • The Birdy
• Tracking + Motivation
  • Beeminder
  • Lift.do
  • Streaks

Tracking Time (and/or Work)

• Passive software watchers:
  • RescueTime
  • Finch
• Active time loggers (many iPhone and Android apps)
• My solution: a Pomodoro timer that automatically logs successful Pomodoros to your.flowingdata (via Twitter)
  • commit to one
  • log everything that is best done with focus

Active vs. Passive Tracking

• Active
  • Paper logging

    (really?!?)

  • Simple spreadsheet or Google form
  • General or specific purpose apps and devices
• Passive
  • FitBit
  • Nike+ FuelBand
  • Last.fm

Caveat Tracker

(Or: Things to Be Careful Of)

• Beginner's mania
  • track ALL the things!
• Can be particularly harmful if you're aiming to change something (health parameter, behavior)
• Self-tracking vs. self-surveillance
• Tracking burnout (and potential solutions)
  • Scheduled time off
  • Limited (initial) tracking period (weeks? months?)
  • Track something fun!

Play with Your Data

• In-app visualization and summary tools
  • e.g., my coffee consumption
  • 
• Download your data and start simple:
  • Bar or line graph
  • Histogram
  • Then get fancy

Data Visualization Tools

• For non-coders:
  • Excel, Numbers, Open Office, etc.
  • Quadrigram
  • Processing (programming lite)
• For coders:
  • R (open-source statistical software; use ggplot2 for graphics)
  • Python:
    • numpy, scipy, matplotlib, pandas
    • Bokeh (ggplot-like, new project)
  • JavaScript:
    • D3 (Data-Driven Documents)
    • Processing.js (for those familiar with Processing)

Examples

Period Trackers

  vs.  

Crazy Correlations

Beeminder

• good for numeric goals
• lose weight, exercise more, smoke less, etc.
• pay them money if you fail at your goal

Beeminding My Running

Beeminding a Noisy Number

Fancy 1

Blood Glucose Heatmaps

Fancy 2

Blood Glucose Violin Plots

Contact Me

• My blog-shaped thing
• E-mail me

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