Quantified self – Tracking with a form

This is my daily survey for myself: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeeN80ltyWTP7S0B-Xwrg-ArwHRG6RyvUvJGl0ZpLR3C__Y3g/viewform

There are many reasons for tracking.  A few really good ones come from the book how to measure anything.  Without annotating an entire book, here are a few good reasons to track (also why I keep a notepad):

• A weak measure (or a broad measure) is better than nothing
• Measuring will cause you to give it more attention than otherwise
• With data you can run tests and prove things.
• Neat graphs
• Track milestones to success

I don’t care if your reason is, “all the cool kids do it”.  Here is my guide.

1. Think of any of the following:

• Small habits you want to take up (reading, diet, not chewing your nails
• Milestones for which you can track small daily progress (weight goals)
• Commitments you want to keep up (call my mother every day)
• Routine events you want to keep track of, (skipping lunch, getting enough sleep)
• cool stuff you want to keep track of (coffee, emails sent, bathroom breaks a day)
• Ratings for each day (1-10 how productive was I? How much did I want to leave my desk)
• Future experimental conditions

2. Make a list of questions for yourself.  Yes/No, 1-10 or multiple choice are much better than long answer even though they are helpful to have too.

3. Consider what each answer set will mean.

This means if you want to ask the question “was I productive today” and you find the number 7 every day, what can you do with that information.  Compared to “did I stick to my diet today? 1/0”

4. Start with a small number of questions to get into the habit.

I started with 5 questions.  after a week of answering every day I added more questions.  Now – as can be seen by the survey above I have 20+ questions for daily answering.

5. keep it up

If you find yourself not answering the survey then maybe you should change something.  Reduce questions, make it easier, decide if you care about the survey enough to keep doing it…

6. evaluate

make pretty graphs. Write to me!  Try it out!  send me your graphs!

Meta: this is the better part of 40mins.  Data evaluations and stories will come in a different post.

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