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i'm not sure quantified self is as cool as it used to be, but maybe it's just be normalised and "done" to such a degree we forget there's any other way to live lol? let they without a step goal cast the first stone i guess!
i used to sub to fitbit (RIP), and loved my pebble (RIP) round or whatever that thing was called. pebble in particular would tell me "good job for sleeping 16 hours, i hope you can beat it tomorrow!" when i had depression "naps" which should have put me off the entire health tracking enterprise a lot earlier than it did.
i am still sleep tracking curious, though i don't know if sleep as android is helping or there's just an issue too deep for it to be able to help with. it's supposed to wake you up during lighter sleep to mke the transition to wakefulness easier. it is not easier! but snoring more than 30% of the night probably isn't right, as it vaguely warns me every day!
i've always felt a bit uneasy about the existence of paid apps to help you get more data about your own literal body, but i guess maybe it feels less dystopian in paid healthcare systems?
i do unreservedly love self-tracking through note-taking, though my favourites aren't "digested" for me, aka, the interpretation requires me to use my brain and senses to work out what the hell all the information means. i do want to be better and drawing less qualitative conclusions from all this stuff but it's fun working out the next steps!
the closest i get to "digested" through a services like exist and daylio, which pull together data and make fun graphs. daylio is completely manual, exist uses some automation but i still need to manually input mood data into both of them to get the most out of it. does that actually happen? most days not really, so i may cancel my subscription to exist and keep daylio around just for the "it's been x days since y" important day reminders.
i have been doing some version of yearly planning since 2014, and my more granular daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly plans start from maybe 2019? I also have a lost period of busy work on todoist from 2013 to 2022! i found todoist leans way too heavily into capture and doing, but not enough into review aka "what was done, and how do i feel about it?" for me to use it as a personal tool. i've had dalliances with various other apps like obsidian, workflowy and intend, but capacities is where i'm landed as it's opinionated in ways that mean i can't permanently dilly-dally on set up without actually writing stuff, similar to bearblog, my blog hosting platform.
i'm surprised people don't ask me more often: does tracking yourself like that actually change much? i know i feel uncomfortable without the plan even if it rapidly changes or i forget about the details of it. i love the act of charting a course and it has definitely made big differences in some areas of my life.
i do sometimes wish i was the kind of person who was happy to just experience life as it comes, not the kind of person who thinks if they go with the flow they will end up flowing under a truck or other large, fast moving object... but we play with the cards we are dealt.
are you much of a self-measurer? do you know what happened to the quantified self nerds, other than beeminder? let me know!
this is my twelfth post in my writing month challenge, which i decided is "one post for each day of november".
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