I can definitely relate to the frustration! It's been years since I've worked on the product side myself, but for what it's worth we do allow equipping up to 2 streak freezes now. I believe you can also restore a lost streak as an in-app purchase; I've never done so myself.
Thanks for sharing - your story reads like a movie script! I'm lucky enough to not be worried about my health (yet) but maybe I should start tracking variables other than bodyweight. I'll definitely be coming back to your post for more inspiration.
OP here. Great question! I've never journaled or recorded emotional variables partly because that takes much more time and partly because they're harder to analyze.
For example, I could record stress on a 1-10 scale. Do I just put 11 for a day of unprecedented stress? Or should 10 always represent the global maximum thus far? More generally, how do I ensure consistency with myself?
I do vividly remember the stressful times in my life and can see their effects in the blog post's charts. I figured it's probably best to preserve at least some of my own privacy, although I did touch on this a bit when discussing music.
All that said, I have friends who journal and I might end up trying it too out of fear of losing data (even if it's squishy). Maybe once a week would be a sustainable cadence?
I've been attempting to solve this as well. I think stress is particularly difficult to measure as a simple number, as there are multiple forms of stress. For me, I've noticed urgency (stress on time), difficulty (stress on cognition), uncertainty (stress on confidence), and guilt (stress on emotions) make up my 'stress matrix'. I'm often able to identify the key strain during stream of consciousness, but only once I've made the conscious effort to backtrace.
I'm also a musician, and ironically, I will often increase my total stress levels by procrastinating certain tasks, using an instrument as my weapon of distraction. Sometimes this has instigated negative feedback loops, causing me to avoid playing for an extended period.
So my plan is to allocate a few minutes in the beginning and at the end of my day where I will reflect on the previous and upcoming cycle, including tasks and goals. Here I will have a -1, 0, 1 flag where -1 is "I am stressed," 0 is "I am relaxed," and 1 is "I am excited." I can either set these flags for an entire period (hour, day, week) or I can set them per object (task, goal). The default state is 0, as I'm more likely to set a flag if I'm experiencing emotion in either direction. Importantly, I will also set these flags retrospectively; so in the morning, I might flag a task as -1, but in the evening, it might be +1.
There are some useful data points here that I should be able to achieve with minimal friction. 1) how often am I stressed or excited? 2) how often can I easily identify the source(s) of emotion? 3) how consistent are my emotional flags over periods of time?
I also wonder what quantifiable data must exist in any form of extended journaling that can be unlocked via NLP or simpler heuristics. When I'm excited, do I tend to use more or less punctuation? When I'm stressed, does it take me longer to complete a journal entry?
Thanks for the inspiration to jot these thoughts down. They've been lingering in my head for awhile.
Interesting approach! It'd be great to hear how it ends up working out for you.
That's also a great point about NLP etc. I was kinda hoping that my "Average daily log entries" would show some kind of trend like that, but I guess it was too simplistic. It really might be worth recording journal data and just assuming that the tools for analysis will catch up later.
Author here! I do track my gym workouts and finances using other apps - I just figured that that's pretty common and less worth mentioning. Those are both very quantifiable, so it's relatively easy to measure progress.
I'd probably improve faster by taking music lessons, but improvement is really a secondary goal after having fun. For what it's worth, I do still get some feedback from bandmates and my own ear - recording your own playing and trying to mix it into something presentable makes it painfully clear what needs work!
Author here! I had searched around but didn't find any existing app that matched my requirements. A few that immediately come to mind:
1. I have sole ownership of the data
2. The data is stored in an easily parsable format (TSV)
3. Duplicating a recent activity takes one tap
4. Pie and area charts are displayed in the app
My app is open source and available on GitHub[1] for any Android developer to compile for themselves, but if there's enough interest I can also get around to packaging it up for the Play Store/F-Droid/etc.
> I can make everyday plans with greater precision, knowing exactly how many minutes I’ll need to shower or drive or buy groceries or do laundry or water the plants.
I used to think like this, I tracked how fast different routes took to work to optimize and decide. I optimized where I put what during laundry to make it less bothersome, and so on. But do you need 10 years of this? For me, after doing it a couple of times I basically got it.
A shower, I don't need to track it to know I can do it between 2-15 minutes. Or less, if I REALLY need to get going.
I've also built my apps, and used pre-built ones. But each time I've stopped, I haven't really missed it.
Counting in my head works too. When I aim to finish after 120 seconds (2 minutes) I'll wind up taking 300 seconds (5 minutes), but that's better than taking three times that long.
Right, you certainly don't need to track yourself for 10 years to figure out how long a shower takes!
A rough analogy: you can figure out from your HP bar how much damage you take from each hit, and it's probably worth doing so if you're going to be fighting these same baddies forever and have no other way of knowing, but the HP bar also serves other important purposes related to resource management: it gives you a sense of how you're doing overall, and it constantly reminds you that HP management is even worth caring about.
Would you define yourself as being anywhere on the autism spectrum?
Sorry for the very personal question. You certainly don’t owe me an answer. I just find it fascinating how some people care a lot about tracking their lives and others (like me) do not. I’m curious how it relates to personality types.
Hmm I've always been hesitant to self-diagnose stuff like that, partly because it feels like potentially trivializing others' experiences.
I basically see myself as a garden variety introvert. I suppose that in an informal sense, I might be further along the spectrum than the median person off the street, but then again I suspect the same is true of many other software engineers - especially HN readers.
I'm fascinated by inter-personal differences in sleep patterns. Could you dive more deeply into what you learned about your sleep habits? For example:
1. How did you defined it - horizontal/unconscious/etc
2. Whether there are any 'outcome variables' it seems to cause
3. Whether your needs changed by age, or exercise level, or previous sleep duration (ie 'sleep debt')
Thanks for doing this! I always find them fascinating
1. For tracking purposes, I assume that I fall asleep immediately after putting my phone down. That's generally true enough, although sometimes I do find myself still lying awake and having to add a "Not sleeping" entry before putting my phone down again (for hopefully the last time of the night)! After my alarm goes off or as soon as I'm otherwise conscious enough to do anything, I mark "Sleep" as over.
2. It's not surprising that lack of sleep can get you feeling down. But since starting to track myself, I've been more conscious of the fact that whenever I'm feeling down, it's almost always after a night or two of bad sleep! I now take sleep a lot more seriously and ask myself first whether I've been sleeping well whenever I'm feeling down (as opposed to blaming other people, etc). This is especially important since I tend to ignore what my body tries to tell me.
3. The 7.5 hour average has remained roughly constant month over month for the entire decade. It's hard to say how much of an effect that other variables like exercise have since I always aim for 7-8 hours regardless. I do notice that if I get like 4 hours one night, I'll end up sleeping more than usual for the next night or two.
I see that you released it (thanks!), any idea why it starts to install, the progress bar goes to end and then it shows message that the app was not installed? Without bothering you too much with logs and stuff, if it's even available somewhere for not yet installed apps. Android 10 on Galaxy S9+.
I can definitely relate to the frustration! It's been years since I've worked on the product side myself, but for what it's worth we do allow equipping up to 2 streak freezes now. I believe you can also restore a lost streak as an in-app purchase; I've never done so myself.