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I don't make my data available to the public like this, but I've gotten a lot of value out of having detailed data to look at from my day. For instance, I use RescueTime to measure my productivity, Misfit to count my steps and measure the amount of movement I have throughout the night while sleeping, Spotify + last.fm scrobbling to capture my music listening habits, and a simple csv stored in Dropbox to track my caffeine intake (0 calorie energy drinks and coffee, mostly) and another to track medication intake and yet another to track water intake (in 8 oz increments) and one more to track alcohol consumption (usually measured in glasses of wine or 12 oz bottles of beer, but sometimes shots :P ). I used to track my mood periodically throughout the day, but this was of pretty limited usefulness, so I stopped. What can I learn from this? - One energy drink increases my productivity by about 20% as measured by RescueTime over the span of around 3.5 hours.
- Working from a coworking space rather than my home office increases my productivity by approximately 25%.
- If I consume any caffeine after 3:30pm or so, or more than one glass of one or more than two beers after 9pm, my quality of sleep suffers (evidenced by greater movement throughout the night and not feeling as rested the following morning).
- If I walk more than 10,000 steps in a day, I generally sleep better (~10% less movement).
- If I drink less than five 8oz cups of water throughout the day, my productivity and mood are lessened.
- If I drink greater than ten 8oz cups of water throughout the night, I'm much more likely to wake at around 3am to go to the bathroom, which causes general grogginess through the first half of the following day.
- Listening to music with lyrics before ~1pm decreases my productivity by around 15% (instrumental/atmospheric rock before 1pm with BPM greater than 100 increases my productivity by about 5%). These may seem like inconsequential things, but I'd have never realized those things about myself without the data to back it up (or at least, it would have taken a long while and a good memory). More importantly, let's say you're trying to lose weight. Without some way of quantifying your current state, it's impossible to know that you're making progress. That's why we have bathroom scales. Does it not then follow that if you're trying to increase the amount of activity you get throughout your day or be more productive or really anything, you need to be able to measure it? |