[physcab]

How would tracking all this be useful to you? Why would you pay for it? The reason why tracking is more common in business is that knowing the metrics gives you guidance on how to be profitable. Therefore you can optimize all your metrics to paint that picture. With personal analytics, there isn't one thing that delivers that kind of ROI, even if we're talking about the investment from inputing the data alone.

[ivankirigin]

People talk about "getting to an a-ha moment". I think this is really relevant here. It's one reason services focus on visualization: it looks like you have something right away.

I would focus things around a goal, and make clear that the service will help you stick to it over time. The benefit is over time and not immediate, so I think you're point is really valid.

It also depends on the quality of the insight. Maybe you can tell from my email and social media patterns when I'm sleeping, and make recommendations a few moments after you auth.

[nomedeplume]

The idea is that we're simple stimulus-response machines running along the treadmill of life, with our day to day consciousness, identity & lifestyle choices dictated by our fuzzy pattern-matching ability; we are subconsciously conditioned by rewards unconscious to us, and we live our life by unconscious heuristics designed to maximize progress towards such rewards.

If we could better understand what we actually enjoy then we could design a lifestyle that maximizes periods of real well-being and enjoyment. Happiness is a loaded word but wouldn't you contend that the modernity, and all the alienation contrived therein with life reduced to private experiences, could be improved for all by an optimization of private experience?

[bckmn]

Yep. I created a system that addressed 3 or 4 out of these 6 points a few months ago, but struggled with adoption and monetization simply because it's hard to find a tangible use/benefit from seeing these trends as an individual. One thing I am/was considering is the value of comparing your data to that of others.

[ivankirigin]

Try http://www.sanebox.com/ and notice how they make it social in comparing your performance to others.

[ejain]

Personal analytics can help you decide e.g. if those expensive supplements you started taking last month do in fact improve your sleep, or if you burn more calories at the gym than when you go for a free walk. Sometimes the effects are obvious enough, but often life is too messy (and your thinking to wishful) to reach a correct conclusion without some help.

[icebraining]

I wonder if you can really reach a worthy conclusion. Because life is so messy, it seems hard to control for the thousands of other factors that could affect what you measure.