Quantified self or self-tracking is a way for someone to generate data of their life to improve themself. By having a lot of data, you can make an analysis and provide you insightful information.
In today’s world, there are many devices and software for us to gather and collect all of this data.
These are the metrics that I’ve been personally collected as a part of the quantified self.
Finance
Most people have a problem with their finance. They didn’t know where their money is going, how much they earn, and how much money did he need to sustain their life.
For finance, I’m using YNAB. It’s a budgeting tool, and it’s required you to add manually. They have an automatic bank transaction, but it doesn’t support yet in Malaysia.
The step is simple but troublesome. You need to enter every transaction that happens every day in your life.
💡 Quick Tips: I rounded my amount for every transaction for easier management. For example: If I purchased a book for RM16.40 and I paid RM20 cash. I'll enter this transaction as RM17.
Most of us have multiple bank account, so it's better to track all of them. By the end of the month, you can see how much you spend money in each category, and you can start to question yourself.
- Did I overspend money on food?
- Did I spend more than I earn?
- Rent is taking 30% of our income. Can we reduce it?
Try to automate some of the transaction entry. Usually, I’ve set a monthly schedule transaction for fixed monthly commitment (rent, parent, internet, saving).
I’ve automated some of my financial tasks, I may write a new article for financial automation.
Health
Is it possible to measure or track our health? Absolutely.
What I track in health?
Weight
I weight myself every morning after I woke up. Don’t forget to take a pee first before you’re into a weight scale.
What tool I’m using for this?
I used the Xiaomi Smart Scale and Gyroscope. Xiaomi Smart scale provides me weight and amount of body fat. I don’t think it's so accurate, but its good enough to observe the data. The best thing, it’s automatically added to my apple health.
It’s great to see the pattern for the entire year. It will provide much insight if you combine all these variables in one place.
For example Weight and Place
Why my weight spike in location A instead of B?
Sleep
How do you track asleep when you’re sleeping? It’s by wearing a wearable device. There is a lot of wearable devices to track sleep nowadays. I’m using an Apple Watch to track my sleep. Its a bit uncomfortable at first, but you will get used over time.
It helps to provide information on how well-rested my sleep. Am I having enough deep sleep? How is my sleep pattern? Heat bpm?
After several months of doing this, I realized that sleep affects my productivity and mood.
Walk
You tracked your movement the entire day. I tracked this using my watch and phone.
It’s recommended to reach 8,000 - 10,000 every day, but as you can see, I rarely hit them 🤦🏻♂️.
I’m a remote worker, so I need to make an extra effort to move a lot 😂.
Mood
Interesting insight. It shows I much happier in Terengganu but more energy in Cyberjaya.
It’s fun to see how mood affects your work. Usually, I’ll record my mood once daily. Unfortunately, there is no automatic way to get this data; I need to enter it manually.
Workout
I’m using Apple Watch apps to track it. It’s easy, and they have a lot of activities. I’m not so active in fitness. I like to do running or HIIT.
Productivity
Track my screen time
I installed rescue time on my MacBook. What this software will do is track your computer activity. You can see all the data on the dashboard.
What’s next
Food
I’m going to use Lose It to track my calorie intake. Most people recommend using FitnessPal, but the design it’s too cluttered for me.
It’s so annoying if one of the foods doesn't have any information about calories.
Alternative way: Use services like gyroscope X food tracking or hire other health coaches to provide nutrition details on every picture food you send.
Glucose
I’m curious about how blood glucose affects workout or in reverse.
Sleep
I saw there is new hardware to track sleep using a ring. Its called Oura ring. Maybe If I have an extra budget, I would love to buy it. Perhaps it much better to wear a collar during sleep rather than an apple watch.
Reference
Let me know if you have any other way to collect all this metric.