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Quantified Life Introduction

Productivity

Back in the mid-80’s and throughout the 1990’s, I was slowly introduced to the concepts of time management. As my career began to ascend, I became increasingly aware of how important it was to capture all the things I needed to do in one place so nothing would fall through the cracks. In those early days I used a a Day Runner organizer . If you’re close to my age (56 as of this writing), you probably used a similar tool. 

While physical organizers were great for capturing the commitments you’d made and the tasks you had to do…they weren’t too good for much else. 

Sure, you could store phone numbers and other contact information in them. You had a list of holidays, and could add birthdays and such. But that was the sum total of what they could do. It wasn’t until smartphones came along that we could start doing a whole lot more. Essentially, computers were shrunk down and put into your pocket. And over time those pocket computers started to gain attributes and features allowing them to track more of what you do. 

My iPhone can track how many steps I take in a day. For a long time I wore a pedometer to do that. But the pedometer had to be reset everyday. That meant I had to record the daily results somewhere if I wanted to keep them. Eventually I graduated to a FitBit which allowed my data to be sent to their app. That saved me when I forgot to record my steps for the day…and it gave me a single place to check on my progress. 

We don’t need to get into a discussion of whether any of these devices record the actual number of physical steps you took in a day. The more important issue is how one day compares to another for you. Some days you’ll take more steps, other days you’ll take fewer. The point is to try and correlate your steps to positive (or negative) outcomes in other areas. 

For instance, I know when I have a string of days when I get more steps, my weight is less of a challenge. That’s irrespective of what I eat. It’s pretty obvious when I burn more calories, the number I take in has less impact than on those days when I’m essentially sedentary. 

It’s not rocket science, but with the tools we have available, we can do so much more! 

In fact, I’m going to be writing an entire series about my Quantified Life and the different things I track. Then we’ll delve into how those things correlate. I’ll also talk about some of the tools out there that can do some of the heavy lifting for you.  

By way of introduction to the Quantified Life, what are some of the things that I currently track? 

  • Time 
  • E-F-M (Energy, Focus, Motivation) 
  • Exercise 
  • Steps 
  • Stand Hours 
  • Active Energy 
  • Resting Energy 
  • Sleep 
  • Blood Sugar 
  • Heart Rate 
  • Blood Pressure 
  • Weight 
  • Body Fat % 
  • Body Mass Index (BMI) 
  • Waist Circumference 
  • Calories consumed 
  • Carbohydrate calories Consumed 
  • Fat calories consumed 
  • Protein calories consumed 
  • Water consumed 
  • Sodium consumed

I know that looks like a lot of things to track, but there are just a couple of apps I use, most of them track several different factors simultaneously with very little data entry. In fact, a couple of the items are recorded automatically with the aid of technology. 

For instance, I wear an Apple Watch. Yes, it’s partly because I’m a huge nerd, but I’ve always worn a watch. With the advent of the Apple Watch I was able to bring a bunch of capabilities to my wrist that previously resided on my phone. Not having to take my phone out of my pocket has been a huge boon to me.

While I use my watch a ton, probably the most important feature is something I don’t think about. My watch tracks my heart rate continuously throughout the day. I come from a family with hypertension and heart problems scattered throughout our entire history. It’s been one of the biggest killers of my ancestors, so it’s something I need track. But it’s not the easiest thing to do.

For a short time I actually wore a chest strap and tracked my heart rate throughout the day. I had been wearing the strap to track my workouts, so it wasn’t awful to wear the strap for a day or two…but not something I wanted to do all the time. Plus the tracking app ate the battery on my iPhone like nobody’s business. 

Now with my Apple Watch I get the same data…and it’s all recorded in one place: the Apple Health App. Not only that, but the data is realtime. So I can see what my heart rate is doing throughout the day. I can easily correlate the data with my exercise. In fact, when I kick off the Workout app on my Apple Watch, it starts watching my heart rate like a hawk. No more having to hold onto those stupid silver handles on the stationary bike, treadmill, or elliptical. My watch is capturing the data and safely storing it.

Without getting too far into the weeds, here are some of the apps that I use to track things in my Quantified Life: 

If you’re not familiar with those apps, check them out. Since I’m an Apple Guy most of my apps are either iOS or macOS. Similar apps exist in the Android world though. I’ll be delving into most of them over the next few weeks and writing about how I record my data as well as how I interact with it. 

If you don’t do anything else, just start thinking about what you might like to track. There’s a pretty fair probability I’ve tracked it in the past or I’m tracking it right now.  

No matter how you look at it, knowing what’s going on in your life is a lot better than guessing all the time. It’s essentially the best way to make it a great day!