Back in 2019, I started collecting all kinds of metrics about my life. Every single day for the last 3 years I tracked over 100 different data types - ranging from fitness & nutrition to social life,…
Back in 2019, I started collecting all kinds of metrics about my life. Every single day for the last 3 years I tracked over 100 different data types - ranging from fitness & nutrition to social life, computer usage and weather.
The goal of this project was to answer questions about my life, like
Since the start of this project, I collected ~380,000 data points, with the biggest data sources being:
Naturally after I started collecting this data, I wanted to visualize what I was learning, so I created this page. Initially, the domain whereisFelix.today (now renamed to howisFelix.today) started as a joke to respond to friends asking when I’d be back in NYC or San Francisco. Rather than send them my schedule, I’d point them to this domain. However, now it’s more than my location: it’s all of me.
Rules I setup for the project
I selected 48 graphs to show publicly on this page. For privacy reasons, and to prevent any accidental data leaks, the graphs below are snapshots taken on a given day.
Visualization of the number of data entries in FxLifeSheet over the last 10 years, and where the data came from.
- Initially (2014) the only data used was RescueTime and Foursquare Swarm location data
- Once I started the FxLifeSheet project in April 2019, I manually tracked 75 data entries every day, ranging from mood, sleep, social life, to fitness data
- I was able to retrospectively fetch the historic weather data based on my location on a given day
- I also implemented other import sources, like fetching my historic weight and the number of steps from Apple Health
On days where I tracked my mood to be "happy" & "excited", the following other factors of my life were affected
- 50% more likely to have pushed my comfort zone
- 44% more likely to have meditated that day
- 33% more excited about what's ahead in the future
- 31% more likely to drink alcohol that day (parties, good friends and such)
- 28% more time spent reading or listening to audio books
- 26% more likely to have worked on interesting technical challenges
- 26% warmer temperature that day
- 20% more likely to have learned something new that day
- 45% less time spent in video & audio calls that day
All flights taken within the last 7 years, tracked using Foursquare Swarm, analyzed by JetLovers.
- The stats clearly show the impact of COVID starting 2020
- Sunday has been my "commute" day, flying between San Francisco, New York City and Vienna
All flights taken within the last 7 years, tracked using Foursquare Swarm, analyzed by JetLovers.
- Frankfurt - Vienna was the flight connecting me with most US airports
- Germany is high up on the list due to layovers, even though I didn't spend actually much time there
Inspired by Your Life in Weeks by WaitButWhy, I use Google Sheets to visualize every week of my life, with little notes on what city/country I was in, and other life events that have happened.
- The first 14 years I didn't really get much done
- I can highly recommend taking a few weeks (or even months) off between jobs (if you have the possibility)
- Yellow area indicates no active full-time employment
- Shades of blue indicate my full-time employments
- Shades of red is formal education
- You can create your own version using my template
Average daily steps measured through the iPhone's Apple Health app. I decided against using SmartWatch data for steps, as SmartWatches have changed over the last 8 years.
- I walked a total of 22,830,860 steps over last 8 years
- I walk more than twice as much when I'm in New York, compared to any other city
- In NYC I had the general rule of thumb to walk instead of taking public transit whenever it's less than 40 minutes. I used that time to call friends & family, or listen to audio books
- Although Vienna is very walkable, the excellent public transit system with subway trains coming every 3-5 minutes, has caused me to walk less
- San Francisco was always scary to walk
This graph clearly shows the correlation between my body weight and my sleeping/resting heart rate. The resting heart rate is measured by the Withings ScanWatch while sleeping, and indicates how hard your heart has to work while not being active. Generally the lower the resting heart rate, the better.
- I started my lean bulk (controlled weight gain combined with 5 workouts a week) in August 2020
- My resting heart rate went from 58bpm to 67bpm (+9bpm) from August 2020 to March 2021 with a weight gain of +8.5kg (+19lbs) as part of a controlled lean-bulk combined with a 5-day/week workout routine
- The spike in resting heart rate in July & August 2021 was due to bars and nightclubs opening up again in Austria
- After a night of drinking, my resting/sleeping heart rate was about 50% higher than after a night without any alcohol
- The spike in resting heart rate in Oct/Nov/Dec 2021 was due to having bronchitis and a cold/flu, not getting correct treatment early enough
Every day I answered the question on how healthy I felt. In the graph, the yellow color indicates that I felt a little under the weather, not sick per se. Red means I was sick and had to stay home. Green means I felt energized and healthy.
- During the COVID lockdowns I tended to stay healthier. This may be due to not going out, no heavy drinking, less close contact with others, etc. which resulted in me having better sleep.
- Usually during excessive traveling I get sick (cold/flu)
- Q4 2021 I had bronchitis, however, I didn't know about it at the time and didn't get proper treatment
- Overall I'm quite prone to getting sick (cold/flu)
On days where I had more than 4 alcoholic beverages (meaning I was partying), the following other factors were affected
- 21x more likely to dance
- 80% more likely to take a nap the day of, or the day after
- 60% more time spent with friends
- 40% warmer temperatures, and 40% less precipitation. There weren't many opportunities for parties in Winter due to lockdowns in the last 2 years. Also, people are more motivated to go out when it's nice outside.
- 25% more steps
My FxLifeSheet bot asks me 4 times a day how I'm feeling at the moment.
- This graph groups the entries by month, and shows the % of entries for each value (0 - 5) with 5 being very excited, and 0 being worried.
- I designed the ranges so that 0 or 5 are not entered as much. 0 is rendered as dark green at the top, whereas 5 is rendered as light green at the bottom.
- For privacy reasons I won't get into some of the details on why certain months were worse than others.
Every Swarm check-in over the last 7 years visualized on a map, including the actual trip (flight, drive, etc.)
Swarm
Every Swarm check-in over the last 7 years visualized, zoomed in
Swarm
Each time I did a check-in at a place (e.g. Coffee, Restaurant, Airport, Gym) on Foursquare Swarm at a given city, this is tracked as a single entry.
Swarm
Each check-in at a given city is counted as a single entry, grouped by years
- 2016 and 2017 I lived in San Francisco
- 2018 and 2019 I lived in New York City
- 2020 and 2021 I lived in Vienna
- The longer it's been since I moved away from Austria, the more time I actually spent back home in Austria for visits and vacations
- 2020 clearly shows the impact of COVID
Each check-in at a given category is tracked, and summed up over the last years
- In 2020 and 2021, check-ins at Offices went down to zero due to COVID, and a distributed work setup
- Airports being the #4 most visited category was a surprise, but is accurate. A total of 403 airport check-ins, whereas a flight with a layover would count as 3 airport check-ins
- Earlier in my life, I didn't always check into 'commute' places like public transit and super markets
Number of Foursquare Swarm check-ins on each quarter over the last 10 years. I didn't use Foursquare Swarm as seriously before 2015. Once I moved to San Francisco in Q3 2015 I started my habit of checking into every point of interest (POI) I visit.
- Q3 2015 I moved to San Francisco, however I couldn't use Swarm yet, since my move was a secret until the official announced at the Twitter Flight conference
- Q2 2020 clearly shows the impact of COVID with Q3 already being open in Austria
- Q3 2021 the vaccine was already widely available and I was able to travel/visit more again
- My time in New York was the most active when it comes to check-ins. When I'm in NYC, I tend to eat/drink out more, and grab to-go food, which I do way less in Vienna
Every Swarm check-in visualized on a map. Only areas where I've had multiple check-ins are rendered.
Swarm
Number of days per year that I've spent in full lockdown, meaning restaurants, bars and non-essential stores were closed.
- I escaped parts of the Austrian lockdown by spending time in the US when I was already vaccinated
- Surprisingly 2021 I spent more days in a full lockdown than in 2020, even with vaccines available
How was my life affected by the recent COVID lockdowns? As lockdown day I classify every day where places like restaurants, gyms and non-essential stores were closed.
- 200% more time spent in audio & video calls with friends (non-work related)
- 60% more likely to follow my meal plan (macros & calories)
- 24% less steps
- 40% less alcoholic beverages
- 50% colder temperatures: Lockdowns tended to happen in Autumn and Winter
- 100% less likely to dance
Alcoholic drinks per day. Days with no data are rendered as white
- Friday and Saturday nights are clearly visible on those graphs
- 2021 and summer/winter of 2019 also show the Wednesday night party in Vienna
- Q2 and Q4 2020 clearly show the COVID lockdowns, as well as Q2 2021
- Summer of 2021 all bars and dance clubs were open in Vienna
Each bar represents a month, the graph shows the number of alcoholic beverages on a given day, with '5' being 5 or more drinks.
- Unless there are social obligations, or there is a party, I usually drink 0 alcoholic drinks
- In May 2019, the 0 bar is rendered to be 55%, meaning on 55% days of that month I didn't drink any alcohol
- July 2021 Austrian night life was fully open up again, with most COVID restrictions being lifted
Each green square represents a strength-workout in the gym, I try my best to purchase day passes at gyms while traveling
- During the first lockdown in Q2 2020 I didn't have access to a gym, and didn't count home-workouts as gym visits
- In 2021 I tended to work out less often on Sunday, the day I visit my family's place
- In Q4 2021 I had a cold for a longer time
- I went from ~50 workouts per year in 2014/2015 to ~200 per year in 2018 - 2021
On weeks where I have a routine (not traveling), I track most of my meals. Whenever I scale my food, I try to guess the weight before to become better at estimating portion sizes.
- Tracking macros precisely is the best way to lose/gain weight at a controlled and healthy speed
- When I first started tracking macros, additionally to already working out regularly, is when I started seeing the best results
- It takes a lot of energy to be consistent, but it's worth it, and it will make you feel good (e.g. feeling good about using a spoon to eat plain Nutella if you have the macros left)
- Gaining and losing weight is pretty much math, if you track your macros and body weight
Percentage of days I went to the gym
- During the first lockdown in Q2 2020 I didn't have access to a gym, and didn't count home-workouts as gym visits
- Generally I hit the gym 5 days a week when I'm at home, but as shown on this graph it ends up being less, mostly due to traveling, and occasional colds
I'm following a pretty regular bodybuilding routine, a 3-day workout split, and a normal bulk & cut seasons
- During times where fitness isn't high up on my priority list, I usually switch to maintenance
- During a cut, I have a slight kcal deficit of about 300kcal, to not negatively impact the rest of my life
- During the bulk, I aim to gain about 300g of body weight per week
- During a cut, I tend to track my meals more precisely than during a bulk or while maintaining
- Purple = Cut
- Brown = Bulk
- Blue = Maintenance
Historic weight, clearly showing the various bulks and cuts I've made over the years. Only the last 5 years are rendered in this graph, with the last 3 years having tracked my weight way more frequently.
- Lowest recorded weight was 69kg/152lbs in 2014 (age 20)
- Highest recorded weight was 89.8kg/198lbs in 2021 (age 27)
- I gained 20kg (44lbs) while staying under 12% body fat on 193cm (6"4)
I usually have slow bulk & cut phases, where I gain and lose weight at a controlled speed, combined with tracking my meals.
- I only track my weight if I didn't drink alcohol the night before, and after getting a full night's sleep, since otherwise the weight fluctuates a lot
- Generally, you can pretty much calculate your weight on a certain date, if you consistently track your meals, and correctly calculated your macros
On days where I walked more than 15,000 steps (I walked an average of 9200 steps a day the last 3 years)
- 60% more time spent with friends in real-life
- 50% warmer temperature that day
- 40% more likely to socialize with friends before going to sleep
- 35% more likely to be a weekend day
- 20% less likely to take a nap that day
- 30% less likely to correctly track my macros (food)
- 30% less time spent in work calls/meetings
- 30% less anxious
- 40% less likely to meditate
- 40% less time spent writing code
- 40% less likely to be a rainy day
- 50% less time spent watching TV
- 95% less likely to be a day in lockdown
On days where I had a total sleep duration of more than 8.5 hours, the following other factors were affected
- 65% more likely to have cold symptoms
- 60% more likely to have headache
- 40% more social media usage
- 30% more likely to be a rainy day
- 20% more likely to be a weekend
- 15% more likely to have bad/stressful dreams
- 12% colder weather on average
- 20% less likely to hit the gym that day
- 24% less energy
- Overall, it's clear that days with a longer sleep duration tend to be significantly worse days. This is most likely due to the fact that I try to sleep a maximum of 8 hours, and if I actually sleep more than usually because I'm not feeling too well, or even sick
I used the Awair Element at home in Vienna, in every room over multiple days
- Overall, the air quality in Vienna is excellent. Just opening the windows for a few minutes is enough to get a 100% air score
- The smaller the room, the more difficult it is to keep the CO2 levels low
- The only room where I'm still struggling to keep the CO2 levels low is my bedroom, which is small, and doesn't offer any ventilation. Keeping the doors open mostly solves the high CO2 levels, however comes with other downsides like more light
- Probably obvious for many, but I didn't realize ACs don't transport any air into the room, but just moves it around
- Opening the windows for a longer time in winter will cause low humidity and low temperatures, so it's often not a good option
- I didn't learn anything from the Chemicals and PM2.5 graphs
Using RescueTime, I tracked my exact computer usage, and the categories of activities in which I spend time with.
- Over the last 7 years, I went from spending around 10% of my time with communication & scheduling, to around 30%
- Over the last 7 years, I went from spending around 33% of my time with software development, to less than 10% (now that I'm not currently full-time employed)
- All other categories stayed pretty much on the same ratio over the last 7 years
- Total amount spent on my computer went down significantly after having left my job late 2021
- Tracking productivity levels automatically is difficult to get right, as it's hard to classify certain activities.
- Day to day I'm using Timing App which has a significantly nicer user experience, however I just had many additional years of data on RescueTime
- I highly recommend every professional to track their computer usage. It's surprising to see how many hours a day you actually get on your computer, and how much of it is considered productive. Timing App shows the amount of hours of the day on the Mac's status bar, and it's been extremely useful
Each day I answer the question "Do you feel like you need to socialize more?" with the answers ranging from "No" (5 = light green) to "Feeling isolated" (0 = dark green)
- Since I'm an Introvert, I tend to feel like I socialize too much, rather than too little
- Early COVID lockdown March 2020 was still good, however as the lockdown continued I started feeling more isolated, also partly because I was single, and had just moved to Vienna
- End of July 2020 Austria opened up most social venues again, bringing this graph back to an ideal level again
- December 2019 I was working remotely from Buenos Aires, however I got a pretty bad cold. Being sick in a remote city wasn't the best feeling
- Over the last 2.5 years I actually never felt isolated, therefore there is no entry for the value '0'
Summer (being from 21st June to 23rd September) has the following effects on my life:
- Chances of taking a freezing cold shower goes up by 100%
- I walk 33% more steps in Summer
- 30% more likely to hit the gym
- 23% more alcoholic beverages (there were no lockdowns in Summer)
- 20% less time spent reading news & opinions (as per RescueTime classifications)
- 40% less likely to be sick
- 40% less time spent on Entertainment on my computer (as per RescueTime classifications)
- 30% less likely to have bad dreams
Winter (being from 21st Dec to 20th March) has the following effects on my life:
- Online shopping time going up by 100%, most likely due to the last Winters having spent in lockdown
- Chances of having cold symptoms goes up 45%
- 35% less likely to take a freezing cold shower
- Unsurprisingly, I'm exposed to less solar energy in Winter, make sure to get enough Vitamin D
Percentage of days spent in each country over the last 4 years
- International travel has slowed down significantly since COVID started
- Traveling without a stop home for more than 3 weeks gets exhausting for me, I prefer doing more shorter travels instead
From late 2017 to early 2020 I lived without a permanent home address as a digital nomad, staying at various Airbnbs or taking over a few weeks of a lease from a friend
Manually
Number of days each month where I had cold symptoms (dark green [1] = day with cold symptoms), which I classify as having a runny nose, feeling light-headed or having light ear pain.
- Clearly the cold months of 2019 and 2021 I had significantly more days with cold symptoms
- Winter 2021 was a full lockdown, I assume this reduced the risk of getting sick
- October and November 2021 I had bronchitis, without getting the proper treatment
Weekends for me naturally involve less working time, more going out, and social interactions, as well as visiting family members outside the city
- 150% more computer time spent on "Entertainment", which is mostly coming from occasionally playing Factorio or Age Of Empires with friends at LAN-Party gatherings
- 74% more time spent watching TV
- 60% more time spent with friends IRL
- 55% more dancing, when going out
- 45% more likely to have a headache, due to drinking alcohol the night before
- 25% less gym visits, mostly due to family gatherings and not being in the city
- 45% less likely to properly track my macros/meals, mostly due to family gatherings and going out
Historic weather data based on the location I was at on that day based on my Swarm check-ins. Days with no data are rendered as white
- Turns out, days in Summer are warmer than days in Winter
- Summer 2019 I spent in New York City, while 2020 and 2021 I spent in Vienna. The graph shows the summer in NYC to reach higher temperatures
- Week 36 in 2021 I spent in Iceland, therefore significantly lower temperatures
- End of November in 2019 I spent in Buenos Aires, therefore way higher temperatures
- December 2019 I spent in Columbus, Ohio, being the coldest week of the year
Historic weather data based on the location I was at on that day based on my Swarm check-ins.
- 2019 I experienced more cloudy weather than the following years
My radiation exposure, as well as CO2 emissions from all my flights over the last 7 years
Nomadlist
I noticed myself feeling more refreshed whenever I spent a night at my childhood bedroom at my parents' on the countryside.
- On average, my sleeping heart rate when sleeping at my parents' home is less than when sleeping at my own place in Vienna
- All nights above 70 bpm are usually associated with either drinking alcohol in the evening, being sick, or sleeping for only a short amount of time (e.g. before a flight)
- Even removing all 70+ bpm nights, there is a clear difference between nights spent at my own place in the city, compared to the nights spent on the countryside
Spotify tracks every single interaction on their end, including every single song you've ever listened to, and if you finished or skipped each song.
- Since 2013, I've listened to a total of 480,155 minutes of music, that's 8,002 hours, or 334 days
- That's 202,148 songs, however I only finished 49% of them
- End of 2013 I didn't have an active Spotify subscription, due to issues accessing it from Austria
- During some areas in my life, I listened to Cercle/Coccolino Deep sets on YouTube, therefore using Spotify less
- I stored a total of 312 Spotify Discover Weekly playlists, every single one since December 2015
- As part of this script, I built a tool to create a playlist of the 500 most listened to songs, as well as the first 500 songs listened to
- In total, I have paid 1,080 EUR for Spotify Premium
Since I've built instapipe.net, I have all my Instagram Stories available in my own database. The blue 'Monthly' area shows the monthly average of IG stories posted, while the green shows the 'Quarterly' average and purple the 'Yearly' average.
- April 2019 I built instapipe while traveling in Hong Kong and South Korea
- November 2019 I had a deadline at work, as well as being sick for a few days
- March 2020, the start of COVID, shows a clear downwards trend the following months until June when Austria opened up again
- September 2021 I was on a roadtrip through Iceland, posting many pictures & videos
- Overall you can see a clear downwards trend of the purple 'Year' line over the last 3 years
- Since April 2019, I have published a total of 1,906 Instagram stories, averaging 1.6 Stories per day
On days with a maximum temperature of more than 26 Celsius (78.8 Fahrenheit), the following other factors were affected
- 80% more likely to take a freezing cold shower
- 37% more likely to hit the gym
- 26% more daily steps
- 20% more alcoholic beverages
- 15% more likely to go out in the evening
- 13% less likely to take a nap
- 20% less time in a code editor
- 21% less likely to be sick
- Generally lower stress/anxiety levels
- 100% less likely to be in a COVID related lockdown
GitHub open source contributions visualized using GitHub's own contribution graph. The graphs only count code commits to open source repositories.
- I started fastlane September 2014, and worked on it until early 2018
- Early 2018 I started working on fastlane.ci which slowly got shut down over time by Google
- January 2019 I decided to leave Google, as fastlane.ci wasn't going anywhere
- Early 2019 I worked on instapipe.net and this very project via FxLifeSheet
- Second half of 2019, until Summer 2021 I worked at Root on commercial software, which doesn't show up on those graphs
- End of 2021 I resumed work on FxLifeSheet to build this very page
Every second week I track my current investments and cash positions. It shows me how to most efficiently re-balance my investments in case they're off track, while also minimizing the occuring trading fees.
- I have a burndown chart, which visualizes how my networth would grow/drop over time in various scenarios
- I have a graph that ensures I have the right target distribution of high, medium and low risk positions
- Whenever I take on a potential new project/role, I simulate the various outcome scenarios that could happen over the next few years
- For obvious reasons, I can't include more of the graphs and simulations I have available
Inspired by a Reddit finance community, I had been creating annual money flow charts to clearly see how much money I earned, where I spent how much, and how much I saved. The chart below isn't mine (for privacy reasons), but just an example I created.
- Not owning an apartment, and living in Airbnbs as a nomad I actually spent less money. This was due to not having to buy any furniture, appliances, etc. but also because the number of items I could buy for myself was limited, as everything was limited to be able to fit into 2 suitcases. Additionally I didn't have to pay any rent whenever I traveled for my job, or during conferences.
- Misc. subscriptions/expenses are adding up quickly
- Having an End-Of-Year summary from your credit card provider, and always using your card when possible, is a great way to get those numbers
- Creating this chart is still a lot of work, as you have to keep in mind that some expenses are not solely yours, but you might have covered for a group (e.g. booked a larger Airbnb), or got reimbursed
This project is custom-built for my own personal use, the resulting code is 100% open source on KrauseFx/FxLifeSheet. There are 3 components to this project:
A timestamp-based key-value database of all data entries powered by Postgres. This allows me to add and remove questions on-the-fly.
Each row has a timestamp, key and value.
Early on in the project I made the decision not to associate an entry to a specific day due to complexities when traveling and time zones, since the idea was just to detect trends using the collected data. It became clear that detecting trends is only a small part of what can be done with the data, so I wrote a script to associate each entry to the correct date.
To populate the data, I manually answer questions multiple times a day through a Telegram bot. These questions span from fitness or health (e.g. nutrition, exercise, sleep, etc.) to questions about my life (e.g. how I’m feeling, how much time I spend on social media, etc.). The extensible use of the Telegram API made this easy, and even allowed me to customize the keyboard to have predefined replies based on the question asked.
Additionally I can fill-out date ranges with specific values, for example lockdown periods, and bulking/cutting fitness seasons.
After having tried various tools available to visualize, I ended up writing my own data analysis layer using Ruby, JavaScript together with Plotly. You can find the full source code on KrauseFx/FxLifeSheet - visual_playground.
I actually published many privacy projects for iOS. That little green/orange LED that’s rendered on iOS when you record something? Yep, that was me! So why this project?
Yes, you could. However, setting up FxLifeSheet is a bit of a challenge and requires engineering skills and time. Some of the features are specific to my life (like the services I use), and so you’d have to modify parts of the codebase. This project is 100% open source MIT licensed, so you can use, and modify everything to your liking. However, I don’t plan on productionizing this project, nor providing any support on GitHub for it.
Realistically, if you want to get started with QuantifiedSelf, you can use one of the services availalbe. I’d recommend looking for the following:
I’ve always been fascinated by tracking my own data, and seeing it visualized. While I can’t pinpoint the reason why, I remember having this fascination growing up, asking myself questions like How many steps did I walk in my life?, and Did I turn right more often or left?.
Having read many articles similar to r/QuantifiedSelf/, I really loved the visualizations, but disliked the fact that almost all solutions were data-silos (e.g. standalone iOS apps, Gyroscope, …) without having full control over the data, nor how it’s visualized. Because the data collection spans multiple years, I was apprehensive to rely on any startup or service that runs the risk of being shut down. Additionally, every individual may have differences in how they want to visualize or analyze the data.
Apple was in a great position to improve the current state with Apple Health, but they completely failed with their implementation on both the APIs, as well as the actual Health app.
One aspect I overestimated is the number of days you will track: If you want to look into how many steps you walked in a given city, you’ll quickly notice the number of days in each city already being quite low. You’d then also slice the data by season or temperature, since you naturally walk less on very cold days, ending up with only a handful of days outside your main residence.
Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting facts. There were some, and it’s super interesting to look through those graphs, however retrospectively, it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project.
I’ll likely continue tracking my mood, as well as a few other key metrics, however will significantly reduce the amount of time I invest in it.
I’m very happy I’ve built this project in the first place, as it gave me a much better awareness of everything going on in my life. I’m excited to have built this website to wrap-up this project and show-case some of the outcomes to the public.
2025 Update: I’ve stopped collecting data and working on this project, but I will keep this page alive.
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Comments
The takeaways at the very bottom of the page are valuable:
> Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting facts. There were some, and it’s super interesting to look through those graphs, however retrospectively, it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project.
The whole "quantified self" movement might be more about OCD and perfectionism than anything else.
/edit: quantified, not qualified
A counter example:
I've been wearing an Apple Watch for close to 10 years. I've tracked my weight as well along those years but nothing crazy like OP. The Apple watch tracked plenty.
I had some strange symptoms and two doctors insisted I had a weak heart and potential heart failure. This was shocking! Turns out I do have a really "weak" rhythm, but heart failure is when your heart is progressively getting worse in it's pumping. I don't even remember which metric he looked at in my Apple health - but basically my heart has always been this way. A doctor looking at a single data point might think I have abnormally low blood pressure/heart rate, but if I've had this for 10 years with no change, the medical assessment is very different - it means nothing. Sometimes boring data is exactly what you need. For this reason, I will probably always wear an Apple watch (or equivalent) moving forward.
Data can feel useless for 10 years until one day it becomes critical. The benefit is spiky and uneven.
But you didn’t spend hundreds of hours on it, so when it did happen to be useful it seemed like an outsized benefit.
I would wager that for most people, most data about themselves will be useless and not worth collecting.
Of course you can’t know what data will be useless or not, so unless the cost of collecting it is minimal or nil (wearing a smart watch, writing down your weight each day/week), it’s probably not worth it.
Spending hundreds of hours to build a solution to capture all data about yourself to find interesting patterns has a huge assumption baked into it: that there are interesting patterns to find.
About 9 years ago I had a run-in with stomach cancer. After a few months of chemo and a 7 hour operation I was eventually declared cancer free and have been ever since, but still have to live with the consequences of the treatment and be vigilant for any signs of it returning.
I still suffer intermittent stomach aches, especially in the early hours of the morning, and had a terrible time trying to decide if they were getting better or worse over time.
Our narrative voice is awful at detecting long term trends and tends to overcompensate for particularly good or bad patches so it was impossible for me to judge and I started keeping records of how bad the aches were each day.
Long story short, the average severity was mostly decreasing over time and the average time between bad aches was slowly increasing but it would have been impossible to tell if this was happening without keeping detailed records because it wasn't consistent - some months were much worse than others and completely skewed my perception of long term trends.
While most people hopefully won't ever need to do something like this, it did make me realise just how bad we are at picking up on long term trends so I can definitely see keeping daily records of, for instance, average daily happiness being eye-opening.
By nkrisc 2026-03-1110:17 Sounds like you had a very good reason to be tracking your stomachaches. But almost everyone else aside from you And people In similar situations would be wasting their time doing that, I would imagine.
By necovek 2026-03-1018:36 Yes, when you have an obvious reason to track some data, do it: I do not think anyone questions that.
Proactively capturing and tracking everything you can to prep for any future is too much work that would really steal your time from, you know, actually living a life.
Like anything else, I think it comes down to having a good use case.
I've gotten deep into weightlifting/bodybuilding over the past couple of years, and that's the kind of hobby where micro-optimizations and data tracking can have a pretty big impact on results (and sort of necessary, you can't fly blind with things like diet, especially)
E.g. I track and weigh everything I eat, take body measuraments on a weekly basis, Dexa scans every few months, etc - for me it's worth it because I know what I want to do with the data. If I didn't have a goal, all that tracking would clearly be overkill.
How long have you been tracking? Can you share an insight you've had from your data?
I've been weight lighting for ten years and initially tried to track things (down to how many reps I did of which exercise, with how much weight) and quickly came to the conclusion that is want worth it for me.
By kworks 2026-03-1016:23 I initially came to the same conclusion. Though I lifted in accord with decent training principles regarding reps and sets, I didn't track for years. As I entered middle age, I started keeping a training log (just one big org file in emacs), mostly out of curiousity. As I entered my 50s, I experienced what Haruki Murakami references in "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" --- Fat is easy to gain and hard to lose. Muscle is hard to gain and easy to lose. Now I track a couple of critical metrics and it's working great. I weigh first thing every day, track all kcals (even if I overeat), plan and track workouts. I write my own plans pulled from principles in these books (don't work for the company, just a satisfied customer) https://muscleandstrengthpyramids.com/ I don't use the vast majority of the info in those books as I'm just a hobbyist who wants to be healthy and strong. The biggest shift came from learning I was doing waaay too much training volume at the gym while trying to lose fat too quickly; a fine recipe for injury. Now, when I'm in a fat loss phase, I try to lose it as slowly as possible while still making progress. Strength training and fat loss is a very long very slow marathon, not a sprint. Perhaps paradoxically, the awareness that's come from tracking has helped me relax. No need to major in the minors; pretty good is pretty good. The tools I use are a scale, loseit, and org-mode.
By cj 2026-03-1014:04 The goal in bodybuilding during a gaining phase is to be in a very slight calories surplus (200-300 calories above maintenance, at most) to maximize the amount of time you're building muscle before you need to cut again (bring calories back to a deficit to shed body fat).
Tracking scale weight is difficult because shifts in water weight and hydration can swing the scale 5+ pounds in either direction without any change in body fat. So I pair scale weight with a 7-point skin caliper measurements taken on a weekly basis, along with waist circumference, in order to infer whether body fat is trending up or down. And also take weekly progress photos of 6 angles/poses with consistent lighting, which I share with a coach.
And then you pair that with weighing and logging everything you eat, and you can make small adjustments to your meal plan on a monthly basis to try to stay in that 200-300 calorie per day surplus for as long as possible. (Although most bodybuilding coaches adjust diet based purely on how your physique is changing in weekly check-in photos without the need for measurements, but I like extra data)
> down to how many reps I did of which exercise, with how much weight)
I also do this. Track every exercise, every weight, number of reps. It's necessary for knowing whether you're progressively overloading over long periods of time. Progressive overload becomes harder to measure once you're past newbie gains because you can't increase weight every week, so some weeks the goal is just to squeeze out an extra couple of reps. Which adds up over time
This is obviously excessive for 99% of people. But I enjoy doing it as a hobby. I would absolutely not recommend this level of tracking for health reasons (not necessary) - I find enjoyment in the process.
By yoz-y 2026-03-1013:57 I track the reps weights of every exercise (in my own app). But the historical values are only useful up to last couple of weeks just to now if the general trends go up and what is stalled. Unless your goals are the numbers themselves and not health, I don’t think there is a reason to track everything. But it is fun.
By nkrisc 2026-03-1013:56 True, if you have a current and real need for the data, then it makes sense to collect it. But that’s an entirely different scenario.
Right, but you don't necessarily need to spend hundreds of hours to capture most of this; the data is already out there. If there were a tool that could collect it all in one place and give you insights with minimal effort that would be pretty neat.
By noemit 2026-03-1015:21 agree. I would never do what OP did. But I also won't throw out my smart watch (Context: other people in the thread said they stopped using them because the data was useless)
By hrmtst93837 2026-03-1020:23 The tricky part is the maintenance drag and subtle risk that you'll start making decisions to optimize your life by proxy metrics just because you have them.
By austy69 2026-03-1013:10 > Data can feel useless for 10 years until one day it becomes critical. The benefit is spiky and uneven.
Not sure if in your case the data was critical, since the doctor likely would have just had you wear a monitor for a while after to come to the same conclusion.
By panlana 2026-03-1016:18 My first car had a broken speedometer. It was a "hand" style like a clock. Instead of moving to the speed, it would spin 365 degrees. The faster the car went, the faster it would spin. Turns out, I acclimated to it and generally knew what speed i was going (relatively speaking).
The lesson, I think, is everything is relative. Even a dashboard with flawed data that is "consistent" can highlight anomalies. And often, that's all you really need out of them. (Or the lack of anomaly)
By necovek 2026-03-1018:34 This is the obvious "benefit" of hindsight. Yes, you accidentally had access to data that provided historical patterns you exactly could use.
But, for anyone who does, there is another 1000 who do not when something hits them: many illnesses develop gradually, and all of our tests (thousands of blood tests, scans and imaging tech...) would benefit from having historical data when we were "ok".
Similarly, you probably did not have more data than what Apple provided to help narrow the problem you still had, right?
And if everyone was put under so many tests, we'd actually be "solving" a bunch of non-issues for people over-reacting to small deviations from "normal" range.
Apple watch helps you with a few parameters — not to be discounted — but I don't really see it as a counter.
By harrall 2026-03-1016:31 Collecting data is great.
But I see people start min-maxing these numbers as a replacement for big picture health goals.
From the outside, I see someone spending a lot of time focusing on numbers while they are actually regularly stressed, who doesn’t get good sleep, and has somewhat bare minimum exercise.
Collecting data is great but don’t sink so much effort into it until you have a problem.
By BeetleB 2026-03-1022:48 This was great because you didn't put much effort into it. Whereas the conclusion was about "it is not worth building your own solution".
By ambicapter 2026-03-1014:17 So what happened with your symptoms?
I had a similar epiphany a few years back when I started wearing a step-tracker/sleep monitor.
It was kinda interesting to see how many times I woke up, or track hours, but to be honest I realised after a few months that when my tracker said "You had good sleep", or "You had bad sleep" I was already aware - I woke up smiling, or grumpy depending on how I'd done.
I didn't ever look at the data and think "I want to go to bed now to catch up on the four hours I missed yesterday". I continued to have mostly consistent hours, but if I was doing something interesting I'd stay awake, and if I was tired I'd go to bed earlier naturally. The graphs and data wasn't providing anything of value, or encouraging me to change my behaviour in any significant way.
By azan_ 2026-03-1023:02 I've found one very interesting thing from these trackers - namely how even small amount of alcohol destroy sleep quality metrics. One beer is enough for my sleep scores to drop by like 20-30% and it's consistent and reproducible for me every time. Whether it actually matters - I don't know, but it made me drink much less (from maybe once a week to maybe once every two months) which is good outcome I guess.
By revolvingthrow 2026-03-1013:31 Eh, I found several interesting things from various tracking tools. Take a nap? Sleep is destroyed this night. Exercise in the evening? Same. Not something I’d pay attention to without noticing the chart afterwards.
There’s also the motivation factor. I’m not sure of the total %, but I certainly did some exercising just to fill the daily goal. Nothing life-changing, but for the price of a cheapo apple watch se once every 5 years or so, more than worth it.
It’s not unlike simplistic time tracking on my iphone. I spent a lot of time on bullshit websites. Obviously I knew it was happening, but the sheer magnitude was surprising. It’s akin to acute pain letting you know there’s a health problem vs something brewing in the background that you are vaguely aware of, but have no motivation to truly care about - one is far more noticeable than the other
Being aware, and being aware that you are aware are very similar things that are subtly different.
I was aware that alcohol affects your next day, even a little. That's because people always say that alcohol is bad for you (surprise surprise). I heard this, so you could say that I was aware. I generally thought about this as "a hangover is bad for you." and was somewhat dismissive of the "even a single drink has a bad effect" mantra.
I did some experimenting, and slowly realized that even a single drink can indeed have an impact on the next day. It's not a hangover, but an impact that I could feel nonetheless. I needed to do some light stats and a lot more journaling to build this awareness. I am now aware that I am aware.
> an impact that I could feel nonetheless. I needed to do some light stats and a lot more journaling to build this awareness.
If you could feel it why beed the stats?
By koliber 2026-03-1015:57 I don't think I was clear.
There is a difference between knowing something, and believing it to be true.
I know that sometimes I feel good when I wake up. I know people say that drinking makes you feel not good when you wake up, sometimes.
It takes a bit of observation and some statistical sampling to connect those two together. Now I know it, and also believe it to be true.
Perhaps "aware" vs "aware that I am aware" was a bad way of phrasing it.
By sdwr 2026-03-1013:36 It's like any good cryptographic challenge - easier to validate the answer than to come up with it from scratch
By oldandboring 2026-03-1012:001 reply Same. I had a Garmin for about 6 months and I eventually just stopped wearing it and sold it. Knowing how many steps I took today, checking it several times a day to see if I was meeting my goal, knowing how many vertical feet I skied.. none of this data ended up meaning anything to me.
By piva00 2026-03-1014:38 The best use I got from my Apple Watch was to use the companion app of my gym routine tracker (to track current loads and personal best) and play music so I didn't have to bring the phone to the gym.
That was it, I got extremely annoyed by notifications so over time just disabled them. Also for some reason the heart rate monitor glitched a couple times, got alerts about my BPM at 180+ while I was sitting on the couch.
Eventually I just stopped using it and now sits in some drawer.
By angiolillo 2026-03-1013:44 > it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project.
I agree with this but minimizing the cost changes the ROI.
Personally, I've discovered useful insights tracking various life metrics. But I also found quickly diminishing returns after a few weeks or months -- if an association isn't obvious within that timeframe it's either too much effort to isolate or too slow or small to matter.
At various points I've tracked calories, macronutrients, weight, allergens, supplements, sleep, exercise volume, exercise timing, nighttime screen use, spending/budget, air quality, and mood. Now I know what kind of cooking wrecks the air quality in my house, what foods I don't digest well, what various protein/carb/fat ratios look like on my plate, how much effort it takes to improve fitness, that exercise in the morning or early afternoon improves my sleep while exercise in the evening harms it, and that any alcohol or caffeine wreck my sleep while screens at night have no measurable effect. But once I understand the associations I can alter my behavior and move on.
> The whole "quantified self" movement might be more about OCD and perfectionism than anything else.
I would agree that continuing to track metrics every day long after they've stopped yielding new insights is often compulsive behavior. But I think that's an argument for time-boxing experiments, not necessarily avoiding them altogether.
I did something similar - I put 18 years of comments on reddit, HN, slashdot, and 3 years of LLM chats in the system. I ended with a similar conclusion - it was less useful than I expected. My intent was to do RAG over my corpus, have a LLM get direct access to what I commented over the years, but unfortunately this much information has a negative effect on LLM creativity. Its responses started to fall in line too much with my ideas and it lost its spark. In the end my conclusion was that all that data was facing towards the past while I desire LLMs to improve in the other temporal direction.
By arjie 2026-03-1017:12 I did the same but with GPT embeddings. My primary problem was different though. I wanted to find when I talked about a related subject somewhere. Search works really well.
I have built a much more limited version of this that combines my journals, sketches, photos, geolocation etc. I found it useful for noticing patterns in my behaviour and in my irrationality. Journaling helped the most, because recording my feelings means acknowledging them and reviewing them.
Above all, it's just interesting. I enjoy reading about the day-by-day progression of a crush or my brutally honest feelings about a trip that produced stunning pictures. It weaves nuance into my history.
By andsoitis 2026-03-1012:49 Yours is qualitatively different because you’re not quantifying your life.
A good thing.
For me it's about managing ADHD-like (never diagnosed, and I don't care to assume) patterns, coupled with self-accountability. I have a self-improving dashboard (it kicks off Claude to propose additions based my positive/negative feedback on past attempts, and then builds them) that feels quite helpful. E.g. one of the things it added was fitbit integration that shoves my step count and resting heart rate in my face every day, and it's helped me drive my step count back up towards where I want it to be.
I do think it's not worth spending a whole lot of time on, though - hence why the first thing I did was add that mechanism to have Claude build it for me, with me mostly glancing at a plan and saying yes/no. It's the perfect thing to vibe-code - if it breaks, I revert a commit and it doesn't matter because nobody depends on it but me.
It's important to tell the readers how long you've been doing this - especially to those that also manage ADHD or ADHD-like symptoms.
Why? Because those individuals tend to spin something up, tell everyone about it (online, and offline) and then stop doing it few days later.
The result then ends up being a false signal for others in the same boat. People who read it, feel a spark of recognition ("someone like me actually figured this out"), and then invest real time, energy, maybe money, into replicating something the author themselves quietly abandoned two weeks later.
Just a small heads up from someone who used to get burned in the past :)
By drivers99 2026-03-1015:30 > Why? Because those individuals tend to spin something up, tell everyone about it (online, and offline) and then stop doing it few days later.
That's definitely me (most recent ones: using engineering notebook techniques but for my own life, and WOOP method), but I recognize that feeling like I've found THE solution when I'm only a few days into it, so I tend to wait and see, or if I tell someone I say "...but ask me again in a week or a month if I'm still doing it." (At least with the engineering notebook, I can still go back and use it to remember what steps and settings I used in KiCad or use WOOP on a new goal at any time. So it's not a total loss.)
I will say one thing that I have stuck with and is pretty useful is a morning checking and an evening checklist. I'm currently using a paper version with the days of March in the columns and the checklists in the rows, and X them off as I go. A slash for the one I'm doing now/next and X when it's done. Leave it blank (or write N) if I choose to skip it. As a back-up, when I can't get around to make a paper version (I'm planning to type in the steps in a spreadsheet so I can just revise and print it each month) I keep the lists in two Google Keep checklists. Those are great because you can reset the checklist each day for reuse, and you can drag to reorder it as you edit it, and you can indent one level to organize it a bit. The disadvantage is I might get distracted by notifications and stuff on my phone.
By vidarh 2026-03-1012:38 I have data going back many years, but this recent effort is a few months old at this point. It's however notably an iteration that has reduced the amount of time I spend on collating and reviewing data, by automating away most of my previous manual effort, including most of the coding, and so I do suspect I'll stick with this for a very long time. A significant part of the prompt to the Claude part of it is to focus a substantial portion of plans on how to automate little things that costs me time, and it's doing a decent job at that.
I've absolutely not figured it out, but I now have an agent throwing stuff at the wall (with guidance from read access to e.g. my journal and a few other data sources) to figure it out for me, and it's gotten steadily better.
By JCattheATM 2026-03-1021:161 reply > managing ADHD-like (never diagnosed, and I don't care to assume)
What's the difference here between assuming and saying 'ADHD-like' instead?
By vidarh 2026-03-1111:31 The difference is that I know what my "symptoms" are, but I don't know whether the combination of them are sufficient to justify an ADHD diagnosis. I don't like to assume because there's a tendency for a lot people in tech to self-diagnose and in the process sometimes diminish the difficultly others have with them.
It's pure armchair psychology, but this type of project always makes me think about anxiety. Who really needs this level of self observation and control? At the same time, I really enjoy reading about it and I find the window into somebody else's world intriguing.
By efilife 2026-03-1015:22 > Who really needs this level of self observation and control
I liked doing similar things in the past. There's no anxiety in the equation, just pure curiosity. How many times have I done a thing a month/year? I was always curious about stuff like this, much like the OP. There's also the hacker spirit in play - designing the apps for tracking stuff.
By runjake 2026-03-1015:03 You're equating two different things here: "building a custom web application" with "quantified self". These are two entirely different things.
Felix's statement isn't a condemnation of quantified self. I think that sometimes, when you're applying algorithms that aren't well-studied, you get pointless or bogus data. I feel much this way about sleep tracking algorithms from the likes of Apple and Whoop. Vitals, too, although it seems remarkably good at detecting when I'm about to get sick.
As a person in the older demographic of HN, having an Apple Watch quietly collect useful data over years and store it in a database has been immensely useful in helping resolve medical issues.
I used to really be into QS, and if I'm training for a marathon, I'm still studying graphs and drawing conclusions. I'm still into QS, but now I just silently log data to Apple Health and use it for medical histories or to identify certain trends (vo2max, cardio fitness, blood pressure, etc) a couple times a year.
I never spent as much time as OP on this but I did collect a lot of data during peak quantified self. I liked having automatic data collection and being able to see trends, for example. I stopped because of a few issues, not related to time:
* Hardware companies went out of business, stopped supporting devices, etc. It became obvious that there was no long term commitment to make good quality hardware that lasted a long time.
* Many devices and/or data collection was consolidated big, data hungry companies Google and Apple. Competitors have similar anti-consumer uses of data. I don't want any of these companies to have my data.
* Related to the last one, limited to no offline or local only data collection.
It is very hard to gather most of this data with off the shelf hardware and keep your data private.
By skyberrys 2026-03-1017:17 This provides some insight into startup ideas around privacy, local first, offline only self data collection. I agree this kind of personal life data is something you don't want to contribute unknowingly to big data. I could see wanting to share it particularly around a health problem where only massive compute has a chance at providing answers.
By cobertos 2026-03-1014:35 > however retrospectively, it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project.
Trying to extrapolate this conclusion to the entire "quantified self" movement is not correct. The issue is the time cost, not the act itself. If a trusted company came along (as if...) that sucked up this much data to allow you to answer these questions with minimal effort, I'm sure this would be a different story.
Anything at the fringes of tech with no tried and true solution requires hundreds of hours of effort. The author's conclusions are also personal, there are other styles of living and conclusions to be drawn that change the calculus on whether to do it or not.
By aurmc 2026-03-1014:34 I ended up doing something similar to this project a year or so ago: for nearly an entire year, I tracked every single thing I ate or drank.
Who knows how many hours I spent scanning nutritional facts on the backs of boxes, estimating amounts of liquids, and even tracking sips of water. And weighing myself! Thank goodness I used a "smart" scale at least, and I didn't have to worry about carefully inputting my weight to an app each time.
But the whole project was an exercise in perfectionism. "I have to remember this sandwich and log it the next time I'm alone" made me anxious, but once I logged it, I felt a sense of completion. The database and my personal history are now at nirvana. Everything is complete.
All for me to learn things every human alive knows today: eat more food and you'll gain weight; eat less food and you'll lose weight. Yes, I can now tell you the exact average difference in calories I'll eat, statistically speaking, on a day that I have adderall in the morning vs a day that I don't. Yes, there's a similar (but much smaller) difference in average calories per day if I have caffeine in the morning as well. And I can tell you that I generally eat an additional 200-400 calories per day on a Fri-Sun than on a Mon-Thu. Wow, groundbreaking.
I've always had a lot of water, but matching foodanddrink.csv to my HealthKit data showed that I have more water on days that I walk more steps. Mildly interesting to see it written out for me? I guess. But was it worth cataloguing every cup of water? Absolutely not.
Was any of [gestures broadly at me pulling out my phone and cataloguing each item I ate] necessary to learn that? Of course not. It gave me a chance to look back at the database and say "Wowee! I did that! Every day for a year, wow, I'm so cool!" and not much else.
By fxwin 2026-03-1013:22 extensive tracking of self-related metrics to improve ones health is the equivalent to reading tons of self-help books to improve ones life/social skills/...
We already mostly know what makes people happy/healthy: personal connections, physical activity, healthy diet and some sort of purpose/goal in life that goes beyond day-to-day activities. The problem is that these things generally require (hard) work and can be unpleasant sometimes, so humans do what humans do and spend unreasonable amounts of time doing the more pleasant things such as reading and gathering info rather than applying these and what they already know. (That's not to say that a project like this can't be fun or lead to insights, especially across longer time spans, but i feel like all of the questions in the first paragraph have fairly obvious answers if you know yourself at all, that don't require extensive tracking of stats to get)
By WarcrimeActual 2026-03-1015:29 This whole site is a rich persons humblebrag. That renders all of it moot as far as value.
By BloondAndDoom 2026-03-1014:55 Agreed, I have tendency to do this to “fix” something in my life, after doing it for 2 weeks I already know, just the consciously pay attention to something even without recording make it very obvious what’s going on.
By alexfoo 2026-03-1012:14 Sometimes it's the journey not the destination.
I did something similar to pull data from my Garmin watch. This meant writing all manner of code to pull data out of FIT files (interesting and often infuriating self-describing file format), coming up with schemas to hold that data to make it queryable, adding visualisations, performing analysis, pattern matching, etc.
The end result is nothing really useful, I had a bunch of scripts that semi-automated some jobs that would have taken 1 minute to do manually and only ever needed to be done a max of five times a day, but I learned a load of things along the way. Often these were useful lessons that can be applied to many other things when developing software.
In a similar vein I've gone to lots of trouble to build a cooling system for my homelab rack (ESP32 to control PWM fans, Dallas 1-wire for reading temp/humidity, exposing measurements as metrics for scraping/observability, designing things to deal with the different voltages involved, etc). I could have just gone and bought an off-the-shelf solution from AC Infinity and installed it in minutes but where would the fun in that be.
I wouldnt have minded if I kept a simple daily journal with a photo a day. If I had that now with LLMs I could ask it "what year did xyz happen".
By nemo1618 2026-03-1014:09 yep, I do a simple version of this in Google Sheets. Very useful to be able to "Ctrl-F" your life, especially when combined with Google Maps location history.
By jives 2026-03-1017:21 > The whole "quantified self" movement might be more about OCD and perfectionism than anything else.
As someone who has dealt with OCD and perfectionism, I think that could be the case for a lot of people. And the urge to obsessively track everything can be debilitating.
By karlitooo 2026-03-112:52 Having set up Analytics on all my websites, I noticed absolutely zero change in sales volume therefore Analytics is a waste of time.
By coldtea 2026-03-1023:38 One interesting actionable takeaway fact is that if you do such a project spending so much time on it, your life outside of it likely sucks.
By Bullhorn9268 2026-03-1013:22 I too learned this the hard way. I still haven't figured out why this is the case - like, is the inherent incidental irreducible complexity of human life too high, so it dominates majority of our actions?
By flexagoon 2026-03-1013:23 > The whole "quantified self" movement might be more about OCD and perfectionism than anything else.
Quantified Self, at least in the intended form, is focused on testing specific theories, not on collecting large amounts of data and trying to find something interesting in them.
See, for example:
https://gwern.net/zeo/zeo#what-qs-is-not-just-data-gathering
By coffeefirst 2026-03-1012:40 Yep. Same goes for elaborate note-taking and productivity systems. The simpler, the less bookkeeping and cognitive overhead, the better.
By a3w 2026-03-1012:57 *quantified self
By Noaidi 2026-03-1013:12 If you are not sick, tracking your life like this is, like he said, is useless. Enjoy your life!
On the other hand, if you are sick like me, charting your long term heath data from doctors visits and photographing skin issues can lead to great discoveries. I have been diagnosed with Erythrocytosis and a susceptibility to mycobacteria infection which caused pulmonary nodules and skin lesions. Only after showing my data collection to my doctor. Since I have mental illness they constantly over looked my physical issues so I needed hard data to convince them of my ideas.
For those curious, I have an minor IL12B deficiency and a partial immune deficiency leading to mildly elevated levels of DexoyATP which is partially corrected with zinc supplements.
By ericyd 2026-03-1013:53 Cynical take: I didn't need to read to the bottom to know it was useless to track the correlation between drinking alcohol and dancing
By swarnie 2026-03-1011:54 This is disappointing.... Last year i noticed large chunks of my life were being monitored via many spreadsheets and i endeavoured to bring them all together in to one Oracle DB. My plan was to eventually put some ui and graphing on top very similar to OP but seeing this is making me think twice.
By cyanydeez 2026-03-1011:37 The whole "this is a movement" thing might be more about mental health issues than anything else.
By PurpleRamen 2026-03-1015:291 reply I kinda disagree. Doing something about open questions which are bothering you can be valuable in itself, even if the result of the process is useless in the end. And usually you are also learning some valuable things along the way, or just push your life into a necessary direction. That isn't related to OCD or perfectionism, it's just gaining more control and insight about some aspects of your life.
By brodo 2026-03-1016:20 > it's just gaining more control
Yes it is! And if you control everything, you won‘t make mistakes.
A simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Felix causes between 70 and 110 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year just from flying.
Paris accord says 1.5t per person per year, from all activities, Felix's flying alonre is ~10-15x current European yearly per person emissions and ~50-75x those compatible with +1.5C.
By crazygringo 2026-03-1014:095 reply If you want to reduce air travel for environmental reasons, then tax it more.
Shaming individuals doesn't seem to be productive or helpful.
Air travel works for people if the benefits outweigh the costs. The only thing that changes behavior is to change the costs.
And even if costs were 10x there are still plenty of people who will fly tons, because it would still be economically productive. There are always going to be people who fly 10x more than others, because certain jobs and roles simply require it.
> If you want to reduce air travel for environmental reasons, then tax it more.
> Shaming individuals doesn't seem to be productive or helpful.
First, none of us have any power to "tax it more" so this is a dead end of discussion. Second, people have agency and we can hold them accountable socially for negative actions even if they are abiding by the current laws (or tax regime). This happens all the time, because laws don't fully align with morality in a culture. Suggesting that we should leave such things to the sole discretion of the economy and taxes describes a strange unhuman-like society that we don't live in.
By azan_ 2026-03-1023:10 > Suggesting that we should leave such things to the sole discretion of the economy and taxes describes a strange unhuman-like society that we don't live in.
Well, the choice is: either we leave it to economy and taxes which work, or we'll rely on shaming which doesn't work. To put it another way - it depends if you want to actually fix the problem or just want to have a moral high ground and don't really care about solving the problem.
By BeetleB 2026-03-1022:52 > First, none of us have any power to "tax it more" so this is a dead end of discussion.
You probably have more power over that than changing a whole population's behavior.
I'd wager you probably have more power over that than changing just one person's behavior (Felix).
> Second, people have agency and we can hold them accountable socially for negative actions even if they are abiding by the current laws (or tax regime).
And people are holding you accountable for the shaming. This leads primarily to polarization, not change. Polarized folks are more likely to increase the negative behavior.
> Shaming individuals doesn't seem to be productive or helpful.
I don't see any shaming. It was all matter of fact, free from judgement.
By crazygringo 2026-03-1017:381 reply What do you think was the purpose of the comment?
Do you think that comparing someone's CO2 emissions with the average and pointing out that it is much higher is value-free, just a totally neutral observation for no reason? That the commenter is fine with it? Or even that it's a good thing?
No, it does not mean the commenter is fine with it. Regardless of their feelings, the commenter had the good sense not to include any shaming.
By crazygringo 2026-03-1019:341 reply So you think the commenter was neutral? No judgment? Again, what was the purpose of the comment then?
What is the purpose of your comment? Are you neutral? No judgement?
By crazygringo 2026-03-1020:051 reply I asked you first.
But I'll also respond to your questions: my purpose is to show that your claim that the original comment was "free from judgement" is wrong. I'm not neutral, I'm attempting to show that your claim is obviously false, that it's not plausible at all. Of course I'm trying to judge a comment that seems wrong.
So now that I've replied honestly to your questions, will you reply honestly to mine? Repeating:
> So you think the commenter was neutral? No judgment? Again, what was the purpose of the comment then?
Because if the purpose wasn't to shame the person for their carbon footprint, I can't imagine what else it possibly could have been.
Ok, fair.
But you see: not one comment here is neutral. It would be silly to expect a comment to be neutral, such a comment wouldn't be written in the first place. I think the original comment expressed the point while staying as neutral as possible.
> So you think the commenter was neutral?
Yes, it stated some facts.
> No judgment?
Yes, it contained no explicit value judgement. Any value judgement we bring into it is our own.
> Again, what was the purpose of the comment then?
How would I know the purpose of someone else's comments? I don't even really know what my purpose is debating here with you. I certainly don't see myself persuading you of anything :)
By crazygringo 2026-03-1021:321 reply What you write doesn't make any sense. You say it's "silly to expect a comment to be neutral" but the comment is "as neutral as possible" and then answer if the commenter was neutral with "yes". Those aren't consistent.
I don't know what definitions of neutral or value judgment you're using, but I hope you can use this as a learning opportunity. The original comment has the obvious implicit judgment that a greater CO2 footprint is a bad thing. This is shared context. It is so obvious it doesn't need to be explicitly stated, any more than "murdering people is bad". The purpose of the comment is clearly to shame the person for having such a high carbon footprint, otherwise there's no purpose in bringing it up. I don't know what your purpose was in trying to deny that. But if you genuinely didn't understand before, I hope now you do, and that this has been helpful in improving your reading comprehension or understanding of shared/implicit context.
> The original comment has the obvious implicit judgment that a greater CO2 footprint is a bad thing.
No it did not contain any judgement. That is your reading and not the comment.
> This is shared context.
The world is a large place and different people share different context.
> The purpose of the comment is clearly to shame the person for having such a high carbon footprint, otherwise there's no purpose in bringing it up.
Informing perhaps?
I wonder what your gripe is: Do you think it's inappropriate to mention the CO2 at all? Or do you think that the poster should have said it in a different way? In what way?
By crazygringo 2026-03-121:12 > That is your reading and not the comment... different people share different context.
That makes as much sense as saying that the comment being written in English is just my "reading" of it, and that in a different context all the words could have entirely different meanings. That is technically true, but also completely useless when you're engaged in a real-life conversation with the rich context of the year 2026 on planet Earth... I tried to explain to you the shared context in case you were somehow ignorant of it. If you insist on denying that, then you're going to have a very hard time communicating with others, as you seem to be having with this conversation. Good luck.
I think a broad tax would just make it more difficult for middle and lower class to fly. Tax the business/first class and frequent flier, but don't push people who can already barely afford to fly out.
By azan_ 2026-03-1023:15 > I think a broad tax would just make it more difficult for middle and lower class to fly. Tax the business/first class and frequent flier, but don't push people who can already barely afford to fly out.
No, it's the other way around. If flying is bad then poor people absolutely have to be priced out of it. I know that it sounds absolutely awful, but unfortunately taxing just business and first class won't do much for reducing emissions if flying will be affordable for and used by billions of people.
By mixmastamyk 2026-03-1020:22 I appreciate this concern, but "poor people exist" is not a valid reason to continue destroying the environment, imho. It's not just people that have to bear the repercussions.
That said there are probably some work-arounds, tax free twice a year, tax rebate or some-such.
By lukakopajtic 2026-03-1014:561 reply You wrote one of the solutions as if it conflicts with the other one.
Let's raise the tax on an activity according to its negative side effects, while pointing out individuals that do a lot of it and dont take personal responsibility.
By crazygringo 2026-03-1016:061 reply If you run a company or companies on two coasts and have a wife and family on another continent (say she has her own career and can't move), then what exactly are you supposed to do?
I don't know this guy's personal life, but the people I know who fly tons fit into this profile. E.g. the wife can't move because she's a tenured professor at her university, and he's got to be at both offices regularly. He's best qualified to run the company/companies, and he's not going to get divorced to reduce his CO2 emissions.
What exactly is the solution you propose? What personal responsibility do you expect them to take? You think he should get divorced? Only see his wife and kids four times a year? Have his company/companies suffer because he can't be there in person? Quit his jobs?
And let's be clear, there are lots of jobs that require tons of air travel. If you're a highly specialized repair technician for certain equipment, all you do is constantly fly around the world fixing equipment wherever it is. If you're a CEO of a multinational company, you're constantly flying around to different offices. Are you looking for "personal responsibility" here too? How?
I can't tell if you're serious or if you really think someone who has a family on another continent and is running two companies on opposite coasts is some kind of victim of their circumstances and needs a special keyboard warrior to comment on HN in support of them, lest they face the consequences of a little more tax that they'll never miss or some social shaming.
I'm sorry, I don't want HN to to be the place where we get into a fight over the mildest inconvenience for people who are already living extravagant lifestyles.
By crazygringo 2026-03-1017:341 reply I think you've misunderstood me.
I suggested raising taxes in the first place.
What I'm opposed to is some hand-wavy demand to "take personal responsibility" without suggesting exactly what they're supposed to do and whether any tradeoffs involved are reasonable.
And please don't call people names. You can write comments here without calling other people "keyboard warriors". Nor is it helpful to try to shut down some viewpoint by claiming that somebody doesn't need any extra support.
And I think most people would consider not seeing their family more than e.g. four times a year more than just the "mildest inconvenience".
By lostlogin 2026-03-1017:53 > I think you've misunderstood me.
Knowing this completely changes the tone, I’d missed that you were that same commenter too.
> Shaming individuals doesn't seem to be productive or helpful.
I don't see how much support from history for that viewpoint. Some examples of positive societal change driven in part by shaming individuals: drink-driving, civil rights, sexual harassment, automobile safety, the slave trade, McCarthyism.
By eightys3v3n 2026-03-1014:55 All those cases also have huge penalties or effective costs associated with them. Is there an accurate "shame first, then penalties came later" stand point?
Automobile safety in my life has only changed after fines. Sexual harrassment still happens and doesn't seem to be helped by shaming someone as much as firing them. Though we often don't have the guts or legal backing to publically shame someone.
By lostlogin 2026-03-1017:54 > drink-driving, civil rights, sexual harassment, automobile safety, the slave trade, McCarthyism.
This hasn’t been a good few years for your examples.
By dansmith1919 2026-03-1014:273 reply That was my main takeaway as well. How do you do this without any shame? My man is emitting an amount of CO2 on par with an small African country
By adamtaylor_13 2026-03-1015:043 reply Most people don't spend a lot of time wistfully considering their CO2 usage, myself included. The religious zeal by which people feel the need to tell me about the ever-warming planet is honestly more off-putting than most actual religions.
Of the very few "f*cks" I can give in my life, I prefer to spend mine as I choose rather than being scolded for not giving mine to the pressing issues that others deem important.
The thing is that everyone alive today and in the future is footing the bill for that indifference. It's nice that you don't care, but it's not something I'd brag about.
By MarcelOlsz 2026-03-1016:211 reply Is the OP flying a private jet or something? Unless he is, it's a useless metric. The people flying private are responsible for a 1000x a regular persons emissions. It's offensive to suggest regular salaried people are supposed to be "doing something" in this CO2 effort.
By trox 2026-03-1019:55 It's true that a single private jet is causing tons of CO2 emissions. But in the end, all consumers control the market. You can jump one link further in the chain to regions with much lower emissions. Somalia/Congo emit over 200x less CO2 per capita in comparison to the US. Do you think that's fair for them if the "regular salaried people" don't care? If responsibility always gets dismissed by pointing to someone emitting more, nothing changes.
By integralid 2026-03-1015:362 reply I too don't want to be a martyr hermit who don't travel and consume just to cur my CO2 emissions in half, while someone else generates 10x of that living a full life. That's just dumb, and I consider this whole movement rich people telling poor people that they should be considerate and sacrifice themselves.
If you truly care about the planet, don't have children.
It's an "all hands on deck" situation, yet everyone seems to think that someone else has to do something. You don't need to be a martyr, just to make an effort.
At the very least don't brag about not giving a crap.
I don't give a crap, in the most boastful way possible. Sorry if my zealotry isn't your zealotry.
By luxcem 2026-03-1018:09 > If you truly care about the planet, don't have children.
That's a fallacy; people care about the planet precisely because of children. I don't care about the planet for its own sake; I care because of the humans who inhabit it and their future lives.
Also, humanity spent 100,000 years without flying around the globe, and I doubt they were all living hermit martyr lives.
By adamtaylor_13 2026-03-1018:121 reply I don't feel it's properly engaging in good faith to say that I don't care. I don't specifically care, in the "feeling shame" sense that the GP had mentioned. As I pointed out, we all have a limited number of things we can realistically care about.
The fact that I happen to care about other things more than this specific flavor of global catastrophe is morally OK.
By nicbou 2026-03-1111:15 The way I see it, "from each according to their ability" is the right approach here. If you can afford 30% less flying, red meat etc, then it's your duty to do it. You don't need to make your cat go vegan; just... do what you can, even if imperfectly.
Shame is not necessary, but callous indifference is not acceptable. There is a middle ground where you treat it like a habit to improve, like a step count.
By jug 2026-03-1016:57 And this is it. This is why we are where we are today. That it is seen as taking a religious zeal to realize how flying very frequently is disastrous for the climate. That's our bar and what we have to work with. Yes, we are properly fucked.
By spiderice 2026-03-1016:01 I would totally do this without any shame if I had the need/desire. CO2 isn't going to be solved by well intentioned individuals making absolutely no impact. It will be a generic solution that solves it for everyone, or it won't be solved at all.
I'm also not going to take shorter showers when people are farming in a desert and shipping the crops to China.
You might think this makes me a terrible person. That's probably good. Because it will help people understand what we're up against and what needs to happen to actually solve the problem.
"Take less flights" isn't the solution.
By eudamoniac 2026-03-1023:082 reply I refuse to worsen my life for an absolutely minuscule abstract benefit to someone, eventually, maybe. I am going to continue eating meat and flying when I want to, and I don't feel the least bit bad about it. It's unfortunate that climate change is happening, but my personal actions are not meaningfully contributing. My choices do not have cascading effects on others; whatever I do, the climate will change in the same manner as it otherwise would have. In that light, I am not going to reduce my QOL just to feel self righteous for no actual benefit to anyone.
You may wonder how this is consistent with my propensity to recycle and follow traffic laws and not do crimes and other socially beneficial minor things to which a comparison could be made to CO2 output: because those all have a greater benefit:cost ratio than flying and eating meat, by far. I am including the benefits of living in a high-trust society in that analysis.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
Instead we're razing the forests and bragging about our indifference.
By eudamoniac 2026-03-1116:29 Me planting a tree results in a tree existing for progeny. Me skipping a flight results in absolutely no difference for progeny. I pick my battles. I also plant a lot of trees, literally.
By cindyllm 2026-03-1023:14 [dead]
By jamesharding 2026-03-1023:44 I work as an airline pilot, and I just recently calculated mine to be 65,658 tonnes in my 10-year career so far (not quite so bad when calculated per seat-mile, but still eye opening!). https://jameshard.ing/pilot/#statistics
There is a section comparing flight emissions to US citizen average total emissions. This might make him feel good, but only 30% of an average American's emissions come from transportation and just a sliver from flying, so it's very likely his total emissions are much higher.
By necovek 2026-03-1023:29 I believe you misunderstand what "average" is: Americans (or people in general), on average, do not fly much.
Some — eg. those who've moved for work — probably fly 10-15x the average, and 10-15x of people fly 1/100th of average. Flying cost and availability correlate with average needs, but that presupposes that some people have higher needs altogether.
Exactly, I stopped reading when I saw the flying stats. There are people who still haven't clocked where our climate is headed.
I get that you may have to see family abroad or maybe indulge for a holiday, but this is "I'm using an airplane to commute" kind of level.
And here I am trying to book my train tickets to go to London instead of flying even though it costs three times as much just to avoid a few kg of CO2 (among other things), it's making me angry.
Depends where you take the train to London, it is a much nicer experience anyhow than going to airports and people should consider that as well (ignoring climate stuff)!
On the price, the very annoying thing is that fuel for planes is not taxed! Changing this would require quite some effort (falls under some specific laws, that are old and nobody wants to touch, etc.) but I think everybody should just ask "honest tax on fuels!" as this will make less people say (or thin) "but climate change is a hoax". Planes are just unfair competition to other transport due to taxes!
I agree re: fuel taxes, but it’s a complete nonstarter: passengers would be voting against their wallets, and airlines would lobby against it since it’s a vote against their business model.
By jamilton 2026-03-1020:42 Still worth trying, IMO.
An alternate approach that would be seen as consumer and business-friendly would be subsidizing companies with a certain level of fuel efficiency per passenger mile, targeted above current levels.
By WarcrimeActual 2026-03-1013:44 Surprise surprise. Felix is as rich and out of touch as most rich and out of touch people.
> And here I am ...
Reminds me of the soggy straw memes floating around now. I've been having those why bother? thoughts as well.
Eh, other people throw litter on the floor and rob elderly folks in their homes. Those people hardly ever get caught, but neither you nor I are are going to start copying their actions.
By ceroxylon 2026-03-1016:34 I stopped reading at "San Francisco was always scary to walk"...
By gardenhedge 2026-03-1013:224 reply Isn't this a drop in the ocean? Why would any 'normal' person forgo flying? How much CO2 emissions have 'world leaders' produced going to summits, or Taylor Swift and her fans flaying to concerts or war flights?
Couple of things: 1) NO ONE is suggesting any one forego flying altogether, or skipping their once-a-year overseas vacation or periodic family visit. 2) THIS level of flying is not normal and is exactly the kind of harmful behavior people have in mind when they complain about frequent flyers. 3) Whinging about summits and Taylor Swift is just a bad faith red herring argument. Obviously less flying is better, no matter by who. To the extent it's related to the topic at all, it bolsters the case for less air travel.
28 flights per year.
That's 14 round trip flights. A little over once a month. Not at all surprising if once a month. Or divorced and kid is in another state.
If we're generous and assume each trip is actually 2 flights (i.e. connecting flights), then it's 7 per year.
Yeah, more than typical. But not insane.
By Arn_Thor 2026-03-126:30 For this particular person, the inordinate factor is not the frequency of flights, but the distance: 40 flights in 2019, mostly from the US to Austria via Frankfurt. Now, there are some jobs that really do require such travel (though the business should probably consider hiring locally even though it might be more expensive?), but probably fairly few. The individual doesn't show flying stats after 2021, but presumably the work did get done even in the pandemic years when they couldn't fly as often.
By BeetleB 2026-03-114:06 > Not at all surprising if once a month.
Typo: Should have been "Not at all surprising if for work".
I don't know why someone going on a vacation would have moral high ground over someone that HAS TO travel for his work. If you are scientist you absolutely have to fly a lot to visit lots of conferences, disseminate your work, provide lectures etc.
By Arn_Thor 2026-03-126:18 Understand this is both an individual and systemic critique. We have the internet. Much of the travel you describe can and should be done remotely. The top 1% of flyers account for 50% of emissions. I would argue most of that probably is unnecessary technically, but there is both a push and pull factor from people expecting some things to take place face to face.
We're adults, we can keep many things in our minds at one time: We should all reduce flying. Regular working people should not be shamed for taking a holiday and flying there. The most frequent fliers for work should make a personal effort to reduce their flying. And companies, conferences, etc. should work much harder to facilitate remote participation and reduce stigma around it, as well as encouraging other modes of travel. Governments should improve alternative solutions such as rail and high-speed rail.
By fxwin 2026-03-1013:28 Why do anything for the greater good at all then? (Also there's a big gap between "forgo flying" and "fly every 2 weeks for 7 years")
By mmooss 2026-03-1013:46 Everything any one person does is a 'drop in the ocean'. Thankfully, we organize and do things collectively very well - it's in our fundamental nature going back to non-human ancestors, and there is a long, rich history of how much we accomplish. Alsmost nothing that has ever been accomplished has been done without a lot of people doing it together.
The general concern around Taylor Swift's emissions has always struck me as shortsighted. Her Eras tour is estimated to have generated around $5bn in economic uplift in the US, at an estimated 10,000 tonnes CO2e for her personal travel. Even if the total footprint is higher, that is thousands of times lower than the emissions intensity of an industry like fast fashion. From an environmental point of view, attending a Taylor Swift show is a much less carbon-intensive way to spend your money than ordering from Temu.
By duskdozer 2026-03-1014:10 People just want a scapegoat that allows them to say they have no responsibility
By lezojeda 2026-03-1014:30 [dead]
By carlosjobim 2026-03-1013:51 [flagged]
By glemmaPaul 2026-03-1013:073 reply yeah America treats flying as like taking a bus, so I am not at all surprised
By andsoitis 2026-03-1013:08 > yeah America treats flying as like taking a bus, so I am not at all surprised
What does this have to do with Felix?
By drstewart 2026-03-1014:02 Exactly, you'd never see any airlines get popular in Europe on the back of fares costing less than a bus ticket
Unrelated link: https://xcancel.com/Ryanair/status/776292730179682304
In my experience, tracking objective things like "nutrition" and "sleep hours" is immensely useful to reflect on what went wrong, and tracking subjective things like "mood" or "stress" is useless given hedonic adaptation or heavy swings that make problems obvious, and not need tracking.
What's key is be able to visualize metrics easily on the data and frictionless data entry, I've got a decent setup with iPhone Action + Obsidian + QuickAdd scripts on Obsidian Sync (mobile + laptop). for visualization I use Obsidian Bases and Obsidian notes that run Dataview code blocks and Chart.js, couldn't be happier.
I could track things that are not interesting to reflect on like vitamin D supplementation for accountability but I've never bothered, especially if it's taken ~daily.
By davidanekstein 2026-03-1018:07 The language you use to describe this is fun, I make an app for self tracking called Reflect and would love your opinion of it, even if it doesnt suit your needs exactly.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
I think it's good to track mood swings, because it makes you notice them. After a while it makes you call out your own BS.
By j_bum 2026-03-1013:50 Strongly agree with this. I’ve been using Apple’s “mood” log for about two years now, and it is extremely helpful for me to have a concrete view of the history of my general affect.
“This entire month I’ve been feeling good, I want to pinpoint why,” or “it’s clear since stressor X entered my life, my affect is lower; how can I resolve this?”
These long term trends are harder for me to track without data. It might be easy for others, but not me!
As someone with Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type, if you are not diagnosed with a mood disorder, tracking "swings in you mood" when you have no clinical disorder seems like a disorder of its own.
I have had people tell me they were "manic". Then I showed them videos I took when I was manic and they see what I mean when I tell them they are not manic.
We have come to a place where we do not want even normal fluctuation in mood, and that is a illness of its own, but it is a cultural illness.
Maybe for some it's a lot more extreme than for others, but even if it's not so dramatic as to be categorized as a mental illness wouldn't you want to know if, say, there were a direct correlation between whether you went for your morning run and your mood later in the day?
Is this something that needs to be tracked to bring into your awareness? We have a memory storage device sitting on top of our spine. When I drink I feel drunk. Easy. If the change is noticeable you will notice it and remember it.
I am just trying to save you time and escape the cycle of "optimizations" which is where all this data logging leads.
By nicbou 2026-03-1015:04 Yes? As I wrote, the mere act of writing down your feelings forces you to acknowledge them and see patterns in them. Sometimes while writing something down I realise "wait, I've been through this before" or "every time this person is around, I feel this way". It helped me be more self-aware, for my own good.
It turns out that our memory storage device uses a very lossy form of compression. Memories get simplified and distorted over time. Heck, I can't even remember when something started hurting, so how should I notice a year-long pattern of thinking around a certain topic?
By nicbou 2026-03-1014:53 The message here was "journaling is a useful form of introspection".
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
