Culture

“I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined, but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.”
– Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin, noted Renaissance Man of the American Enlightenment, was a well-known advocate of self-improvement. He famously kept track of thirteen personal virtues every day in the quest for moral perfection, and was notoriously productive (and prolific) in his endeavours.

If old man Franklin were alive today, he’d probably be a lifelogger and self-quantifier. Lifelogging is a movement that promotes the use of technology to track, weigh, measure and calculate just about any area of life. With the meteoric rise of smartphone culture, most of us are walking around these days with a GPS, pedometer, diary and camera in our pocket. Lifelogging takes advantage of these tools, allowing you to measure and catalogue your life and create objective data by which to measure your achievements and failures.

Sound a bit intense? It is. With the help of technology you can record:

- How many steps you take each day, and where you take them (pedometer apps)
- How much exercise you’ve done, and your heart rate throughout (Nike Fitbit)
- What you ate and the calories therein (MyFitnessPal)
- When, how well, and for how long you had sex (Spreadsheets iOS app)
- Your mood at various intervals (Moodpanda)
- Which websites you spend your time on, and for how long (browser extensions)
- Which Facebook friends you interact with the most, and which of your posts are popular (Wolfram Alpha)
- How well you sleep every night (Sleep Cycle)

And pretty much anything else you could care to measure. Several currently-trending apps take photographs at set times during the day, or prompt you to film one second per day in order to eventually create a short film of daily snapshots. Andy Warhol would love that shit.

I admit that I’m fascinated by, and engage in, a little self-quantifying. Why? Because statistics are sexy. Let’s face it, if you want to achieve something, having some solid statistics to go on will help. Maybe you want to lose weight. Maybe you think you’re doing well at eating healthy things, and you congratulate yourself. Guess what? You might not actually be doing well. Your brain is an arsehole – it lies to you to make you feel good about yourself and activate happy feelings. Your brain is likely to forget to warn you that slathering aioli all over your salad ain’t helping your fat arse. You know who will warn you? MyFitnessPal, the calorie-tracking app.

Similarly, Fitbit will let you know if you half-arsed your workout, and timeStats will reveal just how much time you spend scrolling through Reddit. Stop Smoking will tell you how long ago you quit smoking, and how much money you’ve saved by doing so. As wearable technology reaches its tipping point in wider society (think Google Glass and smartwatches), more and more aspects of your life can be logged, crunched and analysed.

Lifelogging isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and, admittedly, the uber-commited lot appear to be of the Tim Ferris, privileged-male, productivity-nut type. If you’re the c’est la vie, que sera, sera, YOLO type, lifelogging is probably quite unappealing. But for the more neurotic among us, or for those trying to achieve specific goals, using technology to help might actually be worth it.

Track your sleep cycle for a few nights and find out if you’re sleeping well, or if you would benefit from cutting back on the Monster habit. Log your internet usage for a few days and you might just find that the hours you’re wasting on Pinterest just aren’t worth it – you could be using those hours to actually make one of those Pinterest projects. Self-quantifying doesn’t have to be hugely intrusive, or time-consuming, but sometimes a little statistical information can prompt a change for the better.