I’m writing this as an outlet for my interest in personalized, digital healthcare. There’s actually more than healthcare that I’d like to cover, things like happiness and productivity. If we describe depression as a mental health problem, I think it’s fair that my anxiety, frustration, and worrying about my life are considered healthcare.
Over the last ten years, I’ve been a big user of different tracking tools for my body and behaviors. The initial start was Strava, tracking my running. I still do this, but graduated to a Garmin smartwatch that actually does the tracking, and then pushes the data onto Strava. I’ve also tracked my eating using MyFitnessPal. This has been a huge pain at times, mostly because I don’t have much of a purpose for the tracking. It’s nice to see how many calories I’ve eaten when 10pm comes around and I pull out the ice cream. That hasn’t always been a good enough reason to keep going. Lack of purpose has made it easy to stop tracking for a few days, which quickly turns into a few weeks and months. My watch, which I’ve worn for a few years now, also tracks my sleep, heart rate, and steps. I’ve dabbled with intermittent fasting using Zero. Again, I’m not sure what to do with that info except pat myself on the back after a 10 day streak of 16 hour fasts.
A big one I want to start looking at is my attention. I spend most of my internet time on browsers. I don’t download apps like Instagram or Twitter but I’ll go to those websites on my phone or computer. I probably think it’s not an addiction if I’m not an app user. About a year ago I read Deep Work and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. They sold me on the fact that email, social media, and plenty of other internet tools are huge time wasters, and more, they don’t lead me to being happier. I have had long stretches where I’ve totally given up social media, news, and other internet tech, but sadly I always fall back in. I think some tracking on these sites would help me.
My problem has always been centralizing this data. It’s a chore looking at data in ten different apps. More than that, it removes the context that different data can provide. The food I eat might impact how many pages I’m reading each day, which may also be connected to the minutes I spend on social media. This needs to be brought together.
I’ve written tons of notes about building a dashboard for understanding my habits. Plenty of plans to do something with all the data. From waking up to going to sleep, and all the little things I do in between, I see that I spend so much time and effort getting the data and don’t do much with it. Throw in my body’s output, from heart rate to blood tests, and I think there’s potential to give myself transparency into the decisions I’m making and the effect they’re having.
I don’t plan to become the bionic man or anything like that. I’m just overwhelmed with all the choices that seem to be available to me, from food to leisure, and I know that I make terrible decisions regularly. Those include one-off bad choices, like downing a bottle of wine and then sleeping only five hours because I want to be an earlier riser, and routine bad decisions, like mindlessly finding my way onto Reddit during every “free” 10 minutes during the day.
Just seeing this information in a single, easy to digest location would be a step in the right direction. A dashboard for my body. After that, maybe I can start to look into patterns. I can’t imagine that my coffee intake isn’t connected, either as a cause or effect, to my food, alcohol, and leisure choices.
Expect a simple dashboard to come soon. The Connected will follow my journey toward building this connected life for myself. Enjoy.
~ Corey