An experiment of Quantified Self: the life logging of David Achkar

The experiment:

I present here the experiment of David Achkar.

David's blog

David's Twitter account

He is an influent blogger about Quantified Self.

He decided to track every waking minute of his days to know how he really spent his time. For that purpose, he used a simple Google calendar with a color code.

David's activities

Then, he gathered and studied the data and found out surprising things.
I think this experiment is very interesting because we can see how Quantified Self can highlight our cognitive biases. Besides, the majority of David’s discovering are representative of our life.

What David learned with the data:

Thanks to this experiment, David has been able to have data to answer the simple question “What have I 

done this day/week/month?”  And, he found out that his intuition was often misleading.

For instance, productive hours of work were often overestimated whereas less wanted activities like 

procrastinating were underestimated.

His set of data enabled him to build a “manufactured awareness” to be more aware of his time and better choose his activity.

The urgent and the important:

Distractions...

Paradoxically, recording his activities on his smartphone or computer throughout the day enabled David to stand
back and change his viewpoint on the use of the Internet and more generally of technology.

He found out that, very often, the urgent activities like answering an email, doing research for this email, arriving on 

facebook, talking with a friend on the chat were perceived by him as important at the moment. But, some of them 

were not. Therefore, thanks to his experiment, he got the proof with his data that switching too often from one 

activity to another was a huge waste of time.

I think that is something we all know but, seeing the figures about it can be more helpful to change it.

The Quantified Baby

The "Quantified Baby" trend

New data about babies

In the article “Is Quantified Self really new ?”, we have seen that what was really new in this trend was the idea that everybody can store and study quantitative data about themselves.

But, for instance, athletes have always done it to improve their preparations. 

Besides, parents are generally following their newborns with a lot of quantitative data. For instance, babies are weighed and measured very frequently after their births and even before, during the pregnancy.

Their sicknesses, their vaccines, their reactions to them are recorded in a 

health record book.

So, even before today, we could see that Quantified Self has been applied to babies.

That is why, now, the “Quantified Baby” is a very dynamic topic of innovation. Indeed, parents are already prepared to store data about their child for themselves and for their pediatrician.

So, there is a need to make  the storage of data easier. For instance, smart baby scales can create weight and height curves by themselves .

But, other innovations go beyond this and enable parents to have access to richer data about their child.

For instance, there are some wristbands made especially for kids. Like those for adults, they monitor activity levels and sleep patterns but they also alert parents whenever the child goes out of range. Thanks to a smartphone application, parents can follow  real-time data about their children.

The Sync : a wristband for babies

Another fascinating new thing is a smart feeding bottle – Sleevily -  that tracks how much and when your baby eat. 

Sleevily : the smart feeding bottle

And, last but not least, nervous parents can also measure their baby’s health vitals thanks to Teddy The Guardian, a new kind of Teddy bear.

“Teddy the Guardian is a plush bear with embedded certified medical sensors that measure child’s heart rate, oxygen saturation, and body temperature seamlessly during the play, capture and send the data using wireless technologies to pediatrician’s app. Every time a child takes Teddy The Guardian by the hand or puts Teddy’s paw on his forehead sensors detect the values, capture them and transmit in real time to a mobile app where data is analyzed, visualized, managed and downloaded by the medical staff and parents.”

The iPhone application of Teddy the Guardian

Pro and cons

Although this trend seems to be very helpful for young parents, it also has its detractors. Indeed, the “Quantified Baby” trend is blamed for overwhelming parents with data. And, it could distract them from learning to listen to natural cues and cycles.

Besides, we could also say the same about the whole Quantified Self trend. If the data we store and on which we are focused is not relevant, not only is it a waste of time but it also can prevent us from thinking about the right causes.