Thanks for visiting dunkbonds.com, the dormant Rails app I built to gamify charitable contributions toward personal goals, piloted around my goal to dunk. You'll notice I have made zero effort to update its style, so it still harkens back to its original 2011-era mint.com inspiration, when it was likely already looking pretty dated. Have a click around!
DUNKbonds
Achieved
Selected Goal

Aaron DUNKs

Follow This Goal
August 20, 2012

Rethinking my Data-Tracking Habits: Simplicity over Precision?

I'm somewhat into personal metrics and their potential to shape one's behavior.  This probably started in 2002, when I began tracking my spending using Microsoft Money.  Sure, the system is a little ancient and clunky, but I've got 10+ years of data to about 99% accuracy.

But has this wealth* of info and its fine granularity affected my spending behavior for the better?  Probably somewhat, but most likely not nearly to its potential.

Why?  Probably because I am much more beholden to the recording habit than to the review habit.  It takes more effort to distill meaning from fine-grained data.  More effort discourages me from reviewing it, and so I merely sit on a bunch of data that rarely feeds back into my behavior.

How is this related to DUNK? 
Well, one of the big behaviors I want to regulate is my diet.  I do track what I eat using dailyburn, and while the data I have acquired is rich, I still cannot easily see if I'm sticking to the plan.  Sticking to the plan quite simply boils down to:
  • Did I eat or miss a meal (a big problem on busy weekends)?
  • Quality of meal according to my strategy {ideal, so-so, cheat meal}


A friend pointed me to a post from personal data geek, serial entrepreneur, and accomplished triathlete Sami Inkinen.  Months later, I finally got around to reading it last week.  It got me thinking about simplifying my data tracking down to what I actually want to improve:  how well I'm sticking to my eating plan.

I'm going to give this a shot, starting small with just a few metrics on a Google spreadsheet, so I don't discourage my forming of the habit.  I'm also going to build a habit of reviewing the data.  Things should be interesting after a few weeks, when I might add tracking of sleep time, quantity, tiredness, snoozing, etc. 

Don't get me wrong:  I'm still going to use dailyburn to track what I'm eating (and MS Money for $) because the sheer fact that I have to be accountable affects my behavior.

Heisenberg, alive and well.

*seriously, no pun intended. I caught it when I proofread the post.