CxD #195: 🍁🍂
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2. Is tracking our personal data helpful? A hindrance? Another obsession? How might we become wise about what we track and what we don’t? Hint: once you’ve established a practice of meditation, stop tracking it, lest it become another achievement trophy.
A few years ago, this fellow Nicholas Fleton took his self record-keeping very seriously:
Back in 2005, when people still talked about Pete Doherty on Libertines forums and Tony Blair was still Prime Minister and this writer was still in short trousers, a man named Nicholas Felton somehow managed to set the bar for the “quantified self” movement that’s exploded over the last few years. And boy, did he set that bar high, creating an Annual Report each year that laid out his personal data, from weight to how many miles he’d flown to the books he’d read and the photographs he’d taken.
Painstakingly laid out in infographics and charts, these became the Feltron Annual Reports (the additional “r” in his name as a sort of design pen name, almost separating the reports from life). Now, ten years on, he’s helped shape the Facebook timeline design, seen his work placed in MoMA’s permanent collection and launched iPhone app Reporter, which helps users record and visualise subtle aspects of their lives. His most recent Annual Report has just surfaced, and it’s the one that the designer says is his last.
“The world of personal data has changed considerably since the project began in 2005 and this edition attempts to capture its current state,” Nicholas says on his site. “While previous editions have relied on custom solutions to gather ethereal personal data, this edition is based entirely on commercially available applications and devices.”
As with previous reports, we see Nicholas’ car, computer, location, environment, media consumption, sleep, activity and physiology instrumented and logged, but this time using just readily available products and software. What do we learn? That in Q1 he weighed an average of 158.8 lb, that he drove a total of 459 miles, and that he took a whopping 685 photographs. Why do we care? We’re not sure, but it’s utterly compelling, and this decade-long body of work is testament of the power of design to allow us to read and communicate our lives, and in Nicholas’ case, to predict a trend that today in the world of FitBits and phone pedometers seems almost commonplace. Source
You can find tens years’ worth of his reports here.
What are five things you find helpful to keep track of? What do you refrain from tracking? How does tracking things help you design your character?
3. Buddha’s Noble Truth #1: Life is full of dissatisfaction and dis-ease:
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The little things I like about you
How you say when you say what you do
When your feeling is a little gold and blue
When your feeling is a little strung out
Everything we talk about
Living in the city is a crowded place
I still lose sight of every other faceTurn in your direction
Feeling like I need attention
Told you this once or twice
Won't you hear?
I see you in the yard, drinking a beer
Leaving me undressed
Like some cheap classic movie
Maybe I'm a little obsessed
Maybe you do use meOne step behind you
Following you down
I was inside of you
Kissing your mouth
You were inside of me
Kissing my mouth
Seein' out that needle eye
Seein' out that needle eye
Seein' out that needle eyeThe little things I like about you
How you say, when you say, what you do
When your feeling is a little gold and blue
When you're feeling a little strung out
Everything we talk about
New York City is a crowded place
I still lose sight of every other faceOne step behind you
Following you down
I was inside of you
Where are you now?
Where are you now?