Lifelogging: The Ability to Quantify Yourself

With more and more data available and at our fingertips, it has become possible to track every area of our lives. We can track our finances, our location, our friends, our movement, our jogs, our calorie intake, and even, our sleep patterns via digital channels.

Below is a video of Hasan Elahi's Ted Talk on tracking his entire life in response to ending up on the FBI watch list by accident:

This trend towards tracking everything is impacting the health and wellness sector in a unique way. In the last few years, a new trend has emerged, Lifelogging. According to the Lifestream blog, Lifelogging is the process of tracking personal data generated by our own behavioral activities. While Lifestreaming primarily tracks the activity of content we create and discover, Lifelogging tracks personal behavior data like exercising, sleeping, and eating. Lifelogging revolves around analyzing and learning from data to help optimize personal behaviors.

Some interesting apps and devices are capitalizing on this trend:

• UP by Jawbone is a wristband + iPhone app that tracks your activity and sleep. The idea is that the wristband inspiring you to move more, sleep better and eat smarter. 
• Nike+ is one of the best-known examples for tracking exercise. You can track your workouts via Sportband, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPod Nano as well as online. 
• BodyMedia FIT is an armband to track physical activity and sleep patterns. Tracking is done by iPhone or Android apps as well as online. 
• iHealth Blood Pressure Dock is the first blood pressure monitoring system for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. 
• Meal Snap asks you to take a photo of your meal and then estimates how many calories your meal was. It tracks your meals and progress towards your diet goals over time. 
• Sleep Cycle is an iPhone app that acts as an alarm clock. It analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you in the lightest sleep phase so you wake up relaxed and refreshed. 

And, this Lifelogging trend even extends into tracking changes in personal appearance. People are tracking how their face changes over time with the Everyday app, an app that allows you to take a picture of your face every single day. As noted by Techcrunch, the app functions in the following way: “When you first load up Everyday, you’re asked to take a picture of your face. Once you do this, you’re asked to align a grid to where you nose, mouth, and eyes are. This means that for each picture you take, your face can be in the same position…. And there’s also an overlay photo mask of your original face picture (which can be switched on and off) to help you align your face. And the real key may be the alert system, which allows you to set a time each day to get a Push Notification to take the picture of yourself, so you don’t forget.”

Moreover, communities are developing around Lifelogging. For example, the Quantified Self community is an online community around the users and toolmakers who share an interest in self-knowledge through self-tracking. The community includes a forum, a guide to available self-tracking tools and projects, and videos around the subject. Additionally, it has even expanded offline into Quantified Self Show and Tell meet-ups and an annual conference.

As the ability to quantify yourself through real-time data becomes more and more engrained in society, it will be interesting to see the results. Will people gravitate to the idea that they more they know, the more they will be able to better themselves? Or, will it result in a backlash?

For more information on this topic, here's a link to a collaborative post I wrote for work with Alina Koyfman, "Mobile Devices: My Tool for a Better Me."