You can track almost any kind of data and then review and reflect on that data to make informed decisions about your productive future. Most people, however, do not. Movements, like that of Quantified Self, whose tagline is “self-knowledge through numbers,” aim to help individuals track data to improve their lives in whatever way they choose. In this cast, the ProductivityCast team looks at the state of the world through the lens of active tracking (versus passive tracking, which we’ll cover in the next cast). We will talk about what active tracking is, how to be a productivity enthusiast with empowered choice, why and what to track, and how to do so with good ol’ pen and paper, or with the latest digital technologies. You don’t want to miss this conversation, so queue us up and listen as we discuss this prime topic of this hyperconnected time and Internet (of Things) Age.

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In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Francis Wade

Art Gelwicks

Show Notes

Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Quantified Self (DC Quantified Self)

Google Keep

Don’t Break the Chain

RemindMe

LifeSum

Goodnotes

Evernote / Penultimate

Eli Finkel’s Relationship/Marriage talk, in which he discusses a Gratitude Journal

GitHub

One Way to Overcome a Limit of the Quantified Self - Using Notifications

Becoming like the elite 11% who get all their tasks done each day Part 1

Can you be productive in 40 hours?

OmniTrack - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRIuENNRjEM

Toggl

Habitica - (Contact Ray if you want to join the GTD Party)

GTD Productivity System in Google Sheets / Microsoft Excel template and tutorial

LoseIt

MyFitnessPal

BulletProof Coffee

MapMyRun

Google Fit

Apple Health

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is h:mm:ss.ms to h:mm:ss.ms (e.g., 0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000 starts at 0.00 seconds and ends at 4 seconds in the cast's audio).

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Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Welcome everybody to productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity. I'm particularly excited about our discussion, but this episode and next episode and and there's a very good reason why you see everyone identifies their overall satisfaction and fulfillment with their day differently, but there's no doubt that whether the factor or factors, by which we define our productivity is emotional or logical. It's all based on data, whether that data is correct incorrect positive or negative doesn't really matter. Today, thanks to technology and and greater awareness of this more people than ever are tracking all kinds of data.

about themselves and then using that data to make informed decisions about their productive futures. However, I think most people. Sadly, don't purposefully track that data around areas they like to improve and obviously I think they should movements like that of quantified self, which I'll describe in more detail and a bit their tagline is self knowledge through numbers and aims to help individuals track data to improve their lives in whatever way they choose. So we're going to have a conversation today about the state of the world through the lens of active tracking versus passive tracking which will cover in next week's cast, we're going to talk about what active tracking is how to be a productivity and disease through empowered choice. This is kind of a term of art. I've I've chosen to use empowered choice why and what to track and how to do so analog digital and or through a hybrid approach.

And those of us here on the recording each have our own way of doing that. I think it would be really a great discussion around that as well. So I'd like to start off with a definition of active tracking and why track data for greater productivity at all you know what's the what's the purpose. What's the utility of that. So I'm gonna get started with just just my own definition of active tracking and then I'd like to hear your thoughts gentlemen on the idea and so I'm going to start off with, with just a couple of items that I think are points of or elements of the description or definition of active tracking, which is to say that active tracking is the process of being able to purposefully capture data and then review and or reflect upon that data in order to make impact.

movements in your life. And that's pretty much the extent on both ends of it right for me in terms of active tracking that is it's purposeful and that you're going to review and reflect upon that data in order to make forward progress on some area in your life, not necessarily on the definition i

i agree on the definition is I think that is tension that I will make your definition is that

this active data that we are collecting could be us not only for personal but also to professional perspective and and the reason I will make the distinction is because the analysis and the use of both are completely different.

The professional tend to have more dollars assigns or attach to it. While the personal it goes.

into other things as well being as healthy as energy as vitality and other elements so that even that is still the same

objective of quantified self your yourself it's look from a really completely different perspective. Right. So, so for listeners who may not know, I wanted to actually talk a little bit about quantified self and then I'm happy to respond to your thought there Cousteau because I think it's salient so quantified self or what some people have called Life logging is the idea of using numbers right using data collection and that includes active and passive collection of data about one's self in order to make awareness, a regular part of your life. That is the awareness of different parts of your life, whether that be health and wellness, whether that be.

productivity, whether that be any number of other particular components of one's life being able to gain greater self knowledge through numbers as its as its mission or tagline states is the whole purpose and movement of quantified self and so this was a. This was something that two gentlemen based out of San Francisco. They started as a monthly I think meetup or something like that and it has grown into quite a substantial global movement as a disclaimer. I'm actually one of the CO organizers of the DC quantified self meetup. And it's nearly 1000 members strong in Washington, DC. And so we have statisticians and you know data scientists and all kinds of people who come together as well as enthusiasts, you know, data science enthusiasts and quantified self enthusiasts who come together every month to discuss these various ways in which people are using their data to become better and that includes people who who are tracking their children's.

activities to tracking heart rate to identify health, you know, many, many areas of your life that can be tracked and actually just as an aside, most recently we had a professor come to the University of Maryland for one of our meetups and she talked about an application called Omni track that she's developed that she created and it allows her to do active tracking she can go in there and identify things that she's working on and then purposefully put that information in as she makes progress on them. And so there are many, many different areas where this is really, really powerful. And I think you're right at gusto there is there's two sides of this right how do I improve my personal life and then how do I improve the professional life. And I think I think we can have a thoughtful discussion around that as well. I do want to make one more point which is to say that I'm a huge proponent of what I called an.

What I call empowered choice and I'm sure that this comes up in stoicism or somewhere else in in philosophy before me, but it's just a term of art that i've you know taken hold of which is this idea that today more than any other time in history. We must I think it's an imperative. We must take the reins in terms of the data that surrounds us and through that sort of, you know, taking control of that data we're allowed to then make good choices empowered choices right we're being imbued with the with the information to make good choices, whether they be good choices or bad choices, but we're we're imbued with the ability to make choices that we otherwise wouldn't be able to make without that information and I think it's really important. I think it touches almost every area of our life from public policy to personal and professional effect. Yeah, sure. I'll jump in. I I've always been a tracker. I guess of some kind.

I used to track my times time I spent studying for my exams. When I was in high school,

so I had, you know, had a schedule and I take off how closely. I could stick to it and this is when I was about 15 or 16, years old, so I've always I've loved the idea of tracking and as I got a bit older, I guess I got a little more sophisticated that graphs and different ways to show data so I could understand how well I'm doing it different things. This is totally tied in with the fact that I'm an industrial engineer operations researcher so right in line with my training but what's great No,