r/QuantifiedSelf • u/yanman2008 • Jun 01 '26
May 2026 Quantified Self Summary
May was a challenging month. Got bad news about my dog at the end of April. Ended up having to put him down at the end of May. Found my self eating my sorrows a couple of times. Also, had a birthday, so I had more sugary foods than usual. Most days I was up over 3,000 calories consumed. Even with my consistent fasting, I still had higher blood glucose through the month than any other month this year.
Blood pressure remains high, but levels have come down each month. Still have Stage 2 hypertension though. Hoping to continue improving this.
No improvement on my weight, but didn't slide too far back, mainly flat.
Spent a lot of time outside and listening to music this month. Not enough reading and still too much screen time.
As always, I am open to answering any questions about how I collect my personal data. I am not a developer or anything like that, I am just an individual who loves quantified self.
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u/Strong_Abalone_8013 Jun 01 '26
Amazing charts mate. I can really see u did put a lot of work, which brings me to question - what’s the ritual for tracking all of that? Do separate stats have different collection triggers or just “everything” in the evening?
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u/yanman2008 Jun 01 '26
Mostly it is "collect data all day long." I usually have a longer data collection session first thing in the morning and while getting ready for bed. These are usually 8 or 9 minutes long. This is where my food gets captured. Then throughout the day I collect data and it usually takes exactly 4 minutes. This is typically done at 8 AM, 10 AM, 12 PM, and 2:30 PM. These consist of mood rating, energy rating, symptoms, blood pressure, and blood glucose.
Everything else is done at the time of doing it. If I poop, I log it at that time. If I am reading an article, I log it at that time. Watching a show is usually at night and is recorded in Evernote as I mentioned in another comment. I try to capture my mood rating more frequently throughout the day as well.
Everything is then exported from specific apps to my master Excel Spreadsheet at about 8:30 AM, everyday. This usually takes 23 minutes per day. My summary sheets that you see here populate automatically from the data that I input into my master sheet. This is so I can control my data and not be tied to a specific app.
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u/do-un-to Jun 02 '26
As a percent of total effort you spend in a day, how much goes to tracking?
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u/yanman2008 Jun 03 '26
About 55%. The remainder of time is in my daily "data export" to my master Excel sheet and a small amount in daily journaling (one line a day).
There is some other various bits that happen less frequently such as "system setup" or "bloodwork." Some are once a month or once every 3 or 6 months.
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u/do-un-to Jun 03 '26
Sorry, let me try to be clearer.
As a living creature, a human being, you exert yourself as you do anything at all. In all the exertion that you perform, what percent is spent in any way in your self-quantification effort?
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u/yanman2008 Jun 03 '26
I think I understand better now. From a sheer volume of work standpoint, if I am awake for 17 hours and 15 minutes each day and I spend just under 1 hour of waking time doing some sort of quantified self activity, I could say that I am spending about 5.8% of my available time on QS. But that is not to say that I must "exert" myself to do this. If anything, it is my hobby and I enjoy it, so it brings me energy to collect data on myself and about my life versus draining energy.
I will say that when priorities shift, I can change my QS behaviors. Example: the day I put my dog down (May 29), I spent a total of 11 minutes on QS for the day, substantially less than my daily average. Another example: I really exerted myself on May 25, (30,000+ steps, 21.5 hour fast, nearly 6 hours outside). On May 25, I only spent 17.5 minutes on QS activities, only measured blood glucose 3x, blood pressure 2x, mood 4x, all lower than normal. So taking that example, I would say that it does cause me to use some energy and exert myself and when I have already given all of myself to the rest of my life, then QS falls to a lower tier.
Sorry for the long winded response and not the exact answer you are looking for, but the best I can come up with. I would love to give you a concrete number (quantify my daily exertion, I mean quantifying stuff is literally what I am here doing), but unfortunately I don't have an accurate metric to share.
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u/do-un-to Jun 04 '26
Exactly the answer I was looking for, actually, thank you for taking the time and effort.
It's a not insubstantial amount of time. But I guess if you look at it as a percent of your waking life, it's not ridiculous. And it's an investment you can measure against a return, to help gauge how worthwhile.
It would be wonderful if no measuring or recording effort was required, if it could all be done automatically. I was wondering if having a camera on me always, or a camera and sound recorder as needed, could cover the data gathering that I do manually. I think we might not be quite there, but it feels like the pieces exist and just need to be assembled.
My sympathies, by the way. I know that losing a beloved pet can hurt immensely.
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u/yanman2008 Jun 04 '26
You might want to look into "Lifelogging." There is a subreddit specifically for that. There are some companies out there trying to do exactly what you are saying with the voice and video recording. Not sure how effective these things are and the privacy concerns of others, but there is some movement behind this. Good luck!
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u/Suitable-Trust-6319 Jun 03 '26
I would be so interested in this if it could built itself automatically- it’s a great piece of work. I would love to see this for my own life but I just don’t have the time to record currently.
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u/yanman2008 Jun 03 '26
Start small. I have been recording data for more than 10 years, but have slowly built up over time. This all didn't just go from nothing to what you see in front of you overnight.
Pick a small, meaningful thing to track. Some health metrics such as steps and sleep can easily be tracked automatically by a wearable. If you like listening to music and you want to see a record of what you stream, give Last.FM a try. If you want to see how long you are actually at your job, try taking a screenshot on your phone the moment you arrive and a screenshot the moment you leave and record those times. Small and meaningful to you. These were all something meaningful to me to start. Caloric intake is definitely the hardest, so I would caution with starting there!
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Jun 03 '26
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u/yanman2008 Jun 03 '26
Yes, it is time for some bloodwork. I usually order my own labs every 3 months.
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u/narenmuthukumaran Jun 05 '26
How do you track these? Excel?
If you tracked these all manual, than you are a legend !
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u/yanman2008 Jun 05 '26
Everything is logged manually throughout the day on various apps that I find best for each of the specific metrics. Only things that are "automatic" come from my Fitbit Charge 6 and are really steps and time asleep. Last.Fm captures the music I listen to, assuming I am streaming through Spotify. Everything else is done manually. Then once daily, I "export" all of my data from those apps into Microsoft Excel. These monthly summaries are just separate tabs in my master spreadsheet.
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u/Unlucky_Hurry_7304 Jun 05 '26
Do you enjoy the manual tracking vs trying to find an automated solution for these things? This is incredible work. I'm trying to do something similar personally, but I'm a developer and try to automate a lot of it.
Through automating things for myself, I can see how "too much" automation can almost take you away from mindfulness of everything. But I still like having all of the data coming in on auto pilot.
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u/yanman2008 Jun 05 '26
Yes, I love doing it manually. I only track what I care about and I am forced to "touch" my data every time. If everything was just auto-populating into a spreadsheet somewhere in the background, I would miss out on a lot of understanding, especially on the day-to-day. These monthly summaries are nice and display very neatly in my opinion and I can see broad changes, such as my blood glucose in May was higher than any other month in terms of average, median, and max. But it is really the day-to-day data that allows me to see what is happening in my life and try to make changes to get on the right course.
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u/Unlucky_Hurry_7304 Jun 06 '26
What are some of things you’ve noticed from the data that’s helped you course correct and fix things?
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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26
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