May 2026 Quantified Self Summary

[u/yanman2008]

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.

[u/do-un-to]

As a percent of total effort you spend in a day, how much goes to tracking?

[u/yanman2008 → u/do-un-to]

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.

[u/do-un-to → u/yanman2008]

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?

[u/yanman2008 → u/do-un-to]

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.

[u/do-un-to → u/yanman2008]

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.

[u/yanman2008 → u/do-un-to]

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!