20 Dec 2013
By Belle
Belle

Quantified Self weekly links: tools to track everything and the future of medicine

1. Quantified Guide

This site's still in beta, but it's shaping up to be a useful resource to help you find a tool to track pretty much anything.

Quantified Guide

2. A Case Study in Getting Important Things Done

Cal Newport writes awesome blog posts about getting "real" work done—how to practice so that you improve, how to split your day up so that you're most productive.

This one's about doing "deep work"—that truly important, mind-stretching work that's good for his career and personal development. He's done some interesting self-tracking to work out how to improve the percentage of his time spent on deep work.

3. Indoor air quality and sleep

Interesting self-tracking results from experimenting with carbon dioxide levels in the air.

4. Five years of weight tracking

If you like looking at graphs, this is a cool one.

5. QS and the future of medicine

Interesting case study in how useful self-tracking can be when you can share that data with your doctor:

My (always excellent) GP dealt with my problem quickly, and kept me out of the surgery saving time and money.

This process is made easier by the fact that I present my GP with evidence when I say there’s something wrong. I keep a decent record of my inhaler usage and my peak flow. I’m also recording my physical activity at the moment and sometimes (when trying to lose weight) record my calorie intake and daily weight. If everyone could present their GP with this sort of data, we could probably save a lot of time. And money. And lives.

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