{"id":4505,"date":"2019-06-07T03:45:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T08:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hectic-dad.com\/hectic-dad\/?p=4505"},"modified":"2019-06-04T11:42:06","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T16:42:06","slug":"quantified-life-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hectic-dad.com\/hectic-dad\/quantified-life-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Quantified Life Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back in the mid-80\u2019s and throughout the 1990\u2019s, I was slowly introduced to the concepts of time management<\/em>. As my career began to ascend, I became increasingly aware of how important it was to capture all the things I needed to do in one place so nothing would fall through the cracks. In those early days I used a a Day Runner<\/em>\u00a0organizer . If you\u2019re close to my age (56 as of this writing), you probably used a similar tool.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While physical organizers were great for capturing the commitments you\u2019d made and the tasks you had to do\u2026they weren\u2019t too good for much else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sure, you could store phone numbers and other contact information in them. You had a list of holidays, and could add birthdays and such. But that was the sum total of what they could do. It wasn\u2019t until smartphones came along that we could start doing a whole lot more. Essentially, computers were shrunk down and put into your pocket. And over time those pocket computers<\/em>\u00a0started to gain attributes and features allowing them to track more of what you do.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My iPhone can track how many steps I take in a day. For a long time I wore a pedometer to do that. But the pedometer had to be reset everyday. That meant I had to record the daily results somewhere if I wanted to keep them. Eventually I graduated to a FitBit<\/em>\u00a0which allowed my data to be sent to their app. That saved me when I forgot to record my steps for the day\u2026and it gave me a single place to check on my progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We don\u2019t need to get into a discussion of whether any of these devices record the actual number<\/strong> of physical steps you took in a day. The more important issue is how one day compares to another<\/strong> for you. Some days you\u2019ll take more steps, other days you\u2019ll take fewer. The point is to try and correlate your steps to positive (or negative) outcomes in other areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, I know when I have a string of days when I get more steps, my weight is less of a challenge. That\u2019s irrespective of what I eat. It\u2019s pretty obvious when I burn more calories, the number I take in has less impact than on those days when I\u2019m essentially sedentary.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not rocket science, but with the tools we have available, we can do so much more! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, I\u2019m going to be writing an entire series about my Quantified Life<\/em>\u00a0and the different things I track. Then we\u2019ll delve into how those things correlate. I\u2019ll also talk about some of the tools out there that can do some of the heavy lifting for you.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By way of introduction to the Quantified Life<\/em>, what are some of the things that I currently track? <\/p>\n\n\n\n