Tim O'Reilly onced blogged on a conversation he had with a Google employee and called the post If Google Were a Restaurant. Basically, Google measures everything and so they would capture information about every plate that came back, that was picked up at the end of the meal, and learn what people ate, what they left. They'd probably learn what people ate in what order. This wouldn't increase the quality of the food, but it the efficiency with which it was dispensed. I've also read of a man named Seth Roberts who performs self-experimentation by trying new things in his life and recording a lot of data to measure the change that occurs. What he's learned is what he can eat and when, at what times watching TV makes him feel better and happier and when it makes him feel worse, and many other things about himself that most people would live with for 90 years and never discover. The point is, we all behave in patterns and never learn what those are. Google knows more about our viewing and searching habits than we do. They gather so much data on everything that I do online that there would be enough to analyze my personality. It would be interesting to connect that data with my journal entries and find out what kind of mood I was in that day. So, if "when performance is measured, performance improves [and] when performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates," (source) then maybe a part of our problem is that we aren't measuring our behavior enough. We don't know the effects that different stimuli have on us. We live with the same patterns day in and day out and should become acutely aware of them. Perhaps this is why journal writing is such a productive activity. If Google ran our lives, we would know and have data to tell us basically why we act a certain way in certain situations. Gathering data on yourself can help you learn more about yourself and your behavior patterns.



Here are some basic and easy ways to gather data on yourself that you might find useful.

1. Keep receipts so that you can track where your spending your money and why

2. Log when you go to sleep and when you wake up and the the activities that you perform the hour before going to sleep and the hour after waking up. Try mixing things up and see if it affects your mood/productivity throughout the day.

3. Keep a basic journal every day. If you don't have time to write a full journal entry of what you've learned and experienced that day, have a pocket calendar so you can at least write down the major activities of the day and then write a full journal entry once a week.

4. If you're trying to break a habit or addiction, write when tempted. Write what you're feeling and what you were doing when and before the temptation got strong. If you already slipped up, write what you were doing before. Try and see any patterns emerging in your actions that lead to increased temptation to fall back into the habit or addiction.

5. Try doing new things in your life and keep a log of what the apparent effects are. For example you could try going for a jog in the morning for a week and then document how you felt during that week. The next week, you could try exercising in the evening and see if the effects are different.



In order to be effective at this, you might consider going to an office supply store and picking up a pad of graph paper so that you can keep stats on your attempts at the same time. Try not to alter too much at one time because you won't be able to isolate the effects of one stimulus from another. For example, if you try and switch your exercising habits while changing your sleeping habits, you won't know which change produced what effect. So keep it simple with one change at a time. If you keep track for a few weeks, write back and let us know what patterns you've seen emerge. We'd love to gather some of these to help others that are looking to find similar patterns in their lives.

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