23 Personal Tools to Learn More About Yourself

Posted by Nathan / Sep 12, 2008 to Featured, Self-surveillance / 37 comments

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In the not too distant past, the Web was all about sharing, broadcasting, and distribution. The tide is turning. The Web is moving towards the individual. Applications spring up every month that let people track, monitor, and analyze their habits and behaviors in hopes of gaining a better understanding about themselves and their surroundings.

We saw what data can be recorded in the personal visualization project. Some data lend themselves to easy tracking while others are easier to monitor with the aid of an application. These 23 tools, to track the minutiae of everyday life, try to fill that niche.

Is it information overflow or are we learning more about ourselves?

Track Everything In Your Life

Applications to record data pretty much about anything and everything seem to be coming all at once.

Daytum

Daytum, by Nicholas Felton, is based on Felton's annual Feltron report. Data entry is manual and makes heavy use of the Google charting API.

mycrocosm

mycrocosm is a project from the MIT Social Media Group that is similar in spirit to Daytum. The main difference is the interface. Users send Twitter-like messages via SMS or email to add to their personal datasets.

Me-trics

Me-trics is described as a Google Analytics for, well, you. It's sort of an aggregator of all your personal data from applications like RescueTime, Twitter, etc. You can also enter data manually, and then it does some statistical voodoo (which sort of worries me) to find correlations. Not so sure about that part. It will offer an API, however.

Time Management

Let's face it. We all waste time, and when we do, we feel like a lazy bum. There are plenty of applications that help you keep track of how you spend your minutes.

Basecamp

Most of us have heard of Basecamp, which is used by many for project management.

RescueTime

I use RescueTime pretty much all the time. Start it up, run it in the background, and visit your dashboard to find how many hours you spent watching YouTube last week. Shameful.

Trixie Tracker

Ok, Trixie Tracker isn't for you specifically. It's designed to monitor your baby's habits – poo, pee, sleep, and eating. However, I can see how an adult might find it useful... or at least senior citizens.

Twitter Charts

What are your peak tweeting hours? Find out with Twitter Charts.

Wakoopa

Wakoopa is sort of like RescueTime, but I think it's more about the video games.

Health

You want to live a long and healthy life, don't you? You better keep track of your bodily functions and what not.

Mon.thly.info

Mon.thly.info is an application for women to keep track of their monthly cycles and stuff. I'm out of my element on this one.

MyMonthlyCycles

Bedpost

I think I read that people who have sex more often live longer, so you better um, stay up-to-date.

Sleep

I, myself, have pretty weird sleep habits, so I should probably take a look into these. The Sleeptracker is a little pricey for me though. I might consider purchasing a Fitbit though, which is a pedometer slash sleep tracking thingy. Not sure yet. Like Me-trics, it was introduced at TechCrunch50 and is still private.

Sleep Tracker

FitBit

Emotions

I'm happy. Now I'm sad. Wait no, I'm happy. I'm perplexed. Confused. Crazy. Happy again. Oh life, you are an emotional roller coaster you are.

Moodstats

Record your moods and evaluate over time with Moodstats.

lifemetric

lifemetric is similar to Moodstats, although it sort of has a social component to it too.

Exercise

Oh man, I seriously need to monitor this. I have a gym membership, but I don't even remember the last time I went. I do know my waste size is getting bigger though.

Traineo

Use Traineo to track what you eat, how you exercise, calories lost, and all that good stuff.

FitDay

MotionBased

From Garmin, MotionBased lets you upload GPS data and keep track of your (should-be-daily) runs in the park.

Nike+

I haven't used Nike+, but it seems really popular and a cool concept. You put something on your shoe, connect it your iPod and you get feedback as you run.

FatSecret

I actually do use FatSecret sometimes. Several months back I set my goal weight to 10 pounds less than I am now. My weight graph is literally straight across.

Finance

More money, more problems. Seriously.

Mint

To keep track of my billions of dollars, I use Mint, which grabs data from your bank, credit cards, and investments.

Travel

With all our environmental concerns, we should all be aware of our driving patterns.

CarChip

Plug CarChip into your car and it automatically records your driving behavior like speed, braking, etc.

My Mile Marker

I know there are a lot of people who write down their mileage and money spent after each gas fillup. My Mile Marker takes that data and helps you make sense of it.

Resources

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Comments

  • Time Tracker
    Sep 12, 2008, 3:38 am

    Wow! Nice roundup here! I’m using a few of these already (Woopra, Mint, Me-trics) and find them quite useful. Thanks for this list, as I’m off to try a few more right now!

  • Seraphina
    Sep 12, 2008, 4:00 am

    Oooh, more fun stuff to play with. Thanks!

  • Brendan
    Sep 12, 2008, 4:58 am

    I remember reading about RescueTime but had forgotten its name, so it’s great to be reminded of that. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to what it has to tell me about myself though…

    Anyway, this is a great collection of tools - thanks for posting!

  • Ehren Cheung
    Sep 12, 2008, 1:58 pm

    Thanks for the great round-up Nathan :) Now all we really need some aggregator to come along and put all this data together so that we can mash it up and see what interesting things we can find out about ourselves.

  • Nathan
    Sep 12, 2008, 1:59 pm

    @Ehren - that seems to be what me-trics strives to be, but we’ll just have to wait and see how it works :)

  • Hadley
    Sep 12, 2008, 3:28 pm

    You also want to check out http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/

  • Tami
    Sep 12, 2008, 5:27 pm

    For finances (budgeting) I’d also recommend http://www.pearbudget.com. It’s super simple and straightforward to use. Last year our family made the switch to cash only spending and Pearbudget has been a great tool to help ease that transition.

  • Emanuel Souto
    Sep 12, 2008, 10:44 pm

    Muito interessante…

  • Markus
    Sep 13, 2008, 9:03 am

    A great collection!

  • Mark Baratelli
    Sep 13, 2008, 12:25 pm

    Can’t wait to get home and check these out.

  • John
    Sep 13, 2008, 3:53 pm

    Another great app to add under the time management category is Intervals. It is ideal if you are freelancing and need to keep track of your time and tasks, especially when it comes to billing clients. Thanks for the list. There are some good nuggets in there.

  • Rob W
    Sep 14, 2008, 6:40 am

    Whoa — maybe your waste size is getting bigger, but I sure don’t want to hear about it. Maybe you mean waist size? :)

    Seriously, excellent list; thanks.

  • Nathan
    Sep 14, 2008, 1:49 pm

    @Rob W - haha, i think i’m on to a new idea for tracking

  • Ian J
    Sep 14, 2008, 7:54 pm

    great post.. :)

    I made a site to test appengine when it initially came out and haven’t touched it since. Its a very simple wiki for data, i tried to focus on making querying the data easy.

    Seeing the list of applications made me think you might find it interesting.

    http://www.daatum.com

  • Tex
    Sep 15, 2008, 2:03 pm

    I so WANT to believe that Bedpost.com is real, certainly the BETA site looks solid ;)
    Either way, all of us here signed up to see if we get an invite…could be quite a distraction.

    Tex
    http://www.hookupdigits.com

  • fivekitten
    Sep 17, 2008, 12:41 pm

    These are great…gee I could spend all day adding data and REALLY not get anything done. Well, since we have four girls in the house now….going to visit the female-biased tool first…it’ll help with my shopping plans and maybe we can pre-post a PMS warning sign to all who dare enter….

    Going to put a link back on my blog after I play a bit…

  • Nathan
    Sep 17, 2008, 12:49 pm

    @fivekitten: hehe, i never thought of using it that way. i’m sure someone would appreciate the warning.

  • Sleep Deprivation Ninja
    Sep 17, 2008, 11:12 pm

    oooaoaaaaaaAAaaAAaaAA <- sung sound of holy awakening

    I am so getting one of those sleep tracker watches :)

  • Tex
    Sep 25, 2008, 5:40 pm

    OK, signed up for Bedpost…when is that dang BETA? :)
    On a serious note, what’s their revenue model?
    AdSense? Condom sales?
    Bedpost FTW!

    Tex
    http://www.hookupdigits.com
    Free, Anonymous phone numbers for dating sites

  • Nathan
    Sep 25, 2008, 6:27 pm

    @Tex - well it is just one man with a side project. i’m not so sure he has a revenue model (yet), since it was originally designed for himself. I’m sure your beta will come soon :)

  • Dave
    Sep 29, 2008, 11:39 pm

    For fuel tracking there is also Fuelly.com

    You can upload a .CSV with all of your data for a quick import.

  • Auke
    Oct 23, 2008, 4:42 am

    Met up with Ruth at Wired Nextfest and mentioned IYOUIT (and on wikipedia) as well. I’ve been running it over 2 years now, and see some similarities with the PEIR platform. Curious how PEIR would be with a local sharing model (shared responsibility, competition element etc. etc.). Love to chat about that.

    “IYOUIT is a mobile application developed in Python, and running on Nokia Series 60 phones. Its aim is to make it easy for an end-user to automatically record, store, and use context information, e.g. for personalization purposes, as input parameter to information services, or to share with different types of relations, or just to log them for future use or to perform statistics on your own life.”

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