Comments on: If You Could Track Anything, What Would You Track?

By: Travis

Travis — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:52:54 +0000

I would like to track my brain activity, so later when brain science advances further, I have a recording of the subjective experiences of my life. Of course, I assume I can track all the activities in my life to go along with it.

By: Dibyo

Dibyo — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:07:35 +0000

The amount of time I waste on the internet.

By: Zach Pousman

Zach Pousman — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:29:15 +0000

I’d like to track my desk and my workspace. The physical flow of papers onto the desk, their flow across it, and away from it. I guess I’ll expand this to a desire to track all of my activities in my office… I’d like to see the difference between “lean forward” experiences (design, coding, writing), and lean back work and play (youtube / vimeo / lecture breaks), chatting on the phone versus talking in person, printing activity, organizing, paying bills.

I’m not driven by a desire to “optimize” my office life — I’d just like to find ways to visualize it.

By: Fras

Fras — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:23:42 +0000

I’d like to track my ever expanding LinkedIn network. I’m sure, with the right visualisation tools, I’d be able to spot nodes of activity between contacts to pinpoint active sectors of the industry.

By: Chris Reilly

Chris Reilly — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:59:44 +0000

I would like to track the effects of my interactions with others. Did me holding a door for somebody inspire them to be a volunteer somewhere? Did my flippant comment rob somebody of their self confidence for years? Did my laughing at a somebody’s poor joke cause them to tell it somewhere else, lowering their social stature and costing them a promotion? In essence, ‘the butterfly effect’ consumate from every one of my interactions and inactions.

If following the “anything is possible” rule then it would be great if I could also track several generations out of how my interactions cause others to interact with others, etc.

Also, I’d like a summary of the data to judge my impact on two axis: X. Quality of impact (positive or negative results) and Y. Depth of impact (neutral to strongly impactful). Then I can have a dashboard of how my live contributed positively or negatively in others in the aggregate.

Finally, the ability to interpolate the data and attempt to forecast the net effects of a stupid comment might be very useful…

By: Judes

Judes — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:49:05 +0000

Collaborative – I’d like to track the ideas for new things I have that are the same ideas that other people have – - even if they don’t turn into anything substantial.

I’d like to track recovery time starting from when I become aware of stress, impatience, anger or irritation from an input until I start listening and/or put the information in to context or perspective. Hopefully, I’d see progress in shortened recovery times over … the years….

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:27:20 +0000

Track ‘happiness’ over time folded into food / exercise / chemical balances and look for obvious trends and correlations. Allowing for prediction of results for behaviors: i.e., if I eat this and don’t exercise and sleep this many hours then I can expect to see this result in X mood change over the next 48 hours. Etc.

By: Kevin Carlson

Kevin Carlson — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:53:54 +0000

Daily Carbon Footprint, including effects of consuming non-local foods (i.e. transportation distance impact), driving habits, etc.

By: Mona

Mona — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:49:57 +0000

It would be sort of neat to track the relationships between myself and all the people that I know, as well as the relationships between all of the people I know.

To have a better idea of things like: who is related to who and how, who has done what with each other, how one person’s actions have affected others in the web, and to identify patterns in behavior to better understand each individual.

By: Nathan Yau

Nathan Yau — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:04:35 +0000

@Daniel – what norwegian project are you talking about? i’d be interested to see that one