I went to last night's Quantified Self Toronto meetup, a get-together for people who are interested in tracking data about their lives. It was good to hear about people's projects and questions. I shared what I'd been doing with my new Android phone, too. Here are my notes:

For me, the most interesting point was that of analyzing the data you already have in order to understand your patterns.

Correction: I haven't just had my phone for three days, I've had it for a week. (Ah, time flies when you're having fun.) I've only been tracking activities for three days, though, so I guess that's why that number got stuck in my brain. =)

What do I track, why do I track it, and how do I track it?

I want to experiment with getting up earlier, and to see if I still get enough sleep. I knew that tracking would help me stick to my alarm clock, like the way that tracking time helps me stay focused. I've written about tracking my sleep, so you can check out the detailed screenshots there. So far, I've been waking up within a few minutes of 5 AM, getting an average of seven hours of sleep, and feeling reasonably awake and energetic.

I want to capture and share as much as possible. On my computer, Org-mode is working well for me – big text files that I dump notes into, with a bit of structure along the way. I'd like to have a structured way to capture notes on my Android, particularly if I can pull those notes into my Org-mode text files. I haven't settled on any one application yet, although I'm working on tweaking MobileOrg to fit me better. I'm also playing around with mindmapping (Thinking Space supports Freemind maps), and I'm looking for a good way to keep outlined lists.

I want to track how much time I spend on different activities. This will be useful for calibrating my time estimates, comparing my time with my priorities, and identifying opportunities to improve. This definitely has to be a mobile app, as I do things away from the computer too. Time Recording has been working well for me so far.

I want to track my finances. I do this on my laptop so that I can take advantage of all the wonderful reporting tools that the ledger command-line tool gives me. I've figured out a virtual envelope-based system that works for me, and I enjoy balancing my books. I don't particularly feel the need to use my Android to capture this data, as I try to keep my transactions electronic. The occasional note about cash expenses can be handy, though.

I eventually want to get better at tracking my contacts. I like the way Gist gives me a dashboard sorted by importance or filtered by tags. I want to get to the point of deliberately reaching out to people on a regular schedule.

Hmm…

Monthly review: October 2010

I spent most of Saturday plunging into Android development, starting from the Hello World and Notepad tutorials. It was lots of fun. I wanted to use MobileOrg on Android, but it lacked a lot of things that were in MobileOrg for iPhone, so I taught myself Android development by fixing little things that a newbie like me could do.

First: I wanted the capture form to resize itself when the soft keyboard was displayed, instead of letting the virtual keyboard hide the Save button. Fortunately, I’d come across a solution while reading the technical articles on developer.android.com: resize the activity based on the onscreen input method. I tested it on my system, then reported the issue and the fix through MobileOrg’s github. Within a few hours, the fix was included in the project. Yay! (It took me a while to figure out I could use the back button to hide the keyboard, but it was a productive while.)

Second: The editing interface was functional but not convenient , so I dug into views and layouts and all sorts of niftiness. Before and after:

(… and it’s all wired up and working, at least for me!)

Mwahaha! Along the way, I ended up learning about org-mobile.el and how to set up a somewhat finicky configuration so that I could synchronize my files over Dropbox onto my SD card and into MobileOrg, and then back over Dropbox and into my computer. It’s not fully automatic, but the pieces are mostly connected now. The relevant parts of my experimental config:

(setq org-mobile-directory "~/dropbox/mobile")
(setq org-mobile-inbox-for-pull "~/personal/mobileorg.org")
(setq default-buffer-file-coding-system 'utf-8)
(setq org-mobile-files '("~/personal/organizer.org" "~/personal/outline.org" "~/personal/test.org"))
(setq org-mobile-agendas '("a"))

Then I used M-x org-mobile-push to sync  things up. There was a bit of a kerfluffle I had to sort out. I moved files around, so I needed to delete the /sdcard/mobileorg database on my Android, and I also needed to download the checksums and other files using Dropbox before loading them in MobileOrg. But things work reasonably well now, I think, and I can browse my Org files and capture some updates. Whee!

… and so on.

Next step: Talk to my manager about open source approvals so that I can share my patches with the community. There’s still plenty more to build on top of MobileOrg, but at least I’ve taken care of the two big things that were getting in my way.

I’ll have to decide whether I’m going to build my other app ideas as separate lightweight apps, or be evil and store as much data as I can into Org… >:) Hmm. Org as grocery list, price tracker, inventory management, and  recipe database? Org as sewing organizer for patterns, notions, fabric, measurements, and projects? Org as a hammer for an unbelievable variety of nails?

Mwahahaha!

(Okay, maybe I’ll build things for SQLite first, but there’ll probably be some kind of .org or CSV eventually…)

I recently switched to an early-morning schedule, just for fun. Tracking my sleep helps me motivate myself to go to bed when I promised to and wake up when my alarm goes off, and it comes with useful bonuses too. I had been using the Sleep On It application on my iPod Touch to track my sleep and set my alarm. When I switched to an Android phone, one of the first applications I installed was for sleep tracking as well.

Sleep Bot Tracker Log is a fantastic sleep tracker – and it’s free. The basics: you “clock in” by clicking on the going to sleep button, which changes to a waking up button. When you wake up, you can hit the snooze button (if you’ve configured snooze) or slide your finger across the screen in order to clear the alarm. Using Sleep Bot to track your sleep means that you can view your sleep data as a graph, graph, table, or comma-separated export file – good for keeping yourself accountable.

You can set an alarm by clicking on the small alarm clock icon in the upper right. I particularly like the ability to see how much time is left before the alarm goes off, which helps me figure out how much time I have before I should go to bed. You can set the alarm tone to ringtones or songs, and configure it to fade in gradually.

You’ll also see the alarm countdown on the Android lock screen – great for a quick check. As last night’s lock screen shows on the right, I stayed up a little bit late.

But wait, there’s more. Sleep Bot makes it easy to set all sorts of useful settings to help you stay asleep. I’ve told it to avoid calls, set my phone to silent + vibrate, and turn off WiFi to minimize late-night disturbances. Configuring it is also simpler than configuring similar rules using Tracker, Locale, or other context-sensitive Android applications.

Look up the free Sleep Bot  Tracker Log application on your Android phone with this handy QR code. You can add the widget to your home screen for even faster checking in. Recommend.

From Phone

Thanks to W’s fine research and comparison shopping, I bought an Android phone off Craigslist. I’ve just installed Tasker and a whole bunch of other apps, and I can’t wait to try all sorts of experiments. I’m looking forward to mobile development, too! (… and yes, MobileOrg was one of the first things I installed… =) )