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This is super cool. In case you don't make it through to the project's webpage howisfelix.today, and read through to the end, here is the creator's conclusion:

This is super cool. In case you don't make it through to the project's webpage howisfelix.today, and read through to the end, here is the creator's conclusion: Overall, having spent a significant amount of time building this project, scaling it up to the size it’s at now, as well as analysing the data, the main conclusion is that it is not worth building your own solution, and investing this much time. When I first started building this project 3 years ago, I expected to learn way more surprising and interesting facts. There were some, and it’s super interesting to look through those graphs, however retrospectively, it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project. I’ll likely continue tracking my mood, as well as a few other key metrics, however will significantly reduce the amount of time I invest in it.

TomSwirly 4y ago
I think it's fascinating - and horrifying - that he tracks everything except his environmental impact on the planet. He has to be in the top 1% of polluters, given his obsessive flying and consumption of technology. Dozens if not hundreds of charts, depicting every single thing except the thing that is destroying our world. I filed an issue on his github.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Fun fact: British Petroleum coined the term “carbon footprint”. It had gotten to the point where it couldn’t deny climate change. So it was time to get well-meaning middle class folks to blame each other instead of the petroleum industry. (See also in recent years the obsession with plastic straws and plastic bags.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kgran 4y ago
  I also find it horrifying that HN folks downvoted you for your well-founded opinion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Theory42 4y ago
  Agreed, the metrics he uses for CO2 consumption via flying are misleading: he compares the flying against total average CO2 production per US Citizen per year. Clearly, he's doing more than just flying in his life, so the comparison is meaningless.
laserlight 4y ago
The problem is waiting for three years to gain insight. This non-lean approach fails because in retrospective analyses context is lost, there's hindsight and survivorship biases. The opportunity to discover more relevant data sources is missed.
SamBam 4y ago
> There were some, and it’s super interesting to look through those graphs, however retrospectively, it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project. This is my general feeling towards all quantified-self projects. Perhaps it creates interesting insights for some people, but I can imagine the kinds of conclusions I'd actually get from it will be things like "I'm happier on sunny days" and I'll say "yeah..."
- polote 4y ago
  It doesn't make a lot of sense to try to correlate things with your mood that you think are correlated. Because giving a mood grade is biased. For example if you feel like you don't sleep enough, the day you will sleep a lot you will want to give a higher grade.
  - dmurray 4y ago
    It's impossible to do a proper blinded experiment here, but in this case, even if you're measuring a placebo effect it's still meaningful. If you think you should be feeling good today because you're well rested, you probably will feel better.
    - SamBam 4y ago
      "Am I really happier, or do I just think I am?"
- dpeck 4y ago
  You’ve verbalized more about data science than most executives ever will.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    It's a bit more nuanced. It's true that you do research looking for insights that would give you a competitive advantage, and you don't find many - and very often the results don't justify the cost. On the other hand, if you don't do that, you risk staying behind, so some form of data analysis is absolutely necessary for any business - you can't just run on your gut feeling especially once you exceed a certain size. As a side note, people tend to be very unimaginative in the initial stages of data analysis: very often they just take the data they have instead of thinking what data they need to have. And obviously the results correspond to the initial limitations. So much effort is put into data munging and other stages when your inputs are incomplete or plain irrelevant to what your business actually needs.
Xeoncross 4y ago
I would be interested in detection and correlation abilities here. I think simply collecting the data and graphing it doesn't help. However, if enough metrics were automatically collected (when did I fall asleep and heart rate lower?) and there was some system that could sort through them (eating a 4th meal increases odds of ruby team scoring additional points by a factor of 1.3x) then you could possibly learn some neat things. Some of the most interesting things have been pointed out to me by others. Things that are related but I didn't notice. Foods that seem to increase my chances of sickness and things like that.
ra120271 4y ago
When reading above the experience I have is that I rapidly correlated with apple watch heart data that my heart rate stays high when I drink alcohol in the evening, resulting in poor sleep. Conversely I can see when I have been likely to have been drinking from my heart rate. I think the key here is the passive data collection with intuitive data presentation to drive low barrier to entry analytics.
polote 4y ago
I don't feel you will be able to detect big correlation by using that kind of system. If there is a big correlation to be found, it is likely to have already been found by researchers. I'm tracking my life by a similar system than OP, but the error with tracking is to start tracking useless things. For example OP track his calorie intake, it is a lot of work, and it is not really usefull at the end. It is unlikely to correlate with any other measures he is doing (apart from weight). I personally only track mood, activities and position. Each tracking has a specific goal, and only take me 1 minute per day. I have a lot of headaches and could be tempted to track headaches to understand what triggers them. But now that I know what triggers them (when I'm hungry, or I spent too much time exposed to the sun) I would never have been able to detect that correlation from data. So my advice to people wanting to track their life, identify first what you need the data for, and increase the number of data you track if you have a lack of data to achieve a specific goal, but don't track for the sake of tracking. For example I track my position, to know where I have been, but also to warn my parents in case I go missing and nobody know where is my last position I track my mood, to know if I am doing better over time, or if I'm able to improve my sleep not only by feeling it, but by having numbers on I track my activitites, because I want to know If I work too much, if I do enough sport, or if I spend too much time on my computer in a week
- fallat 4y ago
  I don't even get why that's useful. Just reflect on yourself at the end of the day.
- basisword 4y ago
  >> For example OP track his calorie intake, it is a lot of work, and it is not really usefull at the end. It is unlikely to correlate with any other measures he is doing (apart from weight). Tracking calories is very very simple if you use an app like MyFitnessPal. For most foods you can scan the barcode or you can just enter the calorie data from the label. Secondly, isn't weight a pretty important measure to track? It can impact a lot of things and therefore if you see you start to have too many days in a week that are above your calorie goal you can catch any gain before noticing it on the scales.
shalmanese 4y ago
Men will literally devote hundreds of hours to building a bespoke database tracking every moment of their lives instead of going to therapy.
- dotcoma 4y ago
  Instead of living, I would say.

TomSwirly 4y ago

I think it's fascinating - and horrifying - that he tracks everything except his environmental impact on the planet. He has to be in the top 1% of polluters, given his obsessive flying and consumption of technology. Dozens if not hundreds of charts, depicting every single thing except the thing that is destroying our world. I filed an issue on his github.

avgcorrection 4y ago
Fun fact: British Petroleum coined the term “carbon footprint”. It had gotten to the point where it couldn’t deny climate change. So it was time to get well-meaning middle class folks to blame each other instead of the petroleum industry. (See also in recent years the obsession with plastic straws and plastic bags.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kgran 4y ago
I also find it horrifying that HN folks downvoted you for your well-founded opinion.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Theory42 4y ago
Agreed, the metrics he uses for CO2 consumption via flying are misleading: he compares the flying against total average CO2 production per US Citizen per year. Clearly, he's doing more than just flying in his life, so the comparison is meaningless.

laserlight 4y ago

The problem is waiting for three years to gain insight. This non-lean approach fails because in retrospective analyses context is lost, there's hindsight and survivorship biases. The opportunity to discover more relevant data sources is missed.

SamBam 4y ago

> There were some, and it’s super interesting to look through those graphs, however retrospectively, it did not justify the hundreds of hours I invested in this project. This is my general feeling towards all quantified-self projects. Perhaps it creates interesting insights for some people, but I can imagine the kinds of conclusions I'd actually get from it will be things like "I'm happier on sunny days" and I'll say "yeah..."

polote 4y ago
It doesn't make a lot of sense to try to correlate things with your mood that you think are correlated. Because giving a mood grade is biased. For example if you feel like you don't sleep enough, the day you will sleep a lot you will want to give a higher grade.
- dmurray 4y ago
  It's impossible to do a proper blinded experiment here, but in this case, even if you're measuring a placebo effect it's still meaningful. If you think you should be feeling good today because you're well rested, you probably will feel better.
  - SamBam 4y ago
    "Am I really happier, or do I just think I am?"
dpeck 4y ago
You’ve verbalized more about data science than most executives ever will.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  It's a bit more nuanced. It's true that you do research looking for insights that would give you a competitive advantage, and you don't find many - and very often the results don't justify the cost. On the other hand, if you don't do that, you risk staying behind, so some form of data analysis is absolutely necessary for any business - you can't just run on your gut feeling especially once you exceed a certain size. As a side note, people tend to be very unimaginative in the initial stages of data analysis: very often they just take the data they have instead of thinking what data they need to have. And obviously the results correspond to the initial limitations. So much effort is put into data munging and other stages when your inputs are incomplete or plain irrelevant to what your business actually needs.

Xeoncross 4y ago

I would be interested in detection and correlation abilities here. I think simply collecting the data and graphing it doesn't help. However, if enough metrics were automatically collected (when did I fall asleep and heart rate lower?) and there was some system that could sort through them (eating a 4th meal increases odds of ruby team scoring additional points by a factor of 1.3x) then you could possibly learn some neat things. Some of the most interesting things have been pointed out to me by others. Things that are related but I didn't notice. Foods that seem to increase my chances of sickness and things like that.

ra120271 4y ago

When reading above the experience I have is that I rapidly correlated with apple watch heart data that my heart rate stays high when I drink alcohol in the evening, resulting in poor sleep. Conversely I can see when I have been likely to have been drinking from my heart rate. I think the key here is the passive data collection with intuitive data presentation to drive low barrier to entry analytics.

polote 4y ago

I don't feel you will be able to detect big correlation by using that kind of system. If there is a big correlation to be found, it is likely to have already been found by researchers. I'm tracking my life by a similar system than OP, but the error with tracking is to start tracking useless things. For example OP track his calorie intake, it is a lot of work, and it is not really usefull at the end. It is unlikely to correlate with any other measures he is doing (apart from weight). I personally only track mood, activities and position. Each tracking has a specific goal, and only take me 1 minute per day. I have a lot of headaches and could be tempted to track headaches to understand what triggers them. But now that I know what triggers them (when I'm hungry, or I spent too much time exposed to the sun) I would never have been able to detect that correlation from data. So my advice to people wanting to track their life, identify first what you need the data for, and increase the number of data you track if you have a lack of data to achieve a specific goal, but don't track for the sake of tracking. For example I track my position, to know where I have been, but also to warn my parents in case I go missing and nobody know where is my last position I track my mood, to know if I am doing better over time, or if I'm able to improve my sleep not only by feeling it, but by having numbers on I track my activitites, because I want to know If I work too much, if I do enough sport, or if I spend too much time on my computer in a week

fallat 4y ago
I don't even get why that's useful. Just reflect on yourself at the end of the day.
basisword 4y ago
>> For example OP track his calorie intake, it is a lot of work, and it is not really usefull at the end. It is unlikely to correlate with any other measures he is doing (apart from weight). Tracking calories is very very simple if you use an app like MyFitnessPal. For most foods you can scan the barcode or you can just enter the calorie data from the label. Secondly, isn't weight a pretty important measure to track? It can impact a lot of things and therefore if you see you start to have too many days in a week that are above your calorie goal you can catch any gain before noticing it on the scales.

shalmanese 4y ago

Men will literally devote hundreds of hours to building a bespoke database tracking every moment of their lives instead of going to therapy.

dotcoma 4y ago
Instead of living, I would say.