I am a fan of feedback and guidance in life… am a bit of a sucker for technology to emphasise valuable feedback in daily life, how fast I run, how much I sleep, how much I drink and eat… as a #QS-er (quantify self) always eager to get (any) data to learn from… Big Data does not scare me… but I am aware it is the little data within this ocean of data we need to find, like pearls very rare and very precious…. the more data I can get and learn from and dive into – the more patterns I am able to recognise, and extract valuable and relevant data from….
To know or to not know is the question, and since I always have been very curious, I have been conducting many experiments on myself, and joining the QS (Quantified Self community has been one great learning adventure
What is so great about the QS community is that this is not just a get-together of people with a weird obsession (Qs=numbering me ; ) or hobby only, this conference is very much about a passion for getting to know and understand who we all are, by doing experiments with the self, the most available guinea pig we have is ourselves to experiment on, and learn life with.
My Quantified body at the QS conference 2017
A quote from Azure Grant:
We often spend our time trying to appear and feel unworn by our years, covering them with clothing or makeup and ignoring the memories they represent. While Ellis embraces the past, she discusses the frustration associated with the limitations imposed by her injuries. Still, she uses her scars as a visual reminder to appreciate her own history and resilience.
Read this blog about my talk at the QS2017 Amsterdam Conference here: http://quantifiedself.com
Plus the video of the complete talk can be seen here >>
Or the slides in Prezi >>
When I turned 40 in 2011, I celebrated this with a big party including an exhibition about many things I needed to get rid off. Theme was: Trash & Treasures and I invited all the guests before coming to think what they wish to trash and what to treasure forever (see these here). Myself I presented 9 trash & 9 treasures.
My body was one: Now 5 years later only I realise this was a Quantify Self (QS) project, I have been counting my scares and all damages which needed professional treatment… they are not few;
“I often wished to TRASH my body because;
- it was broken so very often, and I experienced a lot of physical pain in my life.
- I wished I could do so much more with this body, but it felt not capable or competent enough.
- I was so often not happy with how my body looked, to big, to fat, to tall…”
“This body is also my TREASURE because;
- it healed so amazingly from so many and heavy injuries.
- it’s resilience amazed me and others so often. The incredible impact it endured more then once!
- this body managed to warn me when I was mentally stressed, and it helped me cope with life.
- my body is so much of what I am and have been.”
For my quantify self experience on Happy Faces I have been interviewed by the Belgium Magazine Charlie Mag. Talking about Happy… can that smile be any bigger? Read the article in full here >>charliemag
To face a day or a face a day, that is the question?
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 For six months I drew a face a day (in the little book I received as a gift from my sister Yvonne), before falling asleep I reflected on that day, the weather, what I ate, and I summarised my mood for that day in one smiley. Because it was just one smile as average representation of that day, I realised I more often choose to look with a positive perspective on the day and measurement, since making a smile reinforced my experience of being happy.During my presentation of this project at the QS conference, the audience asked me: “but haven’t you been brainwashing yourself then?” and I admitted: “yes, indeed I voluntary chose to brainwash myself positively, why not?” |
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Every day I drew a face, and became more and more motivated to follow up on this joyful discipline and ritual, I started to register more details of that day, like the amount of alcohol consumption, since I was aware I did not drink few, but never really calculated the amount, now I started counting, I did manage to decrease the amount, however I prefer not to reveil all these number accurate here 😉 |
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| I also became curious about my health measurement, so I started to document when I ate candy (cake or chocolate) but only used one symbol if I did or not, not more, to Keep It Super Simple (kiss). And I was curious if I was able to increase the amount of time of cooking my own dinner at home by using this journal, and I did… the intension and objective became more real, thanks to the smiles every day,so I managed to positively reinforce several behaviours, and habits. I started to measure when I did anything of sport that day… but I became a bit exhausted with the amount of symbols I was drawing, so I invented a new simplified system, the 1, 2 and 3 method…. | |
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| The 1, 2 and 3 is very simple, I am collecting numbers, and every day I reward myself with minimum 1 point, for a ‘bad’ + ‘unhealthy’ day, an average day is a 2, and a good day (no sweets, no alcohol, bit of sport) is a 3 pointer. I tried to raise the average of my days, which appeared not at all easy, but to be just below green was good enough, I did loose weight. Below some different attempts to visualise my six months and my progress…. | |
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| Now I started to enjoy the playing around with my faces and smileys, ad decided to find some more metrix… since I noticed that while drawing the face, I enjoyed the bigger smiles more then the lesser smiles, so I wanted to investigate the size of my smiles (which seemed in real life also increased in these six months, I felt more happy, and received the same feedback from my friends and family), and so true it was… the drawn smiles became bigger over time on average. | |
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 For those who noticed the two weeks in april, missing faces…. this was NOT a real holiday… but a break from this experiment, I noticed that for these Quantify Self experiments, we need to NOT do it at times, to revive the correct motivation, and prevent it becoming a task or obsession, letting go of a habit at times is good for the engagement… is my personal experience, to make sure itis a voluntary effort…. |
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| I decided to give my mother a face a day book, but she got fed up in three weeks already, she felt out of creativity and even the confrontation of not being able to come up with a new drawing made her resisting the task… she did like the colors very much though, so a few weeks later, I found out she used the book as notebook and grocery list instead.All in all, drawing a face a day to face my day made me more and more happy, so please all, do try this at home! ; ) |
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See my prezi here:
This is what I ate for 3 months winter 2013
Curious about my eating habits*, and about behavior change in general, I decided to start 2013 with a real resolution for the first time in my life. So.. I took a picture from everything I eat…
After blogging on my eating experiment, I was invited to talk about it on the QS Europe conference 2013, which was a great experience (best conference ever!!!). Check my previous blog here: “this is what I ate”
Check the video here >>
Check the post on the Quantify Self website
(photos by yago1.com)
And this is what I learned from this experiment: The first week my eating habits already changed a lot, I enjoyed making the pictures and put a lot more effort in preparing my dinner and eat breakfast, lunch dinner more frequent! • I enjoyed eating me food after taking the moment of taking a picture, as if I really noticed my food a lot more (mindful?) • I posted my first picture on facebook, and many people reacted on this out of curiosity, this motivated me very much to stay loyal to my intention. • I sort of chose my strictness/rules or disciplines flexible, when I forgot a picture, I made a black picture as a reminder, my main goal was to continue taking the pictures more then being very accurate (also honesty or my conscious was bendable ; ) • Sometimes I wanted to eat chips or chocolate…. but decided not to do it… the photos became my conscious … but sometimes I decided to eat something and not take a picture on purpose… the dilemma or attitude change intrigued me. • It became a great way to remember how I spent my days, where I was, with whom, very clear reference these pictures, work like very clear anchors in my memory, very joyful to browse through the month food wise since dinner, breakfast is so often a social occasion, and I was reminded on great conversations and situation while looking at the picture. • Socially it was sometimes embarrassing and annoying since I needed to take a picture, which was noticed often and I needed to explain, questions on dieting or being a weirdo were arose, but also a lot of curiosity and enthusiasm • When I posted my first month on facebook, I received many reactions, which motivated me a lot to continue, but I wanted to change the goal for that month: eat less meat and fish, less chocolat and no late night yoghurt… • My january goal to eat three times a day was achieved! • My february goal to eat less chocolate, meat & fish was achieved (but less consistent on my january goal) • (ps i lost 4,5 kg in 2 months) • When I stopped taking the photos from food on March 1st, I really missed the extra attention on my food very much…• I tried using other apps for calorie calculating like Meal Snap, but this meant clicking 4 times and some patience while uploading and calculating, this was increasing my threshold too much and I lost motivation to continue. • Taking pictures from my drinks (in march) as extra experiment was very very dissapointing to do, a lot of effort, but I forgot so often, so I got demotivated very much… too much…. ; )
Groningen Meet up 2013
Quantified self is a more and more “known” and even “hot”topic. I have been quantifying myself for many years/decades… always felt very much like a weirdo… felt shy about this habit/hobby/passion or even manic tic, but more people are doing it, and it is not as weird anymore… very happy to be able to come out of the closet now: “I am a QS-er!”
Here is my prezi presentation of the QS Meetup in Groningen (Quantified Self) >>