A Quantitative Self

With smartphones and some wonderful apps these days, it is fairly easy to get obsessed, and I am not talking about Candy Crush.  I am talking about Data Crunching.   

Heaps of it.  

Last month, I knew things had got out of hand.  Instead of hitting the town for a friend's birthday, I stayed at home and walked back and forth across my living room hoping the little exercise would make me feel less guilty about the amount of eating-out I have been doing.   It was probably for the best that I didn't go out for dinner and cocktails anyway, because according to the wonderful Account Tracker app that keep stabs on my finances, I am veering dangerously close to busting my monthly budget.  

And don't even go there with the ingenious Drinks Tracker, an app that racks up all the units I drink in a week.  It is making me feel like a really really bad person for pouring a third glass of wine on a Friday night.  I have had a boozy month and the bar chart on my app is alarmingly littered with red exclamation marks.  And so I logged on to Optimism, my Happiness Tracker and downgraded my mood from an eight to a fiver!

Are you lured?  If so, here's a list of useful quantified-self apps for your reference.  I have pretty much been there done that and at the end of the day, I know data does not matter, it is what I mine from it that does.   It is like those TV programmes about obese people when they lay out all the food they have eaten in a week and it really shocks them.  I have hence become more self conscious of what I do, eat and drink, which is very empowering indeed.  

I may have started walking more and eating, drinking, spending less, but frankly, I am ready to ditch my Nike Fuelband for now.  Stop counting and just start living and hopefully, back on jogging (no, I meant blogging) a bit more frequently.