Greg Tracy

Nearly two months ago, I wrote that I had canceled the data plan on my mobile phone. I'm reporting back that it has been a smashing success. I love being connected... to the people around me rather than the interwebs.

If you're disciplined about keeping the phone in your pocket, good for you. If you're not, this might be an option for you.

The experiment was given an extra boost when two weeks into the experiment I promptly lost my non-smart phone. Brilliant move in retrospect. I avoided the nervous, fidgety grabbing of the phone to look to see if a new message arrived. One might say that I went cold turkey, and it likely made the whole transition easier. So easy, in fact, I often questioned whether I needed any kind of phone at all!

That's not to say that the data plan isn't missed. My expectations were pretty spot on. I miss Google Maps and posting photos for the family. Here are the few notes I've jotted down along the way...

The pot

Let's get it right out there... I miss having reading material when I'm on the pot. If you have a smart phone, you know what I'm talking about.

My calendar

I miss access to my calendar... I haven't missed big meetings, but I have missed those non-vital but still important events that aren't necessarily on my radar every day. I've looked into the Google API to get access via SMS and will try to implement this one.

Twitter

I'd like to find a better desktop tool for Twitter. Now that I see less of it throughout the day, it would be nice to find a tool that helps me catchup on some feeds I don't want to miss.

Email

Email becomes less important - which is good. Everyone talks about the email tax where you can't control inbound email. I've found that by sending less and reading less frequently, I've been able to lower the burden of managing email. It now comes in well controlled bursts - those blocks of time that I dedicate to my inbox. I've also become ruthless with unsubscribe options.

Better focus

I haven't quantified this, but it feels like I have better focus through less distraction. If you're not pulling your phone out all the time to check in on your online life, you've improved your chances of focusing on a specific task whether it's work, a game with the kids or cleaning up around the house.

You all have become more annoying

I'm now way more annoyed by people who choose their phones over me. Whether it's to take a phone call, respond to a text message and check the sports scores, it's nothing short of annoying. I don't know how much I did this to other people two months ago, but I'm glad I don't do it anymore.

Back in March when I got started on my marathon training, I signed up for a service called dailymile to track all of my workouts. Even if my marathon aspirations failed, dailymile proved to be a fantastic tool and started a larger trend for me this year. Since starting with dailymile, I've begun quantifying all sorts of useful things in a quest to understand myself better. Partly because my memory is so bad and partly because I just like data. In some cases, I don't yet know when or where the usefulness will come, but in a world of infinite storage it's easy to store all kinds of information.

Here's a summary of what I've been collecting...

Exercise

The year started with dailymile, which I used to track my running, swimming, cycling and bike commutes to work. Dead simple data entry with a social/community element. I will say that I'd trade in the social aspect for a mobile app. :) MyTracks proved to be a great app on Android even though it didn't integrate with dailymile.

When the snow came, my outdoor activity essentially ended and so did my visits to dailymile. But in November, I joined some friends for the 100 Day Challenge. A friendly competition to see who could amass more points (via exercise activities). The idea is simple, you receive points for a variety of exercises - pushups, situps, walking, running, etc. The points are maintained on a Google spreadsheet so everyone knows where the others stand. There's even a little Twilio app that sends out a text message in the morning with the daily standings. I'm not even sure there is a prize at the end, but I can say that the simple fact that my numbers are viewed by others is an incredible motivator for me. 

Most recently, I've started carrying around a FitBit to track my general activity level throughout the day. I'm doing this primarily as a research mission for Asthmapolis, but I've enjoyed seeing the statistics each day. And the entire process is passive. I litterally don't do anything other than snap the device onto my pants pocket in the morning.

Task Management

I've been using Remember The Milk for a couple of years to track To-dos - mostly macro-level items like "fix kitchen window" or "make yard signs for melsgreengarden". But for most of this year, I've started using it as my idea board. I've been recording every idea I've had regardless of whether or not it will actually turn into a To-do. Things like "build a Twitter app that let's one query baseball statistics". Likely never to be built by me... but I have an impressive list of good, bad and ugly ideas. Now I just need to find a better place to store them.

At the end of the year, I started tracking my project time with far more granularity. I've often wanted to know how long it would take me to build something like Frinook with my kids, or a more accurate number for the number of hours I'm spending on Asthmapolis related projects. I'm now on a path to figure some of that out. I'm using a service called Toggl which makes this process very very easy and painless.

• Ran, biked, and swam 486 total miles
• 106 total (dailymile) workouts (1 every 3.5 days isn't bad!)
• 135 donuts burned
• 7 pounds burned
• 2,870 pushups
• 3,105 situps
• Walked 424 flights of stairs
• 262 tasks completed on Remember The Milk

In addition to logging more things in 2011, I'd like to figure out a new way to aggregate all of it so it isn't spread across so many services. I'm envisioning a system like Nimbits and perhaps implementing a number of APIs to import the data. But I'm pretty sure I don't have the time to implement that so I'm still searching...

The pace of innovation in web design and the proliferation of native mobile applications is making data collection easier and more fun. The tracking tools have become so easy and ubiquitous, you shouldn't stop and ask yourself, "What will I do with this data?". You should be saying to yourself, "I can't wait until I figure out how to use all of this great data!"

What else should I be tracking in 2011?