Life Tracking (Reflection)
- Crystal Lim
- May 12, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: May 15, 2020
In this week, we learned about how data is collected and data collection through observe and track. We were asked to determine something that we want to track.
The key question in the list is: “Is this quality time?”
What is quality time? When I get this question in my mind, I ask myself if I am experiencing a moment that is in some way connecting me to a person, an interest, or my own subconscious. I need to be experiencing it in a way that feels intrinsically valuable - an end in itself.
When I was trying to find these moments throughout the day manually, it was very difficult to think back and count them up. But in the moment, as they’re being experienced, it’s much easier. This is the magic of tracking, it samples experience and therefore I’m able to think about moments in the present while never having to carry the burden of trying to capture every moment, or remember them after the fact.
To break it down, here's the list:
1. Primary Data - observation, interview, statistic and personal point of view.
2. Secondary Data - review, written documents, news
3. Tertiary Data - discussion, website, social media
So what's LACTH?
Location - place with comparison
Alphabet - alphabetical order A-Z
Time - use events that occurs a fixed duration
Category - group them by similar importance
Hierarchy - assign value or weight to the information and scale
After tracking it, here's the results:
Saturday and Sunday are the most conducive for quality time at the moment. I’m surprised that the weekend days vary as much as they do, but I’m probably going to wait another week or two before drawing any conclusions from this data.
I think this list is interesting, but I’m more interested in comparing the number of symbols over time to see if I can increase the quality time with the people who I am around the most. I think this information will become more interesting when there are several weeks of data to aggregate… so it will take more time to find patterns. Fun!
Thanks for reading.
Hey Crystal, interesting output and reflections! but i still find myself questioning though, what do you consider as quality time? From what I could deduce, its generally when you are with friends or when you are being productive. Am I right? As you mentioned, you are giving more time to see how you can spot more patterns, would be really interesting if you have another blog post to follow up with that. haha!