10 things I learned from measuring 600 nights of sleep

I gave a very fast 7.5 minute show&tell talk at the Quantified-Self national conference at Stanford over the weekend. "10 things I learned from 600 night of sleep" The slides auto-advance every 15 seconds, so to not try to sound too speedy.... some of the slides are duplicated to give me 30 seconds to make a point. Here's a pdf of the powerpoint. Frick_sleep_600nights_Sep2012 (it's 3MB, beware).

Number 2. Sleep patterns are like a fingerprint. Similar to our stride, or voiceprint. Very specific to us.

How to color code your zeo sleep data

Instructions and template for how to format zeo sleep using excel conditional formatting

1. 1. export zeo sleep (it's the itty-bitty link underneath the green - manage your data button on the myzeo page)
2. 2. open the excel file and highlight column BW - 5 min, detailed sleep
3. 3. click Data--> text to columns --> select delimited (next) space (next) finish
4. 4. do you want to replace? yes, then select most the columns with data (it'll be ragged cause amount of sleep varies)
5. 5. open and use my sample excel sleep chart of 31 nights here --> Sleep_zeo_reformatted
6. 6. copy and paste your data into the color formatted columns of the sample sheet - might have to select all the columns you pasted, right click and set column width to '1'
7. 7. if you want to lengthen or change, just go into conditional formatting tab --> edit and change the cell range to cover the data you want to use the same colored formatting
8. 8. fiddle around with copy/pasting from your data into the sample adding/deleting columns, better to just keep the ones that matter to you. Then you can play with excel to find mean, standard deviation and experiment with the correlate function.
9. 9. I've added my withings weight, fitbit steps and city location to the same file - easy to delete those columns.
10. 10.  yippee, you're there !

Keeping track of yourself

Every  time I look at future scenarios of data tracking - it takes on a hugely sinister theme.

Big brother, stalking, total loss of privacy to big government agencies who are coming to get you. Some of it is like monsters-in-the-closet. While chatting about this with another artist at the LMCC residency in Lower Manhattan, she said maybe it's simply fear of the unknown and not understanding what collecting data could actually mean.

So, in anticipation of a time where sensors are seamlessly embedded in your clothes, in tiny bits you swallow with vitamins, GPS coordinates gathered from your phone and pics of what you see, say and hear are invisibly gathered....I've been collecting data to see how it feels, what does it mean, and how can I fill the spaces I live with that insight about ME?

Most of this is surprisingly easy.

Turn on openpaths on your phone - it gathers GPS data without any battery drain, and paints a map just for YOU, completely private about where you've been.

Grab TimeLapse from the app store on iphone for $1.99. And start snapping pics of what you see and do during the day. OK, you have to wear your phone around your neck, which you think is very geeky, but look on amazon and there are a ton of neckstrap gadgets for your phone. I used clingo.

Wear a fitbit...and keep track of how many foot steps you've taken and distance you've traveled, and weirdly how many flights of stairs you've walked (subway steps add up).

Extra credit for wearing a polar strap, stepping on your wifi scale everyday, logging your mood ala moodjam, turning on manictime, tracking a malady, getting a detailed graph of how you slept (my personal favorite) with Zeo, analyze your twitterfeed with liwc or cut paste all your emails here.

I'm especially fascinated with the sense of seeing and knowing the hidden side of yourself, the stuff that is invisible to you. The subliminal, the unseen, the things others see but you don't. The chance to see the OTHER you, that other person that operates in the world seemingly without direct control from you.

Does mindfulness and observation add a little fuel to your psyche? Does self-reflection using real data calm you down, sooth you, help you sleep, rev you up, give you encouragement, change your relationships, scare you, bring you something you never considered? Maybe this is a data driven version of ACT psychology.

What I know so far is that a daily habit of measuring and tracking adds weight and a sense of being in the world. As time and events slip by unnoticed, it gives just a couple inches more observation and sense of recollection of what is actually happening to me as I go thru the day. And I believe the old-adage 'you can't change that which you don't measure'. So, I'm measuring, watching, and intensely paying attention.

So, NO....I don't think self-tracking is OCD, or sinister, or eliminates the mystery of life. It's early days, but will be normal-embedded in how we live, the data will be ours to use, and we'll look back and can't believe there was a time when our genome and DNA wasn't used as our base-line for everything we ingest.

Fantasy future where wall texture is built from data about YOU

I'm playing with this fantasy future where all the spaces you live will have wall texture and patterns built from data about YOU. Where 'fantasy future' are the operative words. This doesn't actually work yet, and I have to bridge the gap using art-world science. And I think there is something magical and crucial that these patterns are physical....yes, generated digitally, but physical texture you can touch and know is real...not digital pixels. So, I've begun to find my way to actually make laser cut pieces that can be WALL size. For regular people, laser cutters have size limitations that are  maybe 18 or 24 inches on the short side and only 32 or 48 inches on the long side. Here I stitched together GPS walking tracks, fitbit steps and cumulative data from a week walking around my neighborhood in Brooklyn. All gathered, and drawn...using a little magic with illustrator vector files and cut from Rives BFK printmaking paper on a laser cutter while I was at NYU ITP summer camp. I used a sewing machine to sew them together...this piece is about

3D printing - yes, absolutely we'll live in spaces with wall texture built from patterns of OUR self-tracking data

While at NYU's ITP camp this summer (it's the graduate program for art+technology) am on a mission to investigate 3D printing.  Am convinced the walls in the spaces we live will be textured by our self-tracking data produced by 3D printers and laser cutters.  Physical patterned texture from digital data. Have been imagining and fantasizing about how insightful data about ourselves....bio data, self-quantified, but also our physical movement and virtual movement through the online world will be reproduced easily and almost real-time. It's a way to watch our unconscious behavior and understand ourselves. Because we both  don't pay attention in the first place, and then forget.

Couple things so far that are quite interesting one of the other campers is producing clothes via 3D printing, yes you can order this bikini today.

And here is a thoughtful piece about how 3D printing is just the beginning of making digital technology in the physical world that learns to grow like biological organisms. Neri Oxman from MIT  media lab - likens the growth of 3D printing to the democratization of the printing press and moveable type. Totally right.

Smart people are out there

Random incoming email yesterday from James Showalter, who writes a thoughtful blog about evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and it's force on culture. Barbaric Rage & Love Totally worth clicking, one of the best things he does is keep a list of books and articles, which I've never had the discipline to compile. Plus frequent updates and posts...at it about 6 months - hope he keeps it up.  Very cool. Love it when you find people spending tons of personal energy toward something high-quality that pays absolutely no $$. Restores faith in human-kind. ;-).

Here's a little promo for him. Go take a look, and keep an eye out, he's writing a novel.