John-Paul Flintoff: The Quantified self

nancyhd:

“QS is a kind of secular ritual. To be meaningful, it can’t be carried out on our behalf by gadgets. ”

There are many interesting ideas and questions in this fabulous essay on the Quantified Self by John-Paul Flintoff, but my favorite is: If we design perfect monitors that record without any effort, will we lose the mindfulness benefit of the “ritual” of self-tracking?  Does the shortcut of technology (like using a monitor to track stress levels) atrophy our ability to notice it ourselves, or can it help alert and train us to notice it better?  The classic Fitbit example plays in here- if you’re walking solely to win the Fitbit competition, do you lose your natural desire to walk or run such that you won’t do it if you forget your fitbit at home?  And if you have become dependent on the technology for motivation, is that inherently a bad thing?

I think it’s important when designing tracking tools to design for educating and increasing people’s inherent motivations to be healthier, not just *replacing* those inherent motivations with features like leaderboards and competitions.

This is totally right on. With behavior change and habits and quantified self there’s this whole contingent of people who want to AUTOMATE parts of their life and brain away. The real benefit, which this article highlights well, is in creating these feedback loops that help you learn about yourself.

Quantified self is applying the scientific method and mindfulness practice to yourself. Scientists and meditators never talk about automating their experiments away, they dive in deep and try to figure things out from the data.

“I’m the worst kinda celebrity, because all I do is make music.

All I do is sit in the studio and make real, real shit, and that’s it. That’s motherfucking it.

I ain’t here to apologize to no motherfuckers man. It ain’t about me humanizing myself. At what point did I become unhuman where I had to turn myself back?

I ain’t no motherfucking celebrity. I ain’t running for office. I ain’t kissing nobody’s motherfucking babies. I’m trying to make music that inspires people to be the best they can be. I don’t want nobody to ask nothing else of me. This my goddamn life. This ain’t no motherfucking joke. That’s it.

Kanye (via yancey)

Ronen found the longer version of the Kanye rant that makes it even more awesome.

(via msg)

(via msg)

Source: yancey

Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?

Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - Salon.com

I like Jaron Lanier a lot, but this illustration as some sort of evidence of the internet hollowing out the middle class is, forgive me for saying so, idiotic. A child could figure out where those jobs went. 

1) Instagram SHOWS the photos. We have to include all of the people who work on the cloud that supports that. 

2) Kodak made cameras and film. Cameras are still being made - even moreso. At the very least, we should include the current #1 camera maker’s employees. At this point, that’s apple. Fifty thousand employees. Pro rate it to only the apple devices that have cameras, ignoring their mac business. 30,000 employees. 

3) The film business still exists. It was just lost to Fujichrome, who still makes film and has over 30,000 employees. This has nothing to do with the web, but rather something called “Globalization.” 

The internet didn’t kill a single job in photography. There are more cameras now than ever. There are still tens of thousands of people making film. 

Take the market cap of JUST these three companies - facebook, apple, fujifilm, and we’re looking at $500 billion market cap, and nearly 90,000 employees. 

Think that’s unfair? Canon has nearly 200,000 employees. Nikon has 24,000. 10,000 more than Kodak. Shit, ZEISS has 24,000 employees. 

Never mind every single camera in an android phone. 

Those jobs went overseas, and they went to computer companies, Mr. Lanier. They still exist. The internet didn’t kill a single one of them. 

(via rickwebb)

Rafer sez:
Huzzah, plus Kodak’s consumer film executives went out of their way to line their pockets on the way down, at the explicit and afaik knowing expense of the nascent digital businesses. They killed Kodak, probably knew they were doing so, and showed no signs of caring at all.

I was the first internet PM for Kodak Hollywood. My product line was one of their victims.

(via rafer)

Well played, Mr. Webb.

I’m less bullish on Jaron Lanier. After his book “You Are Not A Gadget” everything he says sounds to me like some variation of “YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!”

(via kenyatta)

#teamrickwebb

(via garychou)

Source: salon.com

Baumeister suggests many strategies for increasing self-control. One of these strategies is to develop a seemingly unrelated habit, such as improving your posture or saying “yes” instead of “yeah” or flossing your teeth every night before bed. This can strengthen your willpower in other areas of your life. Additionally, once the new habit is ingrained and can be completed without much effort or thought, that energy can then be turned to other activities requiring more self-control. Tasks done on autopilot don’t use up our stockpile of energy like tasks that have to be consciously completed.

Riffing off psychologist Roy Baumeister’s fantastic book Willpower, Erin Rooney Doland advocates for learning new habits by starting small in an excerpt from the forthcoming 99U anthology Manage Your Day-to-Day. 

Also see how to rewire your habit loops. Because, as William James knew, habit is everything. 

(via explore-blog)

Cool idea.

(via explore-blog)

Build Habits in 1,000 Steps: Our Interview with Buster Benson

liftworldwide:

“I am very much against the idea of a tiny habit.”
                                                        ~ Buster Benson

Tony sat down with Buster Benson to debate the best strategies for reaching your goals. Buster spent the last 10 years helping people build good habits as founder of 43 Things, Health Month and 750 Words. Watch the video to learn:

  • His 1,000 step strategy for reaching goals
  • Traps to watch out for when rewarding milestones
  • Why he’s a behavior change fanatic… and skeptic
  • His favorite fitness gadgets

Transcript after the jump. For more on Buster, check out his incredibly quantified life.

Read More

Part 2 of my interview with Lift CEO Tony Stubblebine.

Cheerfulness, unaffected cheerfulness, a sincere desire to please and be pleased, unchecked by any efforts to shine, are the qualities you must bring with you into society, if you wish to succeed in conversation. … a light and airy equanimity of temper,—that spirit which never rises to boisterousness, and never sinks to immovable dullness; that moves gracefully from “grave to gay, from serious to serene,” and by mere manner gives proof of a feeling heart and generous mind.
The art of conversation, 1866 (via explore-blog)

(via explore-blog)

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