Tag Archives: buster benson

Buster Benson Talks Life Logging at 2013 QS Europe Conference

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Ernesto Ramirez

BusterBenson

We’re excited to share some great news with our Quantified Self community: Buster Benson, one of the most inspring tool makers and self-trackers we know, will be giving a plenary talk about his experiences and adventures in lifelogging at the upcoming Quantified Self European Conference.

750wordsBuster has long been a friend and an inspiration to those of use pursuing various forms of self-tracking. From his pioneering work with helping people maintain writing and journaling habits through his beautifully engineered 750 Words to his work centered on creating and maintaing healthy habits, Buster has employed Quantified Self methods to encourage progress and growth. That is not to say he’s restricted his endeavors to the realm of the digital world. Buster was also one of founding organizers for our wonderful Seattle QS Meetup group.

Buster also happens to be a prolific writer. His wonderful blog ,”Way of the Duck,” details his interest, commitment to, and skepticism about a topic of great interest to Quantified Self: behavior change. His take on the idea of a Codex Vitae is not to be missed. Continue reading →

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Buster Benson: Why I Track

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Alexandra Carmichael

Twelve years ago, Buster Benson started tracking how different web links affected his mood (the Morale-O-Meter!), and he was surprised to find that other people were interested in his data. In this inspiring video, Buster shares some snapshots of what he has tracked over the past several years, including his famous 8:36 pm project and how he analyzes all his created web content. He argues that precision can be counterproductive, makes a clear distinction between objective and subjective data, and suggests creating your own boolean fitness function. (Filmed by the San Francisco QS meetup group.)

Buster Benson – Why I Track from Gary Wolf on Vimeo.

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2011: Numbers From Around The Web

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Ernesto Ramirez

As 2011 draws to a close and we look forward to another amazing year of tracking and learning it’s great to look back and see what people were up to in 2011. I’ve been watching Twitter and it seems like a lot of our friends and acquaintances around the web enjoy breaking down their year numerically. Some highlights:

Buster Benson
Buster shared some of his numbers from 2011 over on his personal blog. Of all his numbers I find his email volume to be the most fascinating. Buster created a nifty little application called How’s my email? that helps you keep track of your gmail account (his reasoning for this is here).

Ernesto's email

Brad Feld
Brad Feld has been tracking different aspects of his life since 2009 and his 2011 numbers look amazing! Over 1,000 miles run and closing in on 6,000,000 FitBit steps. What an accomplishment! Brad uses the Daytum app to track and visualize his important data.
Brad Feld Running Daytum

Jacklyn Giron
Jacklyn, co-founder of SmashRun, posted her year in running to the Quantified Self LinkedIn group. She finished up a great year of running with over 750 miles! Other interesting tidbits? Most of her runs (42%) were during the morning and she ran most often on Tuesdays.

Jacklyn's 2011 SmashRun stats

Joost Plattel
Quantified Self friend and co-organizer of Quantified Self – Amsterdam has been taking pictures every day at 8:36PM. He took the time to stitch them all together into a neat little video:

A quick Google search also turned up some fun posts from around the web:

Do you have some numbers from 2011 you want to share? Let us know in the comments below! Oh, and happy new year!

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Buster Benson: How I Use RescueTime

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Alexandra Carmichael

Buster Benson of Habit Labs likes to experiment with productivity, among other things. He uses RescueTime to see which apps and websites he spends the most time on each week. The winners are his text editor (for coding) and Gmail. In the video below, Buster talks about the ease of different kinds of tracking, from passive to binary to active entry, and previews some some Habit Labs apps. The folks from RescueTime are also present, adding to the audience discussion. (Filmed by the Seattle QS Show&Tell meetup group – first video from them!)

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