Ernesto Ramirez

June 23, 2014

Four years ago Morris Villarroel was inspired to start writing things down. He started with a simple Muji notebook and begun adding some structure such as daily logs, life events, and review of books and articles he had read. In the process of filling out over 130 journals his process has evolved to include journaling about other important aspects of his life. In this talk, presented at the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, Morris explains his journaling in detail, gives a few examples of how he’s able to analyze the data he’s tracking in his journals, and explains how this process has improved his reflection and preparation for future events.

You can also view the slides here.

What did you do?
Kept a log book of daily events over the past four years in muji notebooks, including work, personal life and readings.

How did you do it?
The writing evolved into different sections, including an agenda, food page, idea page, book index and readings written from back to front. I titled each page with the main events and included all pages and events in an excel spreadsheet for easy access and analysis.

What did you learn?
That most events in my life can be classified as work (57%), personal (32%) and writings (11%) and were not very correlated with steps (Fitbit data), and a little more with floors. The whole process also inculcated more reflection on the preparation of events, their intensity and reviewing and reusing results, to then improve preparation in the future.