In 2013 Beth Martin was dealing with a failing startup, starting a new venture and working so much she moved her office into her bedroom to limit the time between waking and starting work. After a series of additional changes led her to near breakdown she decided to take six months off to rewrite her…
Nancy Dougherty has talked to us in the past about her experiences with exploring self-tracking and how mindfulness interacts with the technological processes of gathering and understanding personal data. In this short Ignite talk, given at the 2013 Quantified Self Global Conference, Nancy digs a bit deeper into her personal experiences when she gave up…
Charles Wang is one of the co-founders of Lumo BodyTech, the makers of the LUMOback posture sensor. When he’s not building new self-tracking tools, he’s taking a some time to watch the world around him. Watch this great Ignite talk from Charles to hear about his observations and how they apply to his long-term posture…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Apr 14, 2013
Can you use technology to be more mindful? This question was at the core of a wonderful presentation by Nancy Dougherty at the second annual Quantified Self Conference: Nancy acknowledges at the start of her talk that QS is often thought to be mainly about technology. But not everybody sees it this way. Alex Carmichael,…
Catherine Kerr does brain science related to mindfulness at Brown University Medical School. She points out that mindfulness traditions ask practitioners to simply focus closely on body sensations in order to bring attention to the present moment. Why does this help with depression? In the video below, Catherine explains some of her magnetoencephalopathy (MEG) research to…
This is a guest post by Sean Munson, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Sean studies individual preferences and nudges, particular for encouraging people to read more diverse political news and helping them to live happier and healthier lives. Personal informatics is inherently tied to behavior: reported behavior, monitored behavior, and planned behavior. When people…
Nancy Dougherty made her own set of “mindfulness pills” – placebos labeled Focus, Willpower/Energy, Calm, and Happy. The pills were embedded with sensors that transmitted signals to her phone, recording each time she took the different pills, as well as her heart rate, activity rate, and sleep. Nancy works at Proteus Biomedical, in case you’re…
I’ve been thinking for some time about the connection between self-tracking and mindfulness. At first glance they seem to be very different – picture the wired-up gadget wizard sitting next to the unadorned meditating guru. But step to the side and look from a different angle, and you may see meditation and self-tracking as two…
