For most of my life I tried to be someone else. I'd find someone I admired, decide they were better than me, and copy them. That mindset pushed me into a business I never enjoyed and only started because I looked up to one specific guy. It failed. I felt completely lost.

Around that time I was obsessively tracking my sleep with a Whoop, trying to optimize it. I kept getting good recovery scores. And I was still exhausted, yawning through entire afternoons, dead by 2pm. That's when it clicked: the score doesn't do anything. It just confirms you slept well or badly. Cool. Now what? Knowing isn't fixing.

So I built the thing I actually wanted. It takes the data your wearable already collects sleep, recovery, heart rate, and turns it into a daily protocol instead of another number. It tells you what supplements to take based on your metrics, predicts your most productive hours and gives you the exact time window when you should do deep focus tasks and light focus tasks, it tells you how much caffeine you have in your system left based on your first coffee taken and notifies you when you should take the next caffeinated drink for maximum productivity, it even tells you when to nap so your energy lasts the whole day instead of crashing and much more...

It's on the App Store as RizeAI https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rizeai-maximize-your-energy/id6762402079. i built by myself, it's early stage right now, and I want honest feedback, what's confusing, what's missing, what you'd never use. Tear it apart.

This Half-year happiness check-in: I actually started tracking my mood this year

At the start of this year, I made a resolution that felt simple but important: take my happiness seriously.

Not in a dramatic “change my whole life overnight” way — just by paying attention to my mood, tracking how I feel, and noticing what actually makes my days better.

Now that half the year is gone, I wanted to look back and check in with myself.

I work full-time Monday to Friday, so most of my week is built around work, routines, deadlines, and trying to stay productive. Then weekends and holidays become the space where I reset, breathe, and actually notice life outside the work loop.

What I’ve realized is that happiness is not always some big exciting thing. Sometimes it is a slow morning. A good meal. Finishing work without feeling drained. A walk. A quiet evening. A holiday that gives your mind space again.

Tracking my mood has helped me see patterns I used to ignore. It made me understand when I’m doing okay, when I’m just pushing through, and what kind of small things genuinely improve my life.

Halfway through the year, I’m not saying I figured everything out. But I’m proud that I started paying attention.

And honestly, that itself feels like progress.

Please find any excitement inferences for me!

In March, I wrote a post describing a project I had started working on: tracking my life by noting down the corresponding category (school, phone, food…) for every half-hour.

I recommend checking out that post for more details: https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantifiedSelf/s/cWtR7ToQwU

I had been recording this data for nearly three months just for myself before deciding to share it with you. Honestly, I didn't have any particular expectations, but I was truly surprised by the comments and the attention the post received.

So, I am here today to share some updates.

We have just passed the halfway point of the year, but I waited a few days so I could write about and analyze the data in greater depth.

As I previously wrote, this project has proven to be very interesting and is helping me improve how I use my time, even though changing long-established habits can be difficult.

A lot has happened over the past few months.

Filling out the file has become a habit by now, and as I write this, I have reached 8,874 half-hour entries, amounting to 4,437 hours.

Regarding my phone usage, I managed to cut back month by month from February to May. However, after school ended, my usage increased though I am pleased that I use it more for gaming than for mindlessly scrolling through social media.

Since May, I’ve also fixed up my bike and started riding it again, covering just over 350 km so far (data I track in a separate file, not relevant to this post).

At the same time, I’ve kept up with my reading and have finished 9 books since the start of the year (data I also record elsewhere, not relevant to this post).

Then, in June, I finished school; I had to study and take exams, and I’ve just graduated with a diploma in accounting, scoring 98/100. Now my routine has been turned upside down, and I’ll have to start doing a lot of new things.

If you want to take a look at the data, please forgive the category names being in Italian.

I’ll see how this post performs; I’m going to keep tracking the data, and perhaps around November or December, I might write another post to sum up the project. I’d like to share the experience as a whole, maybe in greater detail, and offer useful advice to anyone who, like me, wants to start tracking something, so they can avoid making the same mistakes I did. For instance, if, like me, you love having precise data and want to start in January 2027, I recommend preparing beforehand and perhaps tracking data as a trial run in December to see if anything needs tweaking. I say this because I’ve been adding new categories as I take up new activities, but there are some things I can’t change without compromising data consistency; in my case, I would have preferred to separate social media from video games.

As with the other post, I am available to answer your questions and welcome suggestions of any kind.

Thanks for reading.

I am chasing the nostalgia feeling and reminiscing that you have when you open an old box in your attic. I like tracking things but sometimes the quantified self posts are lacking the vibes as they show only dry numbers. I want to have all my days saved so I can relive them any time or feed them to the future AIs that will be able to make sense of them and give us perspective and advice. That is why I am capturing my life as a colorful, vibrant tapestry of experience, including the numbers and habits, but not limited to - a ton of information is hiding in photo metadata, visits, motion, music and everything else my phone is now processing anyway, just not showing and inregrating together.

Hi all, 43yo W, I've been tracking my weight for weight loss purposes on my own for a while, but decided to post here just in case my experience can help someone.

I have been diligently tracking my weight daily since March 1st, so about 4 months now. I'm trying to keep a daily deficit around 300-500kcal (foods logged), but got frustrated with weight fluctuations, until I realized I should track against my cycle. WHAT A REVELATION, I mean I knew about water retention, hormonal shifts, the whole shebang, but not until I saw it visually did I realize why I often got discouraged.. so basically I realized I could go up about 2,5kg in weight during luteal/late luteal, with no apparent reason (same deficit, same carb levels, etc..) I mean it was probably obvious to most of you already, but the impact, at least for me is massive. here's my graph to show what I mean (the red is period, blue is ovulation, for ref.).

https://imgur.com/a/NFIiSQ9

So now I know not to compare apples and oranges, obviously if I weigh say day 12 just before ovulation, then again a week later, with same efforts (food, exercise) I'll still be about 1,5kg heavier ! so easy to get discouraged if you don't know this is actually normal...

Can't highlight enough the importance of actual data for me, I find it absolutely central to my weight management system. just having these daily weight and food logs and analyzing them visually has made a world of difference.

So I was talking with my partner last night because I had to cancel yet another dinner (classic crash after a “good” day) and they asked if I’d ever tried actually tracking my energy like people track calories or steps. I’ve had CFS/ME for about 4 years and mostly just go by gut feeling + trial and error.

I started googling and saw people mentioning heart rate pacing, spreadsheets, symptom diaries, even apps that do an “energy timeline” thing. One of them was called ENSTA in a blog I read, but it sort of blurred together with all the other tools so I have no idea if any of this is worth the effort. Part of me is like… maybe I’m overthinking this and adding more tracking will just be more stress.

Has anyone here found logging stuff like sleep, HR, basic activity and mood actually helps with pacing or avoiding PEM? Do you track it manually or with an app/Excel/whatever? And if you did try, did you stick with it or did it just become another thing to feel guilty about?

So I’m in an entrepreneurship course and we’re considering developing an app that lets you talk with licensed doctors and it is supplemented by AI for a better workflow. Responses on this survey would be much appreciated. https://forms.gle/W5oR7NM4PKwQ8Uj86

I pulled validation studies on how accurate each device's VO2 max estimate is across multiple wearable brands and any claims the brands make on their accuracy into a comparison chart. It's broken down into how each device measures VO2 max, what the company claims, and what independent studies actually found. Sources linked as well for each row if you want to check these out further. Hope you find this helpful if you're tracking it!

If the tables are difficult for mobile readers I'll also include a mobile first page with the data in the comments if you need it.

VO2 max accuracy by brand

Additional notes

• Garmin is the only one with solid independent accuracy and a near correct vendor claim
• Resting based estimates (Polar Fitness Test, Fitbit without a run) tend to overestimate
• Every device underestimates VO2 max in highly trained people and overestimates in sedentary ones so the error depends on who you are
• Validation studies typically lags hardware so that's why some models are older
• A chest strap improves any exercise based estimate as wrist optical heart rate drifts during hard efforts.
• Only a lab CPET gives a true VO2 max
• Devices that estimate VO2 max from an actual workout were near spoton on average (bias -0.09 ml/kg/min vs lab)
• Devices that estimate it at rest overestimated by +2.17 ml/kg/min. Both still have wide error for any single person Molina-García et al. 2022

If I missed any studies please feel free to let me know!

Hard to believe that 2026 is already half way over! As always, I am available to answer any questions on how I track my quantified self. What my routines are, what apps I use, what systems, etc.

June was an average month for me. Everything was consistent and steady. My Tuesdays were consistently my worst day of the week, while my weekends were mostly great.

I took a camping trip one weekend and had s'mores in the evening and ate breakfast so those are the two low bars on my fasting chart.

As I continue to work towards lowering my blood pressure, I decided to invest in a new blood pressure cuff, so now I am using a Withings BPM Connect that I got a good discount on during Prime Day. I have been using it for a couple of days now instead of the old free wrist based monitor I had gotten from my health insurance. It definitely takes longer, but I have been happy with the results so far. I look forward to a full month in July and seeing the readings and if they are consistent with what I was getting with the wrist monitor.

As I am half way through the year, I want to refocus on lowering phone screen time. My biggest culprits are Reddit and YouTube, so I will be minimizing my time on those two apps. Also my caloric intake remains high. My self-discipline in eating collapses right after work until dinner time. I find myself grabbing a bag of chips as soon as I walk in the door or even worse, stopping at the grocery store on the way home to buy a full sized bag of chips and devour the entire thing only to look at myself in shame when I log 1,200+ empty calories for a bag of chips. The disconnect between immediate gratification and long-term success is real.

I lift and I run, and I wanted one honest answer to a question two separate apps couldn't give me: am I actually balanced across both, or just decent at each in isolation.

The methodology I landed on: compute a strength index and an engine (cardio) index, each 0 to 100, then combine them with a harmonic mean instead of a simple average. The reason is deliberate: an average lets a strong pillar mask a weak one (a 90/40 split averages to 65, same as a 65/65 split, even though the athlete is nowhere near as balanced). Harmonic mean punishes the gap, so a lopsided profile scores visibly lower than a balanced one at the same total effort. Can't fake the number by being great at only one half.

Inputs right now: logged strength sets (weight, reps, RPE) feeding an estimated strength curve, and Strava-synced runs/rides feeding the cardio side (VO2max-adjacent estimate). No wearable/recovery data yet (HRV, sleep, RHR), that's the obvious next layer, but I wanted the strength x cardio relationship solid first before adding recovery as a third dimension.

I'm running this as a real self-experiment: training for a HYROX in August (goal sub-1:15), logging everything, watching the score move week to week against the actual race outcome as the real-world validation of whether the number means anything.

Curious what this community would track or weight differently. Harmonic mean over average, or would you reach for something else to penalize imbalance? And what's the first non-training-day metric you'd want fused in (sleep, HRV, something else)?