4 ms·

For me "quantified self" has been half meditative. I have tracked daily water intake (and only water to keep it simple) and that has been a huge noticeable qual

• stavros 4y ago
  What was the quality of life improvement in tracking water intake? I find it interesting, because your body tracks it whether you want to or not, and I never found forcing myself to drink more water beneficial.
  • joshspankit 4y ago
    It’s surprisingly easy for some to get disconnected from the signs of dehydration. For example: when focused on a project I can go a couple days before realizing that I did not drink any water at all.
    • Semaphor 4y ago
      All that dehydration talk is fascinating to me. It’s like most people are aliens. I drink about 6L per day just in tap water, not including coffee and tea. I love drinking water and could not imagine limiting myself to what others perceive as their daily goal. And as the question tends to come up: I’m not diabetic, and I have a home-office job. I do vape.
    • lancesells 4y ago
      Are you not drinking anything to supplement your loss of water? You don't feel thirsty?
      • joshspankit 4y ago
        Not usually, and no don’t feel thirsty. The signs I easily ignore are a little bit of brain fog, some reduction in physical energy, and dry skin. The dry skin is meh, and the other two are solved* with food that provides energy. * = It does not actually resolve it, but it does “enough” and has a long enough lead time that it’s easy to have an instinct of “Oh I’m feeling run down, time to grab a snack” followed by “that didn’t quite get where I expected, I’ll give it time to digest” before forgetting about the whole thing as the project reabsorbs my attention.
  • thinkmassive 4y ago
    I briefly tracked water intake since it was a feature in the Garmin app I was using for activity tracking. Ironically it made me worse off, because it interrupted my (extremely simple) natural hydration process. There were 3 customizable preset capacities, but even using those required a couple taps each time. Drinking a non-standard amount and manually adjust it required extra effort and taps. Sometimes I’d forget to record it right away, then have to try to remember if I was double-counting a refill. The mental burden was clearly out of balance with the (practically nonexistent) reward. I quit tracking it when I found myself adjusting my behavior, like avoiding the natural habit to top off my water bottle when it was less than half full and I was getting up from the desk anyway. Ultimately it would be interesting to have that data, but it’s only worth it to me for zero cost/effort.
  • lbotos 4y ago
    I think for me it helped me to see how often when I was thirsty I might actually eat a snack. From there, it's also valuable because it's clear that in the past I might have a dehydration headache, eat something, and still have a headache because I was thirsty. By just incorporating a routine and simple 1 click tracking, that consistency has helped me to easily manage this. But as you said, for you it works "naturally". For me, I was pretty out of tune with that.