健康生活:用手機記錄點滴改變生活

John Rico is a self-quantifier and he says being one has improved his life.

約翰•里科是位"自我量化主義者"，用他的話就是做一個讓自己生活更美好的人。

Every one of us wants to live a better life, but what is a self-quantifier, exactly?

我們每個人都想過得更好，但究竟什麼纔是"自我量化主義者"？

Well, if you have a smartphone with apps tracking your daily activities like spending, exercise, or keeping a calorie diary to help manage your weight, then you might well be on your way to become a self-quantifier.

好吧，如果你的智能手機安裝了一些這樣的應用程序—追蹤你包括消費、鍛鍊在內的日常活動，或者記錄卡路里日記來幫你保持體形的話，那你可能就離"自我量化主義者"不遠了。

Self-quantification is, at its most basic, maintaining performance statistics or data about oneself.

自我量化，最基本的便是記錄自身性能統計與數據。

Rico, a US writer, takes self-quantification to another level that it almost has become an obsession.

里科是位美國作家，對於自我量化，他已經到了癡迷的程度了。

In a recent article he wrote for Salon magazine, Rico admits that he not only tracks both exercise and spending, but on his iPhone, he also has specific apps that track the water he drinks, sleeping cycles, moods, the last time he communicated with friends, and how much time he spends watching television. "Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, my iPhone is pushing, fetching and recording data about myself," he says.

里科在Salon雜誌的一篇最新文章中承認他不只記錄鍛鍊和支出狀況，就連喝水、睡眠、心情、哪天和朋友聊了天、看多長時間電視他都記在iPhone上。他說："一天24小時，一週七天，我的手機無時無刻不在記錄着自己一舉一動的每項數據。"

"Indeed, I even go so far as to have a constantly running timer app that I have to click every time I change activities, with the app providing me with up-to-the-minute reports on how I've spent my time."

"實際上，我甚至還有一個永不停歇的計時應用程序，每次我該做其他事情時，我都必須要點開它，這樣它就能隨時報告我把時間都花在哪裏了。"

Sounds crazy? And what a waste of time tapping away on a phone to record trivial details while the important parts of one's life pass by.

這聽起來很瘋狂吧？在手機上點來點去記錄雞毛蒜皮的瑣事，而錯過生活的重頭戲，簡直是浪費時間。

But Rico offers his defense. He points out that self-quantification is about trying to exercise a certain amount of self-awareness through data to become a better person. Data allows us to measure performance, to observe trends, and to inculcate new habits into our lives.

但是里科也有自己的說法。他指出自我量化是爲了通過數據形式，來鍛鍊自我意識，從而完善自我。這些數據有助於我們評量績效、觀察趨勢、培養新習慣。

Rico says that our perceptions of ourselves are far different from what actual data about ourselves might show.

里科表示，我們的自我觀念與真實數據所顯示出的大不相同。

His mood app is a good example in point. A while back, the writer considered himself to be somewhat depressed. But when he used an app to record his mood, day by day, it was almost always happy.

他的心情應用程序就是個例子。前陣子，里科總感到莫名的抑鬱。自從使用應用程序記錄心情以來，一天天下來，他幾乎每天都是好心情。

It turns out that he was simply focusing more on the bad days, and ignoring the good days. The mood app helped him see and value the brighter side of life.

原來里科是因爲太在意壞心情了，好心情都被忽略了。應用程序只是幫他發現並珍惜生活中美好的一面。

Self-quantification also helped increased Rico's productivity as a writer. He believed he was hard working enough on his new book, but then he started tracking how often he wrote, and realized he was only thinking about writing. Further self-quantification of those periods when he did do writing allowed him to recognize what time of the day he was the most productive, which in turn allowed him to make adjustments that improved his productivity.

自我量化還幫他提高寫作效率。原來里科認爲寫新書已經夠努力了，直到他開始記錄寫作頻率，才發現自己只是在構思寫作而不是付諸筆端。後來他將自己確實用於寫作的時段記錄在案，找到自己一天中什麼時間效率最高，這使他可以依效率來做調整。

His activity timer helped his life become more fulfilling. Rico says it revealed that no matter how busy he thought he was – work, writing, and friends, and the activities of taking care his family - he still had large unproductive pockets of time. Realizing that better management of this time meant he could take on a new hobby, he started applying to PhD programs.

行爲計時器令里科的生活更有成就感。無論他覺得自己有多忙——忙工作、寫作、忙交際、忙家庭，計時器都告訴他還有大把可以利用的零碎時間。里科發覺對時間的有效管理可以使自己多發展一項愛好，於是就申請了博士課程。

The main criticism of self-quantifiers is that it's a decadent indulgence of the self, Rico says.

里科說對自我量化者批評的焦點主要集中在擔心這是一種自我沉迷。

Perhaps in a world of social networks which pay so much attention to one's self, the last thing we need is to also record data about ourselves.

或許在社交網絡世界中，我們太過於關注自我了，而我們最不想做的也是記錄下關於我們自身的數據了。

But self-quantifying is anything but indulgent, Rico points out. Rather, "it is about deflating the self, breaching the fantasy assumptions about ourselves by introducing disruptive cold hard facts, facts that often demonstrate we're actually not what we thought."

里科指出，自我量化決不是放縱自己。"相反是要通過呈現一些嚴厲的事實來挫一挫自己的銳氣，打消自我幻象，而這些事實往往說明這我們並非自己所想的那樣。"