One step at a time numbers are changing the world. Education, politics, transport: so many areas of of our lives have been enhanced through quantification. One stat, one infographic at a time, society has become acclimatised to talking about the world through the lens of numbers, data and patterns. Our contemporary view of the world is now rooted in quantification. So it’s no surprise really that the next frontier to be enhanced by ‘quantification’ should be our own personal lives. Our health, our finances, our habits. The Quantified Self’s time has come. Venture funding for Quantified Self startups has increased 165% in the last year . There are now over 500 different tools listed on the hub site for the Quantified Self movement. So could it be that personal data is the secret weapon to help us rise through this, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Could it be that self-quantification will evolve us to the pinnacle - of self-actualisation? Not yet. When you look at the majority of Self Tracking tools out there - tools to track my sleep, tools to track my movement, tools to track what i eat, they are still firmly rooted at the bottom of the pyramid. Currently we’re not rising up the hierarchy of needs so much as getting really good at the basics. Actualisation has become a the hot topic on the West Coast and our greatest innovators are turning their attention to the question of how technology can improve our overall human condition. Using technology to help us find focus and mindfulness in an increasingly stressed out world. Using technology to inspire awareness and wisdom - 2.0. The underlying principle is that quantification acts as a mirror, forcing us to stop and to look - at both ourselves and our actions - to notice patterns, problems and habits we can fix. [Examples of the Hierarchy of the Quantified Self] Knowledge - rational awareness of what we’re doing - isn’t enough to change our behaviours. The majority of our behaviours are automatic, emotional, irrational - driven by a very different part of the brain to the one that processes data. To help us evolve as people, the quantified self must be able to change behaviour too. And simply looking retrospectively at our data will never be enough to impact that behaviour. Bad habits are too ingrained and automatic for that. ---- Much of our discourse on self-analysis is still rooted in the ideas, language and codes of psychology laid out by people like Freud a century ago. It is a field still heavily weighted towards using words and metaphors. Language over data. It’s probably time we brought a little more quantification, a little bit more science into the way we think about how we think and feel. But any form of quantification should be counterbalanced by qualification. Because the real value often doesn’t come from the data at all, but from the process of doing, documenting and then reflecting on those experiences through documentation.

1. Know Thyself.
Self Actualization By Numbers
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

2. Friday, 7 March 2014

3. Rachelle DiGregorio
Friday, 7 March 2014

4. Friday, 7 March 2014

5. Friday, 7 March 2014

6. Friday, 7 March 2014

7. Friday, 7 March 2014

8. Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs
Self
Actualization
Esteem
Confidence, Achievement
Belonging
Friendship, Family, Love
Security
of Body, Property, Resources
Physiological
Food, water, sleep, sex, excretion
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

9. Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs
Self
Actualization
Esteem
Confidence, Achievement
Belonging
Friendship, Family, Love
Security
of Body, Property, Resources
Physiological
Food, water, sleep, sex, excretion
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

10. Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs
Self
Actualization
Esteem
Confidence, Achievement
Belonging
Friendship, Family, Love
Security
of Body, Property, Resources
Physiological
Food, water, sleep, sex, excretion
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

11. Friday, 7 March 2014

12. Friday, 7 March 2014

13. Data = Mirror
“I think that self-awareness is about mirroring yourself, seeing
yourself, in whatever it is that you do.
I'm using a Jawbone UP to mirror my activity so I can "see" it. If
I meditated more, I'd notice recurring thoughts, etc. This is
another modality of the same sort of awareness gathering”
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

14. “The idea that our mental life is affected by hidden causes is a mainstay
of psychology.
Tracking = Attention
Nearly every therapeutic prescription involves an invitation to notice,
to pay attention.”
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

15. Reporter for iphone
“I want you to be
scared by your
routine, or by
decisions you
haven’t thought
about because you
don’t want to face
them”
Friday, 7 March 2014

16. TRACK
better
decisions
AWARNESS
DATA
enhanced
behaviours
ANALYSIS
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

17. 1. Manual data capture sucks.
2. Single sources of data aren’t that useful.
3. Quantification need qualification.
4. Knowledge alone doesn’t change behaviour.
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

18. 1. Manual data capture sucks.
2. Single sources of data aren’t that useful.
3. Quantification need qualification.
4. Knowledge alone doesn’t change behaviour.
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

19. 1. Manual data capture sucks.
2. Single sources of data aren’t that useful.
3. Quantification need qualification.
4. Knowledge alone doesn’t change behaviour.
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

20. 1. Manual data capture sucks.
2. Single sources of data aren’t that useful.
3. Quantification need qualification.
4. Knowledge alone doesn’t change behaviour.
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

21. Essen’s Hierarchy of
Quantified Self
Quantified
Society
ENHANCEMENT
Behavioural
Prompts
Lifestyle Context
Ambience & Synthesis
INSIGHT
Goal-Progress
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

22. Essen’s Hierarchy of
Quantified Self
Quantified
Society
Behavioural
Prompts
Lifestyle Context
Ambience & Synthesis
Goal-Progress
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

23. Essen’s Hierarchy of
Quantified Self
Quantified
Society
Behavioural
Prompts
Lifestyle Context
Ambience & Synthesis
Goal-Progress
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

24. Friday, 7 March 2014

25. Friday, 7 March 2014

26. Essen’s Hierarchy of
Quantified Self
Quantified
Society
Behavioural
Prompts
Lifestyle Context
Ambience & Synthesis
Goal-Progress
Friday, 7 March 2014

27. Melon
measuring focus in lifestyle context
Friday, 7 March 2014

28. Friday, 7 March 2014

29. Friday, 7 March 2014

30. Essen’s Hierarchy of
Quantified Self
Quantified
Society
ENHANCEMENT
Behavioural
Prompts
Lifestyle Context
Ambience & Synthesis
INSIGHT
Goal-Progress
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

31. Friday, 7 March 2014

32. The Human API
Friday, 7 March 2014

33. Essen’s Hierarchy of
Quantified Self
Quantified
Society
Behavioural
Prompts
Lifestyle Context
Ambience & Synthesis
Goal-Progress
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

34. Where people run
Runkeeper data for London
Friday, 7 March 2014

35. “The idea that our mental life is affected by hidden causes is a mainstay
of psychology.
Actualization?
Nearly every therapeutic prescription involves an invitation to notice,
to pay attention.”
Friday, 7 March 2014

36. “The practical conclusion is that we
should turn many of our decisions and
diagnoses over to the algorithms.
There’s just no controversy any more
about whether doing so will give us
better results.”
Andrew McAfee, Initiative on the Digital Economy, MIT
Friday, 7 March 2014

37. Sigmund Freud
1856 - 1939
Friday, 7 March 2014

38. @benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#DATASELF

39. “People are not machines
but in every opportunity
where they are allowed
to behave like machines,
they will so behave.”
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 1968
Friday, 7 March 2014

40. “The most important
thing about a technology
is how it changes people”
Jaron Lanier, 2009
Friday, 7 March 2014

41. Self-tracking must feed our
intuition. not replace it.
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

42. Behavior leading to selfactualization:
(a) Experiencing life like a child, with full
absorption and concentration;
(b) Trying new things instead of sticking to safe
paths;
(c) Listening to your own feelings in evaluating
experiences instead of the voice of the majority;
(d) Trying to identify your defenses and having the
courage to give them up.
Friday, 7 March 2014

43. Quantification : Qualification
“For me, the real value in this whole project hasn’t
necessarily come from the data at all, but from the
process of getting outdoors, exploring, and then
reflecting on my experiences through documentation.”
Friday, 7 March 2014

44. The best insights about ourselves
will always come from within.
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself

45. Thank you
@benessen
Friday, 7 March 2014
#dataself