For the Dear Data project, I spent a week gathering information about myself, which was more difficult than I had anticipated. Tracking something minor, like my use of profanity, combined with something more meaningful like my feelings prior to, during, and following my workouts at Burn, seemed insignificant at first. But as the week progressed, I saw that these insignificant moments combined to create a portrait of my daily routine, feelings, and self awareness.
The data collection technique helped me be more self aware. Keeping track of profanity forced me to be mindful about my language throughout the day, something I typically do without realizing it. I occasionally laughed at myself because of this awareness, but it also caused me to think before I spoke, particularly in tense or animated settings. Keeping track of my feelings during workouts allowed me to reflect more deeply. I frequently made notes on emotions like tiredness and reluctance before workouts. Those feelings often changed to resolve or frustration throughout exercise, and then they nearly always ended in relief, pride, or serenity. It was reassuring to see that my emotions tend to almost always be positive after a good workout. For me the gym is a place for me to train my physical self, but my mind as well.
The data helped me learn some new things about myself that I didn’t know before. During stressful situations, I used more profanity, but during slower periods of the day, I used fewer profanities. Similarly, my emotional data demonstrated that I always felt better after working out, even if I had dreaded it previously. Even when my motivation is low before working out, it is tough to ignore the good influence exercise has on my mood after seeing this pattern through actual data.
I thought it was super easy to collect my data for both categories. I think this is because I selected straightforward categories. For the swear words, I just kept a note on my phone to track each time I said a bad word. I did the same thing for my emotions and working out. I would just simply be mindful of my emotions around my workouts, and then jot them down in my notes as well. I will say that tracking my profanity usage did get annoying due to the high usage of bad words.
This experience has taught me that I benefit more than I think from a solid routine and consistent exercise. I also discovered that information is never really impartial. Data tells a story that is shaped by what you choose to track, how you track it, and how you interpret it. In the end, this project taught me that data depicts living experiences, patterns, and individual understanding in a way that is human, rather than numbers or graphs.
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