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April Zero

Three months ago, Anand Sharma started tracking everything about himself: runs, walks, heart rate, food, locations, and even restaurants and haircuts. Using only an iPhone and apps like Moves and Foursquare, he has built a complete log of his life, which he has turned into April Zero, a website that, through animations and lots of graphs, presents data collected using an iPhone and apps.

This site tracks where I go and what I do every day. Most of the data comes from various apps on my phone.

I’ve measured my heart rate 415 times and typically it beats 69 times per minute. In the past 105 days, I’ve pushed 1,311 commits to this site, gone on 26 runs & eaten 14 burritos. I love a good burrito.

I’m extremely fascinated by this project: since I’ve started testing fitness trackers and apps to have a healthier lifestyle, exercise more throughout the day, and sleep better, I’ve made an effort to use data and numbers about myself to see which areas I can improve (spoiler: less carbs, more fiber and vitamins, go to bed earlier) and how different data points relate to each other with specific trends that I can observe. The quantified self approach can be a little concerning from a privacy standpoint, but, personally, I’m noticing that visualizing certain aspects of my life helps me understand myself better and actively make changes.

Anand’s website takes lifelogging visualizations to the next level, and I’d be interested to know which other apps he used and how he managed to have the patience to track himself every single day, multiple times per day without forgetting about apps or going crazy. It’s also interesting that all this was possible with just an iPhone and no dedicated hardware, and it makes me excited about the potential of HealthKit for third-party developers on iOS 8.

Check out April Zero here.