Going paperless: The digital lab

Going paperless: The digital lab : Nature News & Comment:

'via Blog this'

A good article on the benefits of electronic lab notebooks. This is how everyone will be keeping records very soon. It's already happening. I'm interested in checking out LabGuru and iLabber for grad school. Does anyone have any experience with these or any other lab record tools?

Tracking time with Toggl

Self-tracking is all the rage these days. The idea is that if we can track data about ourselves in such areas as sleep, eating, time usage, mood, etc, that we will be able to observe patterns that we might otherwise miss. Accordingly, those patterns born out of long-term tracking can then be used as the basis for behavior change. Or that's the idea at least.

I think overall, that makes sense. And with so many applications out there to track ourselves, and with mobile devices so ubiquitous, it's easier than ever to start having a data-collector operate in the background. That has been the success of budgeting programs such as Mint. The barrier to usage is now almost entirely gone since it collects data at the point-of-purchase and all but does the work for you by categorizing the transaction and integrating it into the larger budget. I've really come to appreciate Mint and how it helps me keep tabs on my finances, so I'm ready and willing to start tracking in other areas.

One area that I've been wanting to track for a while is time. How am I using my time? It's not the big areas of time usage I'm uncertain about, such as school, work, etc. It's all the little time-slots that add up to big time blocks, and that's what I want to see.

The problem is that, until now, there really hasn't been an easy way to do this. I started out simply with a Google Doc spreadsheet. But I found that I wasn't being regular with it because it was cumbersome. I had to manually record everything, in particular the duration (which is the most important part). The barrier was too high for me with this method, and so I dropped it.

I looked at some of the other tracker apps out there, and they all were either too feature-rich or they were made in a proprietary form that I felt wouldn't allow me to collect all this personal data into one place. What I really wanted was an app with a start and stop button, that would work seamlessly with my life, and require nothing more than for me to hit go when I was going to do something. And I wanted an app that would collect the data in a clean, simple format that I could actually use and interpret.

Yesterday, I found the closest thing to that. It's called Toggl. It's free (basic service), available on the web, desktop and mobile device. It's almost exactly what I wanted. It collects fairly rich data, allowing me to start and stop, make actions as part of larger projects, tag actions.

Here is what I've got so far

Web App

You can see, I'm using this pretty much for everything. It's intended use is for freelancers to bill for by-the-hour projects, but that hasn't stopped me from co-opting it for my purposes.

So far, I really like it. The biggest thing is that it's so easy to use that the barrier to my using it has gone down significantly. That it is available for the iPad is really key. I don't want to be at the computer every time I want to make an entry. All nearly always have my ipad or iphone on me, and I can just press "start" and forget about it. Then Toggl syncs with the web and desktop clients, and all is well.

At the end of this week, I'll look at the report of my time usage and see if this app really does what I want it to. And, more importantly, if I get anything valuable out of it.

I really can't see too many deficiencies in this app. The only thing I would have liked would be

One last cool thing... for those who use Omnifocus for their time management, some nice person wrote a script that takes an Omnifocus task and imports it into Toggl. Super cool! So now, when you're going down your list of stuff in Omnifocus, you can track that time seamlessly on Toggl.

Check it out if time-tracking is something you're interested in.

Stuff I'm Looking at Right Now

Hi all, On the drive into work today, I was thinking about how every day, I'm learning new things and being exposed to new ideas. No use in keeping all that to myself.

So I'm going to make a habit of just posting whatever it is I'm reading, researching, thinking about or learning on here for others to see. I might not always defend or explain, but I'm just going to put it out there for other people to check out. Getting a discussion going would be awesome too. So here we go....

 1. Omnifocus: This is a piece of software that is based on the Getting Things Done methodology (GTD). The web is full of adherents to this productivity method, and I've come across it enough times that I decided to check it out and take the plunge. I started when I came to med school a year and a half ago. I've tried it on and off and it really hasn't done much to enhance my productivity yet. But that's mostly because I've given it a half-hearted effort. Yesterday I decided to get back on the wagon. I took the plunge and got a book called Creating Flow in Omnifocus that I hope will help me understand and implement this complex piece of software. At this point, I've spent more time trying to learn this piece of productivity software than I have been doing productive things. But I hope it's worth the effort. I want a system. I told my wife this morning, the ideal system would be one in which you just look at the app and there is no question about what you should be doing at any given time. That is where the stress and floundering we all suffer comes from. When I have a block of time to do something, I spend a good portion of that deciding what I should do. And sometimes, by the time I've decided, my time is up!

I'm hoping that if I use Omnifocus the right way, I'll get to the point where I'll have all my possible tasks outlined and prioritized such that at any given moment, I can just plug in and see what I should be doing. I think that would be incredibly helpful.


2. Food Logging
I'm really getting into self-tracking. My friend Peter has turned me onto the Quantified Self site. We've got the tools now to track so much of our lives. Why we would want to do that? Because when you catalog events and personal data, you can see patterns over time. With that information, one stands a better chance of making positive behavior changes. I'm very satisfied with how I eat, but that mean I shouldn't tweak it. I've been a long time low-carber/paleo adherent. The major virtue of this way of eating is that I don't have to count very much at all. My food decisions are qualitative. I eat meat, veggies, some fruits and nuts. I know the foods that are carb-rich, and I avoid them. I don't bother counting anything.

But I think there is value in logging my food over time. I'm going get my bloodwork done this week and I'll see where I stand. I'll do this periodically over the next year and I'll compare my blood work to my food log.  In this way, I can see how my eating is changing, and what effect, if any, it has on parameters such as cholesterol, fasting glucose, minerals and vitamins, etc. I've even toyed with the idea of tracking my blood glucose, to see if there are any foods that are unexpectedly spiking my sugar (and thus also my insulin). Ii've always assumed that the way I eat is keeping my sugar stable and relatively low, but maybe that's not true? I don't know for certain. I'm not a diabetic, so tracking my blood sugar is a bit unnecessary, I know. But I think it might be interesting for a little while at least. Why Not? is what I ask myself. Now with the automatic USB glucose monitors that track and log your sugars for you, it's so easy.

Re: food logs. Does anyone have any suggestions for good online logs? I could just use a spreadsheet. But I'd like to have something that knows the nutrient values for the foods I'm eating. FitDay looks pretty sweet, but there may be better ones out there. Any thoughts?