surprising benefits of deliberate self-logging.md

The surprising benefits of disciplined, deliberate self-logging

In the summer of 2018, I mysteriously started developing acid reflux symptoms, which spurred me to take disciplined records of my diet. To help with the increased logging load, I ended up writing an app, which supplanted all of my earlier attempts of logging in plain text or other half-baked solution like fitbit ¹. Aside of turning me into that colleague who logs everything he eats, there was a subtle yet life-changing effect: perceptual sensitivity.

Let me explain.

The act of logging a personal, internal state is an act of observation. You direct your mental attention at an internal phenomenon to discern what it is. For example, here are some actual entries from my logs of "food coma" responses:

{"time": "2013-08-16T14:07:11-04:00", "entry": "recovered from coma around 5 minutes ago; coma lasted for probably 15 minutes"}
{"time": "2015-02-15 16:31:11-05:00", "entry": "wake from coma, ~5min. severe, total LoC"}
{"time": "2015-03-19T16:37:37-04:00", "entry": "recover from minor coma. maybe < 5 min; rapid low energy"}
{"time": "2016-07-04T13:40:55-07:00", "entry": "downcycle 4/10"}
{"time": "2016-06-13T17:00:00-07:00", "entry": "les 7/10 with intrusions"}
{"time": "2016-07-17T18:57:04-07:00", "entry": "frequent intrusions 6/10"}
{"time": "2020-05-16 21:04:36-0700", "entry": "brain slip", "category": "mental state"}

Over time, I create new vocabulary to describe details that I notice at the time of capture. Some of these vocabularies get superseded by others (what I called intrusion is in fact a microsleep). This kind of evolution may happen across months. It makes for a nasty set of data for quantitative analysis later, but at the same time, the observer is picking up more and more details about the surrounding phenomena. The downcycle is actually a response that precedes falling asleep.

Like bird watching, poetry reading, or microscope viewing, observing the internal state is a learning process, where repeated exposure allows the brain to practice and develop expertise in finding details in what it's observing. In my case, I was able to glean a surprising amount of information after focused observation in this way. I have a finer perception of the "food coma" response than during my teens, when it was simply a "feel sleepy, fall asleep, wake up" matter.

I've written about the phenomenon of increasing tactile acuity in my investigation of [learning braille]; this is similar in nature. Another example where I've noticed increased perceptual "resolution" is from observing... poo stool. Well, that's a separate topic.

The takeaway: through systematic and conscious repetition in observing a single target, the brain fine-tunes its perception, uncovering new features that become obvious. Yet, to the untrained brain, they easily remain hidden from awareness.

Footnotes

1. fitbit's export data structure is a total mess:

   • food and water intake granularity is at the day level, which is silly
   • the date format alters between MM/DD/YY and YYYY-mm-dd
   • there are calories in the root of loogedFood as well as NutritionalValues
   • the units are FL_OZ in water (through measurementUnit) and oz in food (through unit.name, which is obviously a separate table, different from that used for water)
   • why does resting heart rate have a low fidelity dateTime like 09/24/17 00:00:00, but include the same date like 09/24/17 value in .value.date?
   • time data has no timezone information and is recorded in string
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