I love lifelogging. Introduced to the topic several years ago by Kevin Kelly, it’s something I’ve been itching to take up more and more.
Last year I took a picture of myself (almost) every day. I also started using RescueTime, which I still use and love. And I also track daily writing with 750words.com where I can see that in the last 90 days (70+ consecutively) I’ve written 73,813 words. Once you start building links in a chain it becomes hard to stop.
This year I’m taking a one second video every single day. Below is the month of January. This was also just posted on the TED Blog with an interesting caption for my video.
The joy of lifelogging is in capturing and remembering experiences from your life. And what is your life, but a series of events that you remember. If you don’t remember something, it’s almost as if it didn’t happen. A series of events you remember, Forgetting things is almost like they didn’t happen. You can still be shaped my experiences you forget, but just knowing this wouldn’t comfort anyone.
Most importantly – when you commit to logging a daily act, such as writing, or writing down 3 observations, it subtly changes how you think. Your subconscious is much more likely to prompt you with a spontaneous observation or idea. It takes deliberate effort to generate ideas and make connections. The Vine video below might be a horrible example of this or a great one, I’m not sure. I wasn’t seeking out signs that said “No” but for whatever reason noticed a lot of them in a row.
We live in a world of “No.” vine.co/v/bnIUV9QdrlM
— Ben Nesvig (@BenNesvig) February 7, 2013
Nice TED-cred!