Learning from Everyday Activities with Exist

I’ve been wearing a fitness tracker regularly for the last several years. Every single tracker I’ve worn (Fitbits, Jawbones, and now my Apple Watch) has had one problem – they just track numbers. Eventually, you reach a point where the numbers become predictable. You know how many steps you usually take and how much sleep you get. Yet we keep wearing them, so what’s next?

Meet Exist. Exist lets you connect a number of web services together, not to track numbers but to help you find trends.

Right now, Exist is pulling in data from my Apple Watch, my weight and body fat from my Fitbit scale, events from Google Calendar, how I’m using my computer from RescueTime, emails from Gmail, weather from Dark Sky, my Spotify listening history from Last.fm, and posts from Instagram and Twitter.

Once you’ve had everything connected for a few weeks, that’s when things get interesting. Even for someone like me who’s used fitness trackers for years, you start to see new and surprising patterns emerge. It might let you know you’re walking less 20% this month, and maybe that’s because you spent more time sending emails. Sending more emails is also correlated to your weight going up. While those may seem fairly obvious, what about knowing your weight tends to be higher when you listen to certain music? Exist can let you know. (If I have any hope of reaching my goal weight, I should listen to less Lana Del Rey and Florida Georgia Line.)

Here are a few other correlation’s Exist has found. Apparently, Tweetbot and Instagram aren’t as detrimental as I thought.

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One of the areas I’ve been paying considerable attention to is Exist’s mood tracker and the recently added custom tracking. Each day, Exist’s iOS app can prompt you to rate your day on a scale of 1-5. Within that same prompt, you’re given an opportunity to write a quick recap of the day and add any custom tags for further tracking.

While it’s still too early to see any correlations for custom tracking, I’m excited to see if any new trends emerge. Does meditation actually lead to any noticeable changes in my mood or productivity? How does that afternoon Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks affect my sleep? Being able to track anything, the possibilities are endless – although right now, tracking is limited to binary yes/no options.

Thanks to Exist, I finally feel like I’m getting something out of all of these areas of my life I’ve been tracking. Exist is free for 30 days and $6/mo or $57/year after that. You can get an additional free month by using my referral link.

2 thoughts on “Learning from Everyday Activities with Exist

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