Quantified Self, and the Zeo

I have been also interested in the Quantified Self "movement" (if that is the right word to use for this). Capturing information has always seemed like the obvious thing to do, and once the information is captured, the natural thing to do is to visualize it in some way - at least for a visual thinker like me!

For a few years now, I've been tracking my weight. Not daily - I weigh myself every couple of weeks. What I do daily is to track the number of steps, using a simple pedometer. I've tracked this since March 2010, and the resulting graph is rather interesting. (I'll post about that at some point.)

Thinking of sleep, what can be quantified? Some things are obvious but not trivial to define, like the level of wakefulness along the day. Some are much easier to define and quantify, like how long one slept during the night, how much time was spent in the various sleep phases, etc. Of course this requires special equipment, but the technology for capturing this information is becoming very accessible.

I have been paying some attention to the sleep tracking options for a couple of years. In particular, the Fitbit and the Zeo looked like the most relevant options. In several senses, the Fitbit looked like the best option, but my understanding is that its sleep tracking is entirely dependent on capturing movement. The Zeo on the other hand is supposed to detect brain activity patterns, which seems like the best way to quantify this type of information.

Last week I reviewed again details about the Zeo, read plenty of descriptions of personal experiences using it, and in truth I was surprised to find that it was much cheaper than I remembered it. I ended up deciding to give it a try, so I ordered it through Amazon, and it arrived on Monday, March 19th, 2012.

Since I don't own a mobile, I purchased the "bedside" version of the Zeo. Setting it up was trivial. Most of the buttons and menus were completely intuitive. Monday night, the Zeo headband was charged and ready for test driving.