Michael

Who Am I?

I'm Michael Patterson, and I have been tracking a truly ludicrous amount of personal data over the last several years. I did this to see if there was any way to use my own data to identify trends or patterns in my behaviour that impacted my life. I wanted to answer some of life's biggest questions, but based on my own personal data.

For example, looking at my own data to identify…

1. Does having more money actually make me happier?

2. What is my perfect work-life-balance?

3. When am I most productive?

4. How much sleep do I need to function at full capacity?

5. Does weather impact my mood?

6. Are the medications I take helping me?

To that last point, I have been diagnosed with depression, ADHD, and OCD. A nice little combo platter from a not-so-conventional childhood.

But that childhood made me unique. Just like your childhood made you unique. What's good for you isn't always what's good for me.

Why This Blog?

The National Institute of Health says that the average adult needs between 7-9 hours of sleep. When you think about just how limited a day is, you realize that is a massive two hour window.

Do you need 7 or 9? Why do you sometimes feel better after getting a mere 5 hours than you do a full 8?

The answer is that we're all wired differently. I've read enough self-help books to understand a single common theme… they're almost entirely useless. Those productivity hacks you read may work for the author, but they're not gaurunteed to work for you.

So I created this blog not to tell you how much sleep you need (because short of your doctor or therapist, nobody knows how much sleep you need). I built this blog to show you how you can use the data you already have (you'd be surprised at how much you have) to answer that question yourself.

I'll share my own findings from my own data with 100% transparency, but they're to show you just how powerful optimizing your life can be.

What Can You Expect?

My mission is to help you understand how to use personal data to optimize your life. Whether you're interested in enhancing your mental well-being, boosting your physical health, or skyrocketing your productivity, this blog aims to provide actionable insights backed by data.

We'll dive deep into:

1. Health and Wellness: Learn how to optimize your diet, exercise, and mental well-being.

2. Productivity: Discover tools and techniques to manage your time and tasks more effectively.

3. Personal Finance: Get insights into budgeting, investing, and planning for financial freedom.

4. Technology and Tools: Stay updated on the latest gadgets and apps that can help you collect and interpret personal data.

5. And Much More: Relationships, skill development, career growth—you name it, we'll cover it.

So, if you're ready to take the first step towards a more optimized life, you're in the right place. Let's embark on this exciting journey together!

Yes, that picture of me is massive. And yes, I do find it embarrassing. But my passions are in innovation, creativity, 90s Disney Channel Original Movies, and the Quantified Self. Not so much web design.

I've worked in online marketing the last decade, and in that time I realized very quickly data and analytics are to building a successful online business. The first thing people do when they create a site is add Google Analytics to it so that they can start gathering data.

Organizations use that data to understand their customers and adapt their strategies accordingly. Are there articles that drive more traffic than others? Let's create more around the same topic. Do people type in certain keywords before coming to our site? Let's ensure the content they find matches their query.

But what was truly fascinating was when I began working in conversion rate optimization. The simplest things can have the biggest impacts. Changing the color of a button can double the number of clicks it gets.

I spent a lot of time optimizing websites before it struck me that I could use that same methodology to optimize my life. Once you've established a baseline of data, which I will show you how to do, you can begin to experiment on yourself.

That sounds odd, like you're being compared to a test subject, but if you can test certain routines or habits and actually tell with a degree of statistical significance if they improved your overall well-being, isn't it worth it?

I'm incredibly passionate about finding the connections in the data. While it started as simple mood tracking to see how different medications effected my happiness, it has evolved into full-blown personal optimization. I think it's something anyone can benefit from and I am eager to teach more individuals how to do it.