Archive for April, 2011

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Why Did Graphical Feedback Improve My Work Habits?

Monday, April 4th, 2011

A few days ago I posted about the effect of efficiency graphs — graphs of time spent working/available time vs time of day  (see below for an example). I used these graphs as feedback. They made it easy to see how my current efficiency compared to past days. As soon as I started looking at them (many times/day), my efficiency increased from about 25% to about 40%. I was surprised, you could even say shocked.  Sure, I wanted to be more efficient but I had collected the data to test a quite different idea. In this post I will speculate about why the efficiency graphs helped. (more…)

Posted in productivity, self-experimentation | 6 Comments »

Dangers of Antibiotics: Case Study

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

A column in The Telegraph by a doctor named James Le Fanu describes the following case:

It started eight years ago when he was laid low, while on holiday in Sri Lanka, by diarrhea. His symptoms cleared with antibiotics but he was left with a churning gut and frequent loud belching. This carried on for a couple of years until, listening to Farming Today, he heard an Australian vet talking about his belching sheep. “I got in touch and explained that I seemed to be behaving like one of his flock,” he writes. The vet suggested his bowel infection might have interfered with the gut enzymes for metabolising sugars, causing him to be intolerant of fructose. A test dose of orange juice immediately brought on his symptoms, and his gut problems settled on reducing his sugar intake.

In other words, no one consulted about this case, including the Australian vet and Dr. Le Fanu, seems to have understood that (a) a large fraction of our digestion is done by bacteria and (b) antibiotics kill bacteria. If you take antibiotics you risk digestive problems. I predict the belching would have gone away had he started eating fermented foods with bacteria that digest sugar. It was certainly worth a try.

 

Posted in self-experimentation | 7 Comments »

Effect of Graphical Feedback on Productivity

Saturday, April 2nd, 2011

After talking to Matthew Cornell a few months ago, I decided to try to measure how much time I worked.  Measuring it might help me control it. I’d done this before but hadn’t gotten anywhere. Maybe this time . . . (more…)

Posted in productivity, self-experimentation | 18 Comments »

Assorted Links

Friday, April 1st, 2011
  • Interview with Peter Pronovost. “The pilot who neglects a checklist before take-off would not be allowed to fly, and most safe industries have transgressions that are firing offenses. … There hasn’t been that kind of accountability in health care. … Hospitals don’t pressure physicians about teamwork for fear of jeopardizing the business they bring to the hospital.”
  • Doctors taking kickbacks. Dr. William H. Resh, one of the accused doctors, defended himself like this: “I believe that it goes without saying that a doctor who agrees to consult with a company does so because of the confidence level they have in the company and the quality of its products.”
  • Advanced navel-gazing — nice article in Forbes about self-tracking.

Thanks to Brent Pottenger.

Posted in Assorted Links | 1 Comment »

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