5 Areas of Your Life that Personal Analytics can Improve

The era of data is among us. The common term thrown around is big data for big corporations. However, I believe that small data has abundant potential applications for individuals. I refer to small data in the sense that it can be opened in a spreadsheet. It is not the size of the data set that matters, but the quality.

Our society has gathered tremendous amounts of data on individuals and there are numerous ways small data can improve your life. I use the term "personal analytics" to refer to utilizing data to harness individual insight. There are five separate domains in which personal analytics can be applied for enhance well-being.

1. Health and Fitness

People have already begun to use data to maximize the results they see versus the number of hours spent in the gym. However, utilizing personal analytics to improve health and fitness is still in its infancy. Imagine overlaying your workout history with a graph of your weight. You could visually see which workouts have more of a profound impact on weight loss.

Furthermore, personal analytics can be used to maximize each individual workout. For instance, imagine yourself documenting how much weight you are bench pressing and squatting. You reach the insight that you bench 20% more on Thursdays than on Mondays. Similarly, you realize that you squat 25% more on Mondays as opposed to Thursday. Then, you ask yourself, why you continue to bench on Mondays and squat on Thursdays as opposed to the opposite? This is one example out of a plethora of how analytics and data collection could enhance your health and fitness.

Soon, we will be able to measure other activities, such as sleep quality, calorie inbound and outbound, and even alcohol intake.

2. Work Productivity

Next, work productivity can be enhanced with the use of personal analytics. A simple correlation between output and input needs to be measured, documented, and analyzed. For instance, suppose you could rank the productivity on a Likert scale from 1-10 on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Then, if you could combine this knowledge with the duration you spent in meetings or sending email over the same duration. You would then begin to see extremely profound results in terms of discerning the ideal amount of hours to spend in meetings or emailing on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

3. Social Life

Personal analytics to reassess your social life can have the largest implications, especially in our era of social media. Text messages, phone calls, social media, and an associated emotion with each can open the doors to improving your social life in a variety of directions. Envision what the world would be like if you could determine which friendships increase your self confidence and build you up and which "friendships" slowly deteriorate and demolish your outlook on life. You can re-shift which people you are giving your energy to in order to spend time around people that make you feel better. I will be looking forward to see how people apply personal analytics to measure and evaluate their social life in the near future.

4. Personal Finances

Using analytics and data for personal finances is an obvious one. Would it not be fantastic if you could save more money by eliminating frivolous purchases and increase spending in investments that will pay off in the future? The real power will come from combining analytics in the personal finance domain with any of the other domains listed. You could analyze how your personal spending on gym memberships affects your health, spending on your small business affects your bottom line, or even how spending on other people affects your relationship with them. Lets face it, there are people who you enjoy spotting a few extra bucks because you know they will return the favor and other people that you know just use and abuse your bank account.

5. Recreational Activities (esp. Sports)

Again, this is another obvious one, thanks to ESPN. Sports networks have decades of data and they have become immensely efficient over the past few years with conveying the insights to the public in near real-time. However, the subject of this post is personal analytics. How would you reevaluate your performance in your sport of choice if you had the same capabilities as ESPN. You could use this ability to determine where, on what day of the week, with which teammates, and under which circumstances you play best. The only hindrance is a methodology for capturing this data without hiring an entire team of sports analysts.

3 Reasons Why Engineering Schools Should Teach Selling

In general, engineering schools get the reputation of teaching incredibly bright students to solve extremely complex problems. Most people who have interviewed engineers right out of school know that the majority of these students are not exactly the most charismatic individuals out there. However, I propose a change in the generic engineering curriculum to include at least one course in the art of selling for three main reasons.

Note that for the remainder of this post, I refer to recent college graduates in engineering as simply 'engineers' and I know that all engineers are not the same, but I am talking about the majority of these 'engineers'.

First, selling is pervasive in all aspects of life. These engineers will soon be applying for jobs after graduation. Their sheer intellect is usually not enough alone to convince the interviewer for the job due to the fact that engineers have trouble articulating their thoughts. The engineer must sell him or her self to the employer. Furthermore, any time the engineer has a grand idea, he or she must also persuade others to believe in their idea. This persuasion is directly related to one's selling ability.

Second, an engineer can create the best product, but if they can not convince others to buy it, the product quality becomes irrelevant. In today's society, people buy things not because they need it, but because they want it, which is inherently different. Engineers are taught to create products with incredible sophistication and a plethora of features. However, this is not exactly correct. Engineers must create products that consumers want in their daily lives. The only way engineers can figure out what people actually want to spend their money on requires selling, communication, and feedback from the customer. All of which is not taught in engineering curriculum.

Lastly, engineers must utilize communication and social interaction throughout their job, personal life, and relationships. Engineers become great problem solvers, but they lack the necessary communication skills to ask the right questions. No matter how affluent an engineer is, they becomes irrelevant when they spend their time answering a question that customers do not care about. The only way that an engineer can uncover the correct question to answer is through means of communication and social interaction with their customer. Engineering schools do not train their students to seek the right answer, but rather utilize as many convoluted formulas as possible on their tests.

How to Increase Personal Performance: Activities of Fortune

I, along with every other human being on this planet, want to reach my own individual potential. In order to understand how to increase performance, one must dive under the skin and into the human brain. In a recent TED talk that I watched, Dr. Alan Wilkins described what lies at the abyss of the human psyche. 

The human system is composed in these layers, in order from external down to internal.

Therefore, we can see that performance is at the top and has five underlying factors. At the bottom, lies physiology. Physiology is raw data coming into the body. Some examples include the light waves from your computer entering your eyes and the carbohydrates from the food you just ate entering your body as nutrients. 

Per the title of this blog, I claim that there is a straightforward method to changing the physiological stimuli which enter your body. Danial Priestly describes one of the key factors to becoming a key person of influence is to create your own luck by putting yourself in lucky positions. For instance, watching TED videos instead of mind numbing television is one way to begin towards increasing your luck. In order to create your own luck, you must immerse yourself in lucky situations, which I call "activities of fortune".

Once you surround yourself with activities of fortune, the positive physiological data will slowly start improving your emotions, all the way up the pyramid to change your behavior and increase your performance. People say that most of life (90%) is what happens to you, but I beg to differ. If you engulf yourself with activities of fortune, such as reading instead of listening to news or teaching others instead of shopping, you will enhance the physiological input entering your body.

However, there is one caveat. You must love the new situations that you place yourself in. If you simply watch a TED video because this blog suggests it, you will not take anything away from the video. You must enjoy the video itself, which will cause your eyes to pick up on the subtle signals which will change your life by improving your performance down the road.

On a side note, this concept can be expanded to sports, such that, you need to not think about the basketball shot or golf putt, but rather appeal to the physiology data in personal practice before the competition even begins. For instance, imagine playing a sport. If you love the sport, you live the sport. If you live the sport, you play several hours a day, watch the professionals on TV, and talk about this sport with friends. While you think you are merely enjoying yourself, you are in fact placing yourself in activities of fortune, which will in turn increase the positive physiological effects entering your body, resulting in an increase in your performance.

3 Sizes Fit All in the Future of 3D Printing

The future of 3D printing is right around the corner. My last post discussed the rapid adoption rate of technology in today's world. Now, I analyze what how the future of 3D printing will look as these devices become ubiquitous in a relatively short amount of time.

First, the small.

Formlabs 3D Printer

The majority of Americans will have their own 3D printer in their home office. This printer will be on the cheap end to appease consumers who aim to print small tools, jewelry, replacement parts, small toys, and works of imagination. Right now, the consumer can pick up a 3D printer for less than $500. The Formlabs printer above is much more expensive, but the average price of consumer 3D printers will be a few hundred dollars, if that. This will enable the average person to express themselves through works of art and build objects together with their social network. A simple click of the button will allow people to download their friends cool unique object, only so that they can one up their friend with a minor improvement, creating an on-going cycle.

Second, the medium.

Stratasys Mojo 

However, people will want to print larger and more complex objects without having to pay the exponentially larger fees for these printers, as they plan to only use this detailed printer a couple of times per year. Enter, the next generation of 3D print shops. In this world, a user may own a 3D printer, but it may not satisfy the requirements needed to print their next work of genius. So, this person creates the digital file at their home, emails the file to a local 3D print shop, and goes to pick it up in a few hours. The user has that specific object in their hands that same day. This would occur on a mid-grade printer, similar to the Stratasys Mojo, depicted above. In fact, Staples is already beginning to offer this service. Essentially, people who desire a custom object with detailed design requirements will use this service.

Third, the large.

Stratasys Objet1000

Lastly, we look at one more use case. Suppose that a user wants an extremely detailed object or one that is grande in scale in such a way that only a $100,000 commercial printer can build this object. For instance, the Objet1000 above would be an analogous example to the size and power of a commercial printer. However, the user does not necessarily need the object that present day. Introducing, cloud 3D printing as a service. The user designs their object on their computer, as they did in the previous case. Now, they send the design to a cloud printing service, such as Sculpteo. The physical location of this business may be in a nearby large metropolis, or across the country. Regardless, the object comes back to the user after a few days has passed from printing this custom object. The user pays for the service of the printer, along with shipping and handling, and all parties are satisfied. Happily ever after.

The world of 3D printing is fast around the corner. I will be looking forward to seeing what other companies adapt or emerge on each scale. The small consumer printer space is rapidly filling up with one Kickstarter project after another. The medium domain has attracted Staples and other new business sprouting up while the large domain has brought in several business that serve this niche. These three areas be an interesting to see how they fill out in just a few years time.

How Long Until You Buy a 3D Printer?

A few technologies have had monumental impact on society. Recently, my generation has seen the wide adoption of computers, cell phones, and the internet. Right around the corner is 3D printing. Before diving down into the evolution of 3D printing, lets analyze the spread of computer consumption. The chart below depicts the rate of adoption of technologies as a percentage of households. 

We see that computers were at 20% in the early 1990s and reached over 60% in just a few years. This is a huge jump, but particularly, lets look at the year 1977. This was the year in which Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak presented their Apple II to the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977. We note that the initial spike in early adopters for computers took place a fifteen years before even 20% of households had a computer in their home. While this gap may seem rather large, we know with future technologies, this gap will shrink.

Next, lets analyze where the 3D printing industry is at in terms of early adopters. First, we note the surge in interest in the New York Maker Faire, a 3D printing faire and networking event. 

• 2010 - Three business attend
• 2011 - Five business attend
• 2012 - Over twenty companies attend the faire

We note that there is a highly analogous correlation between the state of computers in 1977 and that of 3D printers now in terms of consumer interest. However, 3D printers are light years beyond that of 1977 computers. Therefore, we can conclude that there will be MUCH less time than fifteen years before 20% of households own a 3D printer. I would even speculate this duration to be half that of computers, in the neighborhood of five to eight years, before 20% of U.S. households own a 3D printer.

In conclusion, 3D printers will become much more prominent and well known. There are already large companies with expensive printers that are selling cloud 3D printing services. Read my next blog post to find out my prediction of where the 3D printing industry will be in the next five years.

Sales School Mentality

Through the rigorous training program that IBM graciously invests in the 2013 Summit Architect class, we are fortunate to receive IBM's famous Global Sales School training. Being from a technical background, I recall being fairly nervous before entering this prestigious program. However, I knew that the time that I invested would pay off in the future.

Global Sales School

Unfortunately, my overly analytic brain led me astray in the beginning of practice calls. However, I managed to quickly jump back on track and apply the experience that I gained from consulting interviews to sales calls. This problem solving mindset, combined with a passionate desire to help our clients, even if they are role playing clients, creates value and partnerships. It is the essence of being essential. Now that I can leverage my technical background to improve future sales calls, I can direct attention to some important lessons learned and critical mindsets to put in one's frontal lobe.

First, place yourself in the mind of a CEO of a 15 person company. I am CEO of Erik Inc. This simple thought increases one's personal responsibility and sense of ownership. It can definitely help independent individuals perform better with larger groups of people.

Second, never forget about your competition.

• What is your competition doing? 
• Are you doing anything different? 
• When a client has your proposal on their desk along with a competitors, what will make yours stand out?

While it seems obvious to know the competition's strategies, these questions are imperative to ask. If you do not stand out from the crowd, you will be trampled in a stampede.

Third, place yourself under the skin of a client. Again, this simple mentality can help astronomically. For instance, all I have to envision is sitting at my desk and receiving a request for proposal from a potential seller. The last thing I want is to read a 40 page document straight. Even a short executive summary might be too laborious. I want a document with diagrams, that is easy to read, has bullets, structure, and boldface for important phrases. I do not want my eyes to bleed by reading a proposal. As a technician, I am extremely adept at focusing on the details and making sure every last minute aspect of a product is perfect. However, sometime I lose site of the bigger picture. When working with clients, the bigger picture can never be lost.

While these ideas seem simple and intuitive, it is an entirely different story to live your life, both work and play, by these mantras. These three mentalities, among many others learned, are key to success to sales and life.

Cloud: Hiding the Sausage Factory

The infamous sausage factory analogy describes an unpleasant process, which is hidden from the public's view, that yields a widely consumable product, such as a hamburger. The cloud enables consumers to buy what they want without forcing them to build their own sausage factory, per say. However, the depth of the cloud extends much further past this superficial metaphor. 

The divisions that compose the cloud can be classified as infrastructure, platform, software, or business processes as a service. This concept is powerful because it empowers the consumer to pick and choose which aspects of an IT system that they want control over and which processes they would rather outsource. Just as consumers do not wish to know the details of how a sausage factory operates and only want the final product, cloud consumes may not wish to know how network and storage hardware function, they just want to choose which operating system to use on top of that hardware. In another case, a consumer might not care which hardware or OS is used, they just want a to build a software application with readily available resources that are offered through the cloud. A third consumer may not care which hardware, OS, or software is used, they just want to leverage a business process, such as SmarterCities, to accomplish a business initiative. The possibilities are endless. 

Source: http://kunalashar.com/blog/the-next-generation-enterprise-business-as-a-service-in-the-cloud/

The chart above (Copyrights go to Kunal Ashar) depicts this cloud idea extremely succinctly. On the left, we see that business process lives on software, which lives on a platform, which lives on infrastructure. However, the real value comes almost exclusively from business processes. This is critical for understanding why cloud can help business ignore traditional IT and jump straight to the top of the pyramid for their business processes.

In conclusion, the end consumer of cloud technology is the ultimate decider of choosing what they want to manage and what they want that "simply works". Consumers do not care to know the elaborate details of the internal operations of a sausage factory. The main dilemma is deciding which component of an IT system (infrastructure, platform, software, business processes) is the sausage factory to the client's business.