I have been religiously wearing my UP24 band over the past two months, after taking a hiatus from the technology while pregnant. I originally strapped it on to have record of my sleep. With a newborn, of course sleep looks much different now; there's something strangely gratifying when you can not only know that's the case, but also see it. Over time, I've seen the number of night-wakings generally go down (though last night was an exception, which I feel as I groggily type this post) and sleep consolidate into bigger chunks as my little chunk sleeps for increasingly longer segments. I can start to see a pattern emerge (bed at 11pm, wake for feeding at 2-3am and again at 5-6am, get up around 8am). Visual evidence of slow but measurable progress!

What caught me by surprise when I started wearing the band again is the motivation it inspires when it comes to my activity level. The recommended goal is 10,000 steps per day. When I don't hit it, I feel a bit of shame. When I do hit it, I feel a gratifying sense of accomplishment. That sense of accomplishment goes up as the amount by which I surpass the goal increases. This motivates me to get out and move on a daily basis to ensure I'll hit my goal.

So all of this is a long prelude to the summary from UP that hit my inbox this morning. I tend to post a lot of examples of data viz with which I take issue, so thought I'd mix it up and focus this post on one that I found to be effective. Of course there are things that I would have designed differently, but this summary gets the job done. It's keeping me motivated. Let me step you quickly through what it shows.

It starts with an overall summary of week-over-week changes:

Relative to the prior week, my average sleep per night went down a hair and my movement increased a little. I like the big, clearly articulated takeaway: you held steady.

This is followed by detail on my sleep this past week:

My average nearly hit the nightly sleep goal of 8 hours. I even beat the goal three times (versus prior weeks where I haven't hit it at all!). In fact, this summary looks perhaps deceivingly good, though the number of nights of uninterrupted sleep, at 0, starts to point to the newborn effect. It will be life-changing when that number moves, even by one!

The sleep summary is followed by a movement summary:

I hit my 10,000 step goal each day (my informal goal for myself is to hit it every day in August). You can see the days where a jog or long walk really put me over the top. My most idle time of 8-9am comes as no surprise, as that's when the little one eats breakfast, sequestering me to an armchair for the better part of an hour. The rest of his day remains less predictable.

It's a straightforward and simultaneously (for me, at least) motivating summary.

For more on UP from a numbers-person's perspective (including downloading the data it captures to analyze on your own), check out Nathan Yau's recent review here. For more on the cool insights the team at Jawbone is starting to make based on the crazy amount of data they are amassing, check out their blog (for example, this post). They've shared it with others who have started to analyze and share as well (here's a recent WSJ example, though I still lament the lack of color-key on the heatmaps - ok, turns out it is impossible for me to write a blog post without critique!).

Someday, I'll download all of my data and perhaps do something fun with it. For now, I'll continue to check out the daily and weekly summaries to track my progress and for that feeling of accomplishment when I hit my goals.