quantified mind and lady hormones

[Bethany M. Soule]

Hey y'all, not strictly a question on the topic of akrasia, but have
any of you ever set up custom experiments on Quantified Mind?

I've had the vague sense for a while that my focus/productivity takes
a dive preceding my menstrual cycle and I want to set up an experiment
to test how/if cognitive function is affected by my lady hormones (if
it is at all), but I thought I'd start by throwing this out there to
see if anyone's experimented with this specifically before, or just
has any interesting experience with Quantified Mind?

In particular I'm trying to decide if there're any other variables I
should track in addition to the simple binary or "menstruating or
not", as the hormonal changes actually precede the result -- when
analyzing the data the more relevant info might be "time until next
cycle" or something.

Bethany

--
http://bethaknee.com
http://beeminder.com -- Reminders with a sting

[Oliver Mayor]

Nice timing, Bethany! I was just about to get back into measuring
stuff with Quantified Mind.

I was trying out a custom experiment for attention earlier this year,
to see if my daily Brain Workshop dual n-back practice was affecting
any other tasks. (I know the research; just wanted to see.)
Unfortunately the battery I set up for myself was too much of a time
commitment (around 20 minutes on top of the n-back practice.)

I used a battery that targeted the following:
- Reaction time
- executive function
- motor function
- visual processing
- working memory

I'm putting myself through a bit of a productivity-improvement/ADHD
intervention bootcamp for the next few weeks. So I might have more to
say in a while.

I'll probably just focus on these, to keep the test short:
- reaction time
- executive function
- working memory

About your experiment: how often do you think you'll take the tests?
If it's every day, then the place in the cycle should come out when
you plot the time series. If it's not every day, it might be hard to
distinguish. If you're set on taking the cycle into account, wouldn't
"days since since last" be better than "days until", since the last
occurance was already known? (Please excuse if there's something
obvious I'm missing about this topic, being male and all... :/ )

In any case: interesting experiment idea, Bethany!

Oli

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[Bethany M. Soule]

Ok, good to know that even 20 minutes felt like a big time commitment!
Now to read up on what the different tests *are* in order to decide
what would be interesting.

Ideally I'll collect multiple months worth of data. I can beemind it
to make sure I test regularly. MOAR DATA is better :-)

As for days since vs days until -- totally correct that ex-ante I
can't collect "days until". I was just speculating that in terms of
data analysis after the fact I will probably want to look at both.
Because cycle length is very noisy.

B!