THE QUANTIFIED SELF is about making personally relevant discoveries using our own self-collected data. We call this practice everyday science, a name that emphasizes its nonprofessional character. Lately we’ve begun organizing small group projects that show how collaboration can make individual projects easier. Sometimes, joining forces with others who share our question can make it possible to create both personal and generalizable health knowledge. Following the scholar Effy Vayena, we use the term “participant-led research” (PLR) to describe this approach.
"So: How do you get started with a self-tracking project? You can picture your project as involving four distinct activities. Although these activities blend into each other, they do each have their own particular flavor, and by outlining them separately we think we can give you a coherent and functional recipe. The activities are: Questioning, Observing, Reasoning, and Consolidating Insight."