Use a fitness tracker to track the amount of physical activity you do everyday. To avoid uncomfortable skin rashes, we recommend taking off the the tracker while you're not moving: for example, when sitting for long periods of time or when sleeping. It's important to choose a tracker that allows to export 'per minute' data. Although not through a very straightforward way, Fitbit does allow to do this and is probably the best tracker to use nowadays despite its slight inaccuracies. One way to alleviate these innacuracies is to wear the tracker on the ankle instead of the wrist.
For people making extensive use of computers, we recommend using software programs to track how much you use your computer. The best option we've found so far is to use both ManicTime and WhatPulse at the same time. ManicTime is entirely free and WhatPulse is really cheap.
Next, you'll need to log the activities you do throughout the day. For that, use Taplog. Create a folder for each type of activity you think might be related to your pain problems. For most people, it should be sufficient to track physical activities. In that scenario, create a folder called 'sport', and for each type of sport you do, create a button to press when you start the activity and a button to press when you stop doing that activity. For example, if you go swimming, create a button 'swimming str' and a button 'swimming end'. It's very important that each activity you do follows the template 'activity str' / 'activity end' (the two buttons must have the same name inside it and must just differ by how they end: ' str' for the first button and ' end' for the second one. If you don't want to create a separate button for each sport you do, you can also just create two buttons 'sport str' and 'sport end' (see part 6).
Two options here:
1-Create an Excel or Open Office spreadsheet
that you will fill in every evening. This spreadsheet should look
like this:
2-Use taplog: create a folder called Pain and
create buttons inside it for each painful body region. Add the
possibility to add a quantity to these buttons. Every evening, press
the appropriate buttons and log your pain intensity in that area
through the quantity menu.
Because of its subjective nature, the quantification of pain is complex. Here's an idea of how to do it:
Log every evening an average pain intensity for each body region over the 6 worst hours of the day, using the following scale:
<2 : almost imperceivable most of the time
2 to 2.9 : not too bad, but can still "feel" it
3 to 3.4 : uncomfortable (3.4 is seriously uncomfortable)
3.5 to 3.9 : very uncomfortable almost painfull
4.0 to 5.0 : painfull
greater than 5.0 : very painfull
Create an Excel or Open Office spreadsheet (similar to the pain one in the previous section), and create columns for anything you thing might be relevant. You can also have a 'free text input' column in which you can simply write about your day.
If you've created a 'sport str' and a 'sport end' buttons in
taplog (see section 3), then you can also create a spreadsheet where you
can add details about the activity you did. It should look like this:
For logging GPS positions with your smartphone (for instance during physical activities), you can use an app called GPS Logger. Preferably, change the settings so that the gps position is logged only every 45 seconds (to avoid draining the battery).
The data recorded through ManicTime, WhatPulse and taplog needs to be exported to your computer. The data from WhatPulse needs to be exported every 7 days (the 'per day' is what's needed). For ManicTime, you should export both 'app' and 'time'. Preferably, you should backup your data in case your computer crashes, for example with Google Drive. If you want to share your data with us, you can either upload data to MonsterMizer (your data won't be made open-source in that case), upload it to github (in that case it will be made open-source), or you can contact me at: [email protected]