Since the early 2000s when social media became an intricate part of our lives, Big Data has been a hot topic. Entire industries have been built around and built upon the data generated from our social media and other day-to-day interactions.
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Well, what exactly is Data?
The American Heritage dictionary defines data as the “facts that can be analyzed or used in an effort to gain knowledge or make decisions; information.” Another definition is “statistics or other information represented in a form suitable for processing by computer.”
WordPress consultant, WP Dev Shed, explains in a recent article that “an average person creates 1.7 MB of data every second.” That’s more information than can be stored on a 1990s era 3.5" floppy disk.
Every day, we trade our data for free and cheap services, whether it’s our free personal email and social media accounts or the discount cards we use at the local grocery store and pharmacy.
The reduction in storage costs coupled with the flexibility of the cloud allows Big Tech and even smaller business to use our data to target us with ever more specific ads and content, leading to greater profits and better business outcomes. With the recent buzz around and increased interest in Artificial Intelligence, this trend has only accelerated.
Many are rightfully concerned about the privacy and cybersecurity implications. Briefly placing those concerns aside, as individuals and consumers, we can also use the data we generate or have access to benefit us in our everyday lives.
How? By leveraging three everyday sources of data:
Everyday Data Sources
Source 1: Financial Data
Everyone pays attention to money, whether it is the balance of our credit cards, the amount in our bank accounts, or the prices of our favorite items at the store.
NerdWallet tells us that “a budget is a spending plan based on income and expenses. … an estimate of how much money you’ll make and spend over a certain period of time.” We can use our prior spending data gathered from our banks and credit card companies along with our monthly income coupled with our upcoming expenses to create a budget and forecast our cash flow.
If this seems a little overwhelming, you're not on your own, many websites provide free tutorials on how to create a budget. Here are a few:
You have many choices of how you will track various transactions, whether it is in a handwritten document or a dedicated app like the now defunct Mint. Many people choose to track their expenses using spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel.
Several sites provide free tutorials to help you create a budget using Excel, including this one from Microsoft: How to make a budget in Excel
But you don’t have to stop with your budget, you can also track other financial data such as closing stock prices and the cost of common household goods. Once you have your spreadsheets created, you can further enhance them by using data analysis and visualization tools to create tables and charts to summarize your data.
Source 2: Health and Fitness Data
Another way we can use our own data is by monitoring our health statistics.
In this 2015 TEDx Talk, Talithia Williams explains why it is important for us to track our health data.
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Now, nearly a decade later, it is even easier. Many of us have wearable devices that automatically track information such as our heart rate, daily activity levels, blood glucose, calorie intake, and amount of sleep. Other apps like Apple Health, aggregate this data into a centralized location for easy consumption.
Just four years after the video was recorded, a 2019 TechReport article stated that there were 722 million devices, up from 325 million in 2016. In June 2023, the U.S. National Institutes of health reported that 1 of 3 US adults used a wearable device. So, there is plenty of health data available to consume and analyze.
However, it’s not necessary to use a wearable to track your health. US News and World Report lists tracking your doctor and hospital visits, medications, diagnoses, and tests on a spreadsheet as one way to track your health information.
As with budgeting, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you can use one of the many templates available to get started. Here are a couple:
We can also compare the information we’ve recorded with other data to which we have access, such as calendar events and weather forecasts, to identify triggers and patterns, learning our personal baselines as well as noticing and working with trusted health care professional to act on trends before they become critical.
With whichever data collection method or combination of methods we use, health information is often very sensitive, so it’s important to think about privacy and how we share and store our health and fitness data.
Source 3: Data Related to Goals
Finally, we can collect information on our daily habits and activities to measure progress on our goals, such as job searches, professional development, and academic goals. Many people take time at the beginning of each year to reevaluate their goals and to create new habits.
SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Because our goals are measurable and time bound, we can collect data to track our progress. We can use apps specifically designed for this purpose or we can use a spreadsheet to create a personal tracker.
Here are just two sites where you can find free templates:
Features in Excel such as checkboxes make it even easier to track. We also can use automation and integrations to automatically bring in information from other sources. As examples, to connect this area with the previous ones we've already discussed, we can automatically bring in information from our bank cards to track financial goals or steps walked from wearables to track our fitness goals.
We can help!
This is just the beginning, the proverbial “tip of the iceberg.” By increasing our knowledge of tools like Microsoft Excel, we place ourselves in a position to use the information we generate to benefit ourselves and not just Big Tech. There are so many areas where we can use our own data to improve our lives.
Follow our blog and Flipboard magazines for sources of free training on topics such as Excel and Data Analysis. Once you've taken advantage of free training, you might want to invest in live interactive training such as our Everyday Excel series to fill-in any gaps and to ask questions. Visit our Eventbrite page to find out more about our upcoming courses and free webinars.
We also create customized learning plans for individual learners to help wade through all the different sources of training. If you need onsite or customized training, we also will be happy to assist. Complete our contact us form to request a quote or set up your free 30-minute consultation.
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