24May11 | 1 year of Hyperspaces

In early 2023, during the first days of ChatGPT, I was searching for existing tools that enable detailed tracking of several aspects of my life. I came up with this list: Quantified-Self

This list has almost every app in the market for self-tracking. I was using some of them to track many things. But what I –thought I– needed back then was just an interface to track my progress. So I thought of building a dashboard that displays insights from this gathered data from all the different apps I use. Then I stumbled upon many people who are doing the same thing for themselves. So I thought the use case for this dashboard was very solid, at least for me.

So in order to do this dashboard I wrote some scripts to collect my data from apps I use into one database. My only rule for using an app to track was: I’ll only use it if it enables me to export my data, because otherwise I couldn’t get the data into my dashboard.

I want to do a real-time dashboard that allows users to track data from various sources, such as fitness trackers, location and screentime services, and presents it in an easy-to-understand format to provide valuable insights about their lives.

Eventually this turned out to be a trash proposition. Here’s why:

A dashboard is too technical, no user would want to look at numbers all the time, me included. Plus, while working on this dashboard, AI APIs became so powerful that I thought I wouldn’t even need a live dashboard. I thought an app with a simple search interface would probably benefit more from this type of database than a dashboard. There exist several interfaces to show us our own data that are far better than a dashboard.

So I thought of turning this tracking database into an app.

Core two principles of the product:

1. It has to be easy to use for non-techies
2. Tracking has to be as automated as possible

This process of designing, developing, and publishing a mobile app was fairly new to me. But fortunately stories I found online for some of my favorite products proved it’s quite possible:

The Making of April Zero

This is the first chapter of how April Zero was designed.

blog.gyrosco.pe

My Vision: The Knowledge Lifecycle

A new, contextualized knowledge internet.

medium.com

In the meantime, I was thinking of why do I need to do this in the first place. Why do I track? Why would I like to keep my data in one place anyway? And why search it?

I realized that this was probably due to a higher-level problem I was struggling with: I don’t have anything to preserve my memories! If I can preserve my memories, which include my data, then I’d be able to track my progress and not forget anything that happened in my life in general, not just my performance.

And that was, for me, a lifelong problem. I was always on the lookout for ways to retain as much context from my life as technologically possible. Because I just couldn’t do this manually. For years I kept using apps, like Google Keep, to preserve as much as possible: Web Bookmarks, Journals & Photos, Workout Records, Handwritten Notes, Project Docs, etc. Then I turned to Airtable because of its database structure, but also, none of these was enough because they still lack the context for the basis of my life experiences. At best, these tools were like aggregators where their value only came from the effort I put into them. If I spend time doing the manual stuff of copying and pasting, then they’re valuable, if I stopped, even for one day, then they’re not. This felt completely backwards. I needed a way to have some datapoints about my days even on days that I don’t do any documentation of anything! Sure it was possible but why wasn’t this a thing?

So spending some time on anything, and then totally forgetting that it even happened is just not an acceptable thing! And the forgetting part is almost always imminent due to biological constraints. So the main problem we are trying to solve is: We forget!

Studies actually show that 90% of memories are forgotten after 1 week:

Forgetting curve

The forgetting curve hypothesizes the decline of memory retention in time. This curve shows how information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it. A related concept is the strength of memory that refers to the durability that memory traces in the brain. The stronger the memory, the longer period of time that a person is able to recall it. A typical graph of the forgetting curve purports to show that humans tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge in a matter of days or weeks unless they consciously review the learned material.

en.wikipedia.org

Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve

We present a successful replication of Ebbinghaus’ classic forgetting curve from 1880 based on the method of savings. One subject spent 70 hours learning lists and relearning them after 20 min, 1 hour, 9 hours, 1 day, 2 days, or 31 days. The results are similar to Ebbinghaus' original data. We analyze the effects of serial position on forgetting and investigate what mathematical equations present a good fit to the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve and its replications. We conclude that the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve has indeed been replicated and that it is not completely smooth but most probably shows a jump upwards starting at the 24 hour data point.

journals.plos.org

It’s not new that we’d want something that minimizes that “forgetting” effect, at least of memories we want to preserve! That feeling that we want everything under control is very common among those who want to improve, who strive to be better, and who seek balance in everything they do. Practices like writing and tracking help declutter your biological brain so that it doesn't have to do the heavy lifting.

So a newer paradigm I was investigating to solve this problem is The Timeline, where a user’s timeline is at the center of all their life experiences, and that on top which all other items stick, like a magnet.

This concept had its fair share of discussion during previous posts:

24Mar28 | Time as a computing platform

I thought it’s about time to sit down and write what does it mean to work on a digital time travel tool, along with some definitions and concepts, since there isn’t probably a single idea that consumes as much of my head as time travel. But I believe time is in itself an interesting enough concept that many people like me would have no problem dedicating their life’s work trying to understand it.

zeyads.com

24Apr11 | Events as fundamental units of the timeline

This post briefly answers a question posed in:

zeyads.com

The Timeline concept is the basis on top of which hyperspaces.live was built.

Hyperspaces

A journal that keeps track of everything.

hyperspaces.live

Hyperspaces enables:

• Rich Journaling
• Automated Tracking
• Advanced Search

For all life events.

This started as a genuine intellectual curiosity. Then during the past year, and through bootstrapping, we:

• Wrote an iOS app
• Wrote a Web app
• Grew our team to 6 members
• Grew the waitlist to 620+ members
• Launched a community (just last week)

We’re still in the early days.

What we’re sure of: We want to deploy this vision at any cost.

What we are unsure of: Where should this stand in the business world? Is it Indie Hacking? Will we need to fundraise? We’re still scoping these questions. Ultimately we’ll have lots of answers in a few months time. But for now we’re super stoked for launch, and we can’t wait to let you see what Hyperspaces has in store.

Thanks for reading!