Quantifying Myself With Fitbit

There are lot of chances to win prizes in Las Vegas, Nevada at the 2012 Annual HIMSS Conference. One of these will require me to track my walking .Practice Fusion, the free (ad supported) web based EHR, and Fitbit are sposnoring a contest between myself and Don Fluckinger. We will be competing for the most number of steps taken on Tuesday, February 21 for a chance to win a charitable donation of $500 made by Practice Fusion in our name through Givewell.org. We are also taking side bets on who reaches 30,000 steps first on Tuesday. That is a LOT of walking, but as past HIMSS conferences have shown, there is a bit of walking ahead of us.

With the Fitbit Ultra your information is wirelessly uploaded  to the web so you can gain deeper insight into your daily or monthly fitness and sleep levels with free online graphs and charts. Fitbit offers free iPhone and Android apps so you can track your progress and log food, work-outs and more on the go. It also has a pressure altimeter, so it can determine when you're climbing stairs or hills. This is my first foray into self-tracking, and I am very interested in seeing if or how my behavior changes. Fred Trotter in "The Rise of the Programmable Self" postulated the following formula: Quantifying your changes + motivational hacks = programmable self. As I'm wandering around Las Vegas I'll be pondering how I can use these tools in interesting ways to make positive changes.

You have the chance to win a Fitbit yourself at HIMSS with a value of $99.00. Here are the contest rules: On Tuesday February 21, tweet your response to “Who will win the Fitbit challenge? Don or Brian?” using hashtags #fitbit #HIMSS12 and @PracticeFusion. One participant will be randomly selected to win on Tuesday. No matter who wins, everyone is a winner with $500 going to Givewell.org and a raising of the awareness of self monitoring. Below is a promotional video that describes the Fitbit and may prompt you to send a tweet :-)