It turns out that he was simply focusing more on the bad days, and ignoring the good days. The mood app helped him see and value the brighter side of life.

　　原来里科是因为太在意坏心情了，好心情都被忽略了。应用程序只是帮他发现并珍惜生活中美好的一面。

　　Self-quantification also helped increased Rico’s productivity as a writer. He believed he was hard working enough on his new book, but then he started tracking how often he wrote, and realized he was only thinking about writing. Further self-quantification of those periods when he did do writing allowed him to recognize what time of the day he was the most productive, which in turn allowed him to make adjustments that improved his productivity.

　　自我量化还帮他提高写作效率。原来里科认为写新书已经够努力了，直到他开始记录写作频率，才发现自己只是在构思写作而不是付诸笔端。后来他将自己确实用于写作的时段记录在案，找到自己一天中什么时间效率最高，这使他可以依效率来做调整。

　　His activity timer helped his life become more fulfilling. Rico says it revealed that no matter how busy he thought he was – work, writing, and friends, and the activities of taking care his family — he still had large unproductive pockets of time. Realizing that better management of this time meant he could take on a new hobby, he started applying to PhD programs.

　　行为计时器令里科的生活更有成就感。无论他觉得自己有多忙——忙工作、写作、忙交际、忙家庭，计时器都告诉他还有大把可以利用的零碎时间。里科发觉对时间的有效管理可以使自己多发展一项爱好，于是就申请了博士课程。

　　The main criticism of self-quantifiers is that it’s a decadent indulgence of the self, Rico says.

　　里科说对自我量化者批评的焦点主要集中在担心这是一种自我沉迷。

　　Perhaps in a world of social networks which pay so much attention to one’s self, the last thing we need is to also record data about ourselves.

　　或许在社交网络世界中，我们太过于关注自我了，而我们最不想做的也是记录下关于我们自身的数据了。

　　But self-quantifying is anything but indulgent, Rico points out. Rather, “it is about deflating the self, breaching the fantasy assumptions about ourselves by introducing disruptive cold hard facts, facts that often demonstrate we’re actually not what we thought.”

　　里科指出，自我量化决不是放纵自己。“相反是要通过呈现一些严厉的事实来挫一挫自己的锐气，打消自我幻象，而这些事实往往说明这我们并非自己所想的那样。”