A few years ago I started tracking key aspects of my family’s day-to-day well-being. You can browse the full list of variables I am tracking here. I use this data to conduct casual exploration and N-of-1 experimentation to address issues and opportunities affecting my family’s growth, health and happiness.
The variables I collect represent the individual members of my family. For example, how many workouts did I do to the past month, or what is the average sleep duration for my daughter during Winter months. When reporting through dashboards and indicators, the variables are aggregated in time and space but the unit of reporting remains the individual.
Recently I began experimenting with household-level reporting — the family as a single unit of reporting. For example, how many times did family attend Sunday Mass in the current year, or how many sick days did we experience last winter.
Aggregating by family this way made me realize a few things. First, there is a whole world of household well-being indicators waiting to be explored. Here I am not only referring to household well-being as an aggregation of the individual level. Rather, well-being indicators that only make sense at the household level. Second, reporting on well-being this way raises interesting new questions regarding the role of family in helping improve the well-being of its members.
