This week, I decided along with Veronica to track the compliments that we received and also gave. I tracked not only how many compliments I received and gave, but also the type of compliments they were. This was a hard and interesting assignments for a few reasons.
First it was hard to remember to track the data. I had to be aware of any compliments given or received all day every day for a week. This is something that I don't usually pay much attention to, so it was hard at first, but as the week went on, it got easier as I became more aware of what I was tracking.
The first two days were sad because I didn't receive any compliments :(. Overall this week was probably not the best week to track something that is usually tied to social interaction as I think this was one of my more antisocial weeks, filled mostly alone working on assignments. It is interesting to link social interaction to compliment giving and receiving, but they are tied together in some way.
Veronica and I were skeptical about tracking the compliments we gave because we thought it may affect the amount of compliments we gave. Either too many because we were aware we were tracking this or less because we over thought our tracking of compliments. Overall I don't think the idea of tracking ourselves on this aspect affected the outcome too much.
This exercise was a great way to get the hang of tracking oneself and understand how the process works. When drawing my data, I kept thinking of more ways I could have tracked this data better and thoroughly. Such as also taking into account the time of day the compliments were received or even the way it made me feel.
The compliments associated with personality had a stronger positive effect on me as those are things not material or physical and therefore mean more to me. In turn I realize I tend to give compliments related to that topic more than others.
If I were to continue doing this or other tracking similar, I would be more aware of collecting more than just the actual thing you're tracking, but also possible affects it has; mood, etc.
Overall, this would be interesting to see how it changes long term as I am more social some weeks and less social others and also see how other factors could influence compliment giving.