<\/p>\n
Self-quantifiers often get stereotyped as obsessive self-optimizers (and many of them are), but my reasons for producing and collecting personal data were less about life-maxxing and more about life meaning\u2014at least at first. As most people who know me will attest, I do not have now, nor have I ever possessed, a \u201cproductivity mindset.\u201d I\u2019m also not all that interested in life hacks, shortcuts, or new ways to compare myself with other people. Instead, what I wanted out of metrics\u2014what I hoped I could divine from a never-ending stream of numbers about my health, work, and social life\u2014was something more elusive: self-knowledge. This was my first mistake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The idea that the more we know, the better is so profoundly embedded in our culture that it feels weird to even point it out. Since at least as far back as the Enlightenment, the primary way we\u2019ve all agreed to go about knowing more has been through measurement and quantification. After all, more knowledge\u2014more data<\/em>\u2014leads to better decisions, which leads to happier, more fulfilled people. Or so we\u2019re told, and with increasing frequency in the era of AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n When two Wired<\/em> magazine editors, Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, coined the term \u201cquantified self\u201d in 2007 and helped launch the movement we are all now helplessly a part of, they were essentially selling this very idea. \u201cUnless something can be measured, it cannot be improved,\u201d wrote Kelly in an early blog post, doing his best impression of Lord Kelvin. \u201cSo we are on a quest to collect as many personal tools that will assist us in quantifiable measurement of ourselves.\u201d Almost 20 years later, that quest is easier than ever thanks to a flood of devices, apps, and websites all designed to help us build our self-\u00adknowledge through numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n My first tool was a small, plastic clip-on Fitbit I started using in 2011. It did one thing: count the number of steps I took in a day. As a lifelong video game player, I was already well acquainted with the motivational power of simple scoring systems, and I hoped my new gadget would offer the gentle numerical nudge I thought I needed to step away from my Twitter feed and, if not touch grass, at least walk next to some. Walking also seemed to be one of the few times I had what could charitably be called intelligent ideas, which seemed like another promising by-product of doing more of it.<\/p>\n Alas, that was short-lived. I can\u2019t tell you precisely when \u201cgetting out into nature more\u201d or \u201cthinking smarter thoughts\u201d stopped mattering to me as goals, but I suspect it took no more than a few weeks. What I can say with certainty is that my initial goal of 6,000 daily steps quickly turned into 10,000, which then jumped to 15,000 and eventually settled at 20,000 for years. Stories about becoming a \u201csteps guy\u201d are clich\u00e9d at this point, and they\u2019ve earned that status for a reason. \u00a0<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for me to trade in pedometers for heart-rate monitors (I also started running), smartwatches, sleep-tracking rings, and an embarrassing number of macronutrient-\u00adtabulating apps. Outside the health and fitness realm, my early career as a journalist also happened to coincide with the rise of social media and web analytics tools like Chartbeat, which promised to further quantify \u00addifficult-to-measure aspects of my life, like \u201cjob success\u201d and \u201cimpact,\u201d by tracking things like page views, followers, retweets, likes, and all sorts of other attentional metrics that now carry great weight.<\/p>\n Metrics inevitably redefine your core sense of what\u2019s important, whether you\u2019re aware of the trap or not.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Ultimately, during the 10-plus years I diligently tracked my heart rate, steps, active calories, sleep, story engagement time, stress levels, and other metrics, I gained virtually nothing in terms of greater self-knowledge. (I suppose I did learn that I liked to make numbers go up and down, but who doesn\u2019t?) The swirl of data that followed me everywhere did not lend additional meaning or insight to the way I relate to myself, my work, or the important people in my life. In fact, the more I used numerical proxies, the worse I felt about pretty much everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n What I did learn were two important lessons about what happens when you try to quantify the minutiae of your life. First and foremost, whatever the amount of data you\u2019re currently collecting about yourself, it will never feel sufficient. There\u2019s always a new metric around the corner, a better way for a tracker to remix its readings and more accurately measure what\u2019s \u201cimportant\u201d: heart rate variability, daily stress, exercise \u201creadiness,\u201d cardiovascular or \u201cfitness\u201d ages. Measurement begets more measurement. You can count on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #inevitable #weakness #metrics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Self-quantifiers often get stereotyped as obsessive self-optimizers (and many of them are), but my reasons…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2720,9315,1228],"class_list":["post-14342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-inevitable","tag-metrics","tag-weakness"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sisyphus_MIT-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n