Self quantifying; optimal performance or needless notetaking

I was reading an article the other day about self quantifiers, who are a select group of people that record essential data about themselves from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed, and for some extreme individuals, also when they sleep. All the data that is amassed is converted into data points that can then be analysed and used for performance improvement. Over time the historical trends give them measurements that quantifiably show them whether or not they are performing at optimum levels.

This kind of thing isn’t really new, enthusiastic amateur and professional athletes have been doing the same thing for years in an effort to achieve high levels of performance. But this is something else, this is people attempting to perfect their overall life performance using the same approach that businesses use to achieve peak operating efficiency.

Why would you want to? Was my first question when I started reading the article. The answer after some thought became clear; because you want to function at the peak of your human potential. Imagine having your body and brain work at full throttle over extended periods of time, say months to years? Translate that into personal achievement – whatever that defines for you – and you’re starting to see through the window into the personal world’s of the self quantifiers. (Which does sound an awful lot like a sci-fi movie).

The whole thing intrigues me if I’m being really honest. For years I’ve been half-arsed about improving my body and physical potential through exercise. There are times when I’m fanatical about exercise and eating and after about 6 months I get to a point where I start looking like a solid fit guy. And sometime later I fall off the fitness wagon and slowly loose the physique I made. I’m hoping as I grow older and wiser I can temper the peaks and valleys in my motivation and turn the whole cycle into a persistent lifestyle. Physical health is only one aspect of what the self quantifiers are hoping to improve, their approach is to holistically improve the mind-body-spirit trinity as a single unit.

It did seem to me though that there comes a point with self quantification when you start measuring data for the sake of measuring itself. Really, how much data is enough and how much is too much? You don’t need to be statistician to see that you can keep finding more and more data to measure, if you want more data. But what does it get you? You could probably measure 100 personal details (data points) and it gives you 80% of what you need to know to improve your personal performance, but you have to measure 300 data points to give you 5% more once you have achieved 80%. It’s the simple rule that in the beginning gains are easy, but the closer you get to optimal performance the harder it gets to achieve an increase until you get to a point where even just marginal improvements require vast amount of effort, or for the self quantifiers, data points.

Personally I can see the benefit of adopting a self quantifier lifestyle approach, but would I? I think I would benefit from measuring certain aspects of my life and tuning it to improve, but I know I’m not the kind of guy that’s going to get all anal about the numbers, and it’s sure not going to stop me from my infrequent 6 hour drinking sessions with my friends. Once that first beer has gone down it’s hard not to get locked into a serious drinking effort. I think the people who really get into the self quantifier lifestyle are those who already have anally obsessive personalities with a tendency towards being a control freak. Basically the type of person that regular people would want to avoid going out on blind dates with as if they carried bubonic plague.

If I do give it a go I’ll make it interesting by putting everything into a personal performance website and then having automatic calculations being done on everything. Oh, and I could probably hook everything into a phone app as well, so that I can get real time data on my exercise routines and sync that up with…

Maybe better that I don’t start, because it’s a short walk from intense personality to over top anally obsessive personality with a tendency towards being a control freak.

Andy.

The Self quantifying; optimal performance or needless notetaking by Mentalechoes, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.