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.

Seems like the world is getting ready to go off on holiday right now. Except for the few poor fools who work in IT jobs for advertising agencies, who are desperately trying to get work done for the new year (like me), most other people are already in holiday mode. I’m always interested to hear what people are doing as it gives an insight into the human condition.

Plans either fall into one of a few broad categories. In your 20′s your likely to have 24/7 drugs and partying planned, up to and including Xmas eve, and recovery Xmas morning, just in time for the family do in the afternoon. Most 30 somethings are a spectrum of this falling strongly into this group at the young end, fading out into more family based stuff at the other. The 40 somethings are definitely in the family category as most have kids, while the 50 somethings are too old to give a shit about travelling and are waiting for people to arrive.

Me, I’m firmly trying to hang in there on the 20 something plan, but age is telling me I should grow up. Maybe so, but I’ve always been stubborn.

Andy.

It’s a white trip on the way to work on tram 2 which heads into Leidseplein, the tourist center of Amsterdam. The snow is a reminder that we’re at the end of another year. Living in Europe means the seasons mark the passage of time in a much more prominent way than when I was living in Bris-vegas. There it’s just the constant passing of warm days and changing sweaty shirts.

The snow on the ground seems to trigger some dormant state of self review, and I can’t help but think of what the year really was with it drawing to a close. Much like this tram as it comes to the end of the line.

Andy.

Tonight I’ll be crossing the great divide of birthdays by going from 41 to 42. It seems significant somehow in a way that I cannot describe. 42 is after all the answer to the life, the universe, and everything. I feel it should have come with some sort of bomb of maturity exploding in my head, however all it really feels is a little older and perhaps a little wiser. Not quite sure, I will have to check again in 24 hours.

I am however going to celebrate in a far away exotic location surrounded by only a few close friends and a beach. It feels very dignified to do something low key, unlike the brazenly hedonistic party that was my 40th. The faraway isolation seems like a good place to mark what is a real turning point.

I wonder what happens next?

Andy

This week I came down pretty hard with man flu, which is regular flu caught by a man that leads to constant and nonstop complaining about how he is likely to die at any moment because he feels so bad. Women seem largely immune to man flu as they (mostly) suffer with dignity and just get on with it. However I’ve become aware of many more flu strains the last few days thanks largely to the scare mongering Australian press with their American style over-hype reportage.

The newspapers from my home are particularly skilled at weaving nasty sounding medical acronyms like H5N1 (avian flu) into doomsday scenario headlines containing words like pandemic. Now drop that on a mainstream population that doesn’t really know how to critically evaluate new sources and challenge the information for validity, and what you end up with is a slightly panicked and scared population. The point gets even more rammed home when I talked this morning to my mother on Skype and hear them talking about cow flu of all things, a purportedly more insidious strain of flu that *really* makes you sick.

Seriously I wonder where this crap will end? Worse for me, I really don’t know who to blame; is it the media journalists for writing all this biased sensationalist rubbish in the first place, or is it the irresponsible news consumers for not making even a modicum of effort to critically review what they are reading and taking at face value? All this wouldn’t be so bad except that where there is general population fear, there is somebody selling a cure and making a profit. Michael Moore in his documentary Fahrenheit 911 deftly illustrated the point when he showed how the sale of ridiculous personal safety equipment skyrocketed with each and every media campaign that declared the state of the nations terror level. In the case of Australia there of course is the marketing of flu vaccines to help save people from the evils of bird/swine/cow flu. Which if you look into with even a small amount of research will show a large body of evidence that suggests these vaccines simply don’t work because of the mutation that each flu virus undergoes when passed from host to host, until you get to a point where the virus is a different strain from what you have been inoculated against. However if you follow the trail of money eventually it will end up somewhere in a big pile, and someone or some corporation more than likely is sitting on top of it.

So at this point you could suggest a conspiracy of some sort that this is all manufactured at some top level, but I think that would be by and large, over the top. Human nature being what it is, there is simply no way to effectively organise even a moderately large group of people to serve one general purpose unless you are an outright communist country with a singular leader. No, I think it’s more likely that there are just clever individuals who know how to exploit a particular situation for their own personal or corporate gain by using (and manipulating) the social conditions that already exist.

For example, Australian journalists will always write sensationalist news because most news readers are so used to being shocked that if they aren’t they tend to lose interest quickly in such reportage. This particular style of reportage then creates a situation of fear in the readers, which creates a desire for protection from the scenario that is threatening them. Somebody identifies this desire for protection and translates it into a product that can be commercially produced and sold. This product is then made available and of course the masses follow suit and purchase the product, which in terms buys them peace of mind. There is a low level of social engineering involved, but in this example I would hardly call it organised. There are examples that can be made that show how organisations make very effective use of social marketing as one facet of social engineering to control a population, but that’s for another day. The point here is that the mainstream create this situation for themselves by simply going with the flow, rather than asking some questions that would prove all the fear wrong.

So after 5 days my man flu is tailing out, I’ve been nursing myself with Vick’s Vaporub, dis-solvable paracetamol and vitamin C, and old fashioned bed rest. I’ve complained and whinged, but I knew that I’d recover and that it wasn’t life threatening and didn’t require any cocktail of expensive vaccines to protect myself from. If I’d have listened to the Australian news I probably would have been in fear for my life, but fortunately I don’t do that. I really don’t know why anyone does? Mainstream news is swill and should be treated as such.

Perhaps all this anger is in part because I’ve sick for the last 5 days and I just want to be done with it; the recovery always taking longer than I want. But also because of the stupidity of a system that uses an ordinary sickness to create fear and profit in people that simply let it happen. Each of us can influence this directly by very simply not buying into the fear, and not supporting the fear mongers.

Now wouldn’t that be a world worth living in!

Andy.

One of the greatest moments in the history of 80′s cinema was the crane kick finale scene of The Karate Kid. It’s quite simply the most amazingly foolhardy move ever attempted in a desperate gambit against all the odds. The thing is, if this had’ve been a real life moment, Daniel Caruso (played by Ralph Machio) would have ended up getting beaten senseless then kicked into next Tuesday.

I personally have a kinship with Daniel in this movie because when I was his age, I was going to full contact karate 3 days a week, and I was about his size as well. One grading I had to fight a bigger, tougher, more experienced fighter and, pumped up on the belief that anything was possible after seeing Daniel dispatch the bad guy, I  BELIEVED I could win. Well the referee said fight, and the next thing I was on the ground with my ears ringing and blurred vision. Some people rushed over and one guy said, “holy shit kid, I bet that hurt, you didn’t even see that kick comin, huh?!

Not really, no.

Modern storytelling mediums of film and TV have refined an art form as old humanity itself and created a powerful force of illusion that captivates the individual. In some sense I think this heightened sense of illusion has created an even greater sense of hope for those of us who watched a story and believed in it. The most blatant example of this that I’ve seen just recently was when I watched Avatar (IMAX 3D) and fell so hard for the Na’vi that I wanted them to win with a ferocity of heart that would have equaled any warrior on the back of an ikran. Of course it was really a foregone conclusion that the good blue guys were going to win, if they hadn’t I’m pretty sure people would have torn out their seats and threw them through the screen in defiant frustration. However even knowing that up front, when they did win everybody was filled with a profound sense of justice that they carried with them long after the end credits rolled up.

Within all of us we have instilled a strong sense of hope given to us from our birthright of storytelling heritage. Hope is as necessary to life as oxygen, without it a person will wither and die. But hope is something that we learn as much as a belief in our heart; the more powerful the illusion, the more powerful the hope it generates.

This is why movies like The Karate Kid (the 1984 original that is) have a magic about them that drives deep into our psyche; we wanted Daniel to win, even though we knew he absolutely shouldn’t. So when the dramatic music rose and he went into the crane stance our hearts rose in hope, and the final kick delivered us righteousness.

The illusion was complete, and we were better people for it.

Andy.