What are we measuring?

Image by Alicja from Pixabay

One morning I sat down to meditate, and when I opened my meditation app, a pop-up asked me “Did you meditate yesterday?” The first time I saw this prompt I was confused. The app has a feature that tracks which days I meditate and even celebrates when I have a streak. So it knows damn well I didn’t meditate yesterday.

But then I thought, is it worried I’m cheating on it with other apps? Maybe it thought I was having an affair with Headspace.

Finally I figured out that it was giving me an opportunity to “repair” my streak. It was saying, “Wink wink, nudge nudge, let’s just pretend you did meditate yesterday. It’s a shame to break your streak.” As if, the app was more invested in it than I was.

In this moment, I suddenly felt that all our measuring was getting a little out of hand. It’s never been easier to track all manner of things in our life–our vitals, our steps, how much time we spend on our phone, miles driven. But is all this measuring and tracking necessary? Is it actually being used to make better decisions or just creating an obsession with data?

I can appreciate the motivational aspect of measuring. Not long ago, I overheard a group of teenagers gloating about their Duolingo streaks. But there are times when I’ve tracked and collected data, and it had no impact on my behavior or desired outcome. This time of year, there is a lot of daylight, which interferes with my sleep. I could track the hours I’m sleeping, when I go to bed and when I get up, but I don’t think for a moment that information will make me less tired. I can’t make the sun set earlier or rise later.

I guess this would be a good place to disclose (In case you haven’t noticed) that I’m not a data-driven person. That probably colors my views on this topic. I admire the people who crunch numbers and can demonstrate trends and patterns, but I’m not one of them.

I tend to measure success and progress in a more holistic way. I might have a 276 day streak on Duolingo (I don’t.), but could I walk into a book store in Paris and have a conversation with the shop owner? I can’t remember how many days I’ve meditated in a given month, but I do notice when I start to get clumsy and forgetful.

Since measuring is not something that comes naturally to me, I need a good reason to go to the trouble of doing it. Here are the questions I ask if I’m going to track something:

• Will the date give me information that is actionable? I can track the price of our home on Zillow weekly, but we have no intention of selling any time soon, so who cares?

• Is the data going to be accurate? If the information is something I can fudge to fit my fancy, what’s the point?

• Will it motivate me to make better decisions? I weighed myself the other day, and wasn’t thrilled with the number, but I have no intention of giving up my Friday night Chinese food nor am I planning to start counting calories.

“The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it.”

~Confucius