|
> One of the primary problems with this culture, and the general culture of quantified self/everything, is that the data doesn’t inform or change actual actions. It depends on how you use the collected data. I think it is psychologically similar to investing in stock market or cryptocurrencies: Some people keep refreshing the screen every minute and get crazy about microscopic increases or decreases of the stuff they own, read all the clickbait with related keywords, and after a few weeks they burn out. Other people invest some money, then forget about the whole thing for a few months, then spend one afternoon looking at the numbers and making small adjustments, then again forget about the whole thing for a few months. Just because you collect a lot of data about yourself (as the quantified-self people like to do), doesn't mean you need to review it every day. You could simply spend the minimum effort to collect the data, and then summarize it and draw conclusions once a year. I know people who collect various body statistics every day, and they just upload the logs to their computer, and later write a script that generates graphs over longer periods of time. And their conclusions are like: "hey, I made this lifestyle change a few months ago, and here my health data have improved significantly, so it was the right move"; where the health data is something like a weekly average of blood pressure. Collecting million trivial details does not necessarily prevent you from seeing the big picture. Though I guess for some personality types, the temptation to obsess over the details is irresistible. It is not enough that the big picture is okay, they need to maximize the pressure at every single detail... until the thing somehow explodes. Congratulate yourself on successfully shortening the bathroom breaks, and then get surprised when in a few months half of your workforce quits. |