While Our Forebears Depend on Their Senses to Evaluate Their Well-Being, More and More, We Depend on Devices
Nowadays, if you have enough curiosity, you can track your heart rate, step count, exercise intensity, and sleep quality—often all on a single sleek gadget.
Ideally, these devices create a connection between your subjective sensations and what can be measured objectively.
This is generally a truly impressive and wonderful development.
Our personal feelings and evaluations are important, yet they are not always the most dependable. We humans are just not especially proficient at quantifying our experiences and actions with cold accuracy.
Take, for instance, a colleague of mine. He thought he was consuming calories within a strict range, but after diligent tracking, he discovered that he was actually consuming an extra 500 calories daily—thanks to barbecue sauce.
That being said, some individuals excel more than others.
Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter, reportedly had the ability to call out his 100-meter time within a tenth of a second of the stopwatch reading.1
That’s exceptional performance, to be clear, but it still provokes thought:
How Proficient Are You at Evaluating Yourself?
And, how can you enhance your accuracy through the judicious use of technology—like fitness trackers—to assist you in making improved health decisions?
In the upcoming article, we’ll explore this subject, and we’ll also cover:
- How reliable are data trackers to begin with?
- When is tracking beneficial? (And when is it counterproductive?)
- Can you teach yourself to assess things more accurately by intuition?
Let’s dive in.
First, How Reliable Are Data Trackers, Anyway?
Not all data holds the same value.
Some brands create superior products compared to others. This includes not just the hardware but also the quality of their software and data sets.
Moreover, not everything is equally easy to quantify.
For instance, heart rate and step count data are generally dependable,2 but many other types of metrics—from calories burned to movement speed—have significant errors.
The chart below illustrates the reliability of various tracking devices.
(If you’re interested, we detail the accuracy of different progress indicators here: Are Fitness Trackers Worth It?)
Next, When Is Tracking Actually Beneficial?
The positive: Tracking devices provide us with more data about our behaviors and bodies than at any other time.
The negative: Tracking devices provide us with more data about our behaviors and bodies than at any other time.
“What’s truly astonishing,” mentions Samantha Kleinberg, a computer scientist studying decision-making, “is that even a small amount of excess information can have a significant negative impact on our decision-making.”3
That’s the contradiction of tracking: Insufficient detail complicates making the right choice, but so does excessive detail.
This can be represented as an inverted U, with the optimal point at the top of the curve.
Today, It’s Surprisingly Simple to Have an Overload of Information.
Think about the analysis paralysis you experience after perusing hundreds of reviews from various taco spots in your area. (All you wanted was a decent el pastor, but now you’re uncertain which taqueria to choose!)
Finding just enough data to make sound decisions is an art—especially in the realm of health and fitness, where it seems everyone is competing to provide more research, more customization, and more complexity.
But when all that information begins to fuse together with no clear way forward, what should you do?
To start, you can pose yourself a straightforward question:
Does tracking enhance my well-being and performance?
If the response is a clear yes or no, you understand what action to take. (Either