‘Know thyself’, implored Socrates.
Self-awareness, it seems, is foundational to eudaimonia, or in modern parlance, living the good life.
The problem? We’re irrational little creatures, full of biases and contradictions.
Most of the time we’re completely unaware of ourselves and even then, we cut and paste our story to paint ourselves as the favourable protagonist.
Therein lies the problem. Try to implement any positive life changes, and we’re routinely deceived by our delusions.
When we try to lose weight, we tell ourselves a comforting story to relieve our guilt, tempting us to reach for another chocolate cookie and prolonging our poor diet.
So what’s the answer? Well, according to some, it’s the quantified self (QS) movement.
Let’s dive in to examine the good, bad and ugly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before we start, a quick caveat – I’m a quantified self dilettante and these are merely initial impressions from my own limited self-tracking forays. There are many subgroups in the QS community – this article focuses primarily on activity modification and habit development.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The quantified self-movement describes the self-tracking phenomenon using data to identify physical, psychological and behavioural metrics for analysis, pattern identification and subsequent action modification. “…the term that embodies self-knowledge through self-tracking”<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a practical level it might include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Check out this short video for a brief explainer:<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is the quantified self movement?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Quantified Self Institute<\/a> defines it as,<\/p>\n\n\n\n