A cynic might dismiss the ‘quantified self ’ movement – whose adherents use a range of gadgets to record and track their lives – as geeks and fitness freaks. But, with the ever-increasing popularity of health trackers like Jawbone and a plethora of other apps tracking everything from personal spending to happiness, it definitely seems to be catching on.
The idea of tracking different physical and mental parameters is hardly new. Benjamin Franklin famously tracked 13 personal virtues in a daily journal to push himself towards moral perfection. He shared this insight in his autobiography: “I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined, but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.” For seekers of self-improvement, unbiased data about where their current selves is probably the best place to start.
Self-monitoring allows us not just to identify weaknesses, but to also monitor our progress as we proactively try to correct them. For example, a person in a desk-bound job aiming to become more active can set a quantifiable daily goal (e.g. taking 10,000 steps) to achieve their objective. Activity trackers are quite apt at tracking such metrics. Many go further to goad the wearer on by providing periodic reminders of progress made up to that point in the day.
As technology advances and trackers become capable of tracking more metrics (e.g. sleep quality) seamlessly, more people are likely to track increasingly more aspects of their lives. The wearers themselves may use this data and attempt to find answers to questions that up were, up to now, the preserve of medical researchers. Finding answers backed by data to simple questions such as ‘do I sleep better on the days I’m active?’ are well within the capabilities of current technology.
Of course, current wearable devices still have a long way to go. Most consumer devices are restricted to tracking superficial data points such as steps taken and flights of stairs climbed, etc. The accuracy of even these relatively simple measurements needs improvement. Measuring data that can provide a deeper understanding of our well-be-ing such as blood cholesterol, sugar, and hormonal and stress levels are beyond the capabilities of current technology.
Analyzing the mountains of data that get collected via digital trackers may provide breakthrough findings in coming years. Collecting data non-intrusively, while people are going about their daily lives, is a researcher’s dream. For example, a researcher studying the relationship between sleep quality and heart disease would need to bring subjects into a laboratory to measure their sleep quality. The sample size and the frequency of measurement would have to be limited, to manage logistics. In a few years, it might be possible to conduct this type of studies using data gathered via trackers – enabling larger sample groups, less likely to be affected by laboratory effects.
Currently, data gathered by most fitness trackers cannot be shared or exported by users. This needs to change for this data to become useful. Encouragingly, some market leaders are providing open APIs that facilitate the usage of data captured via their devices by external applications. In the near future, we are likely to see apps that use our health tracking data to offer us diagnostics, new methods to gamify our fitness goals and even brand loyalty schemes built around our health. Fitbit, a prominent company in the fitness tracking space, has seen some interesting apps utilizing its API. Pact, an app that reward/punishes users financially for reaching fitness goals, is one example. Wall Greens Supermarkets, a well-known brand with an app on the platform, engages customers via a rewards app that provides discounts based on activity logged.
Companies are unlikely to miss out on the trend, with some already experimenting with tracking systems to measure employee performance real time and gamify work for their millennial workers. Curiosity to know more about and improve ourselves has so far driven the quantified self movement. It would be interesting to see what kind of kind of reception the idea of ‘quantified serfs’ receive from the same crowd.