I’ve been a fan, believer, lover, of the quantified self movement since the early rearing of the idea popping up at the fabled now seemingly mythical status, Foo Camp.

I often wonder, when will I get my invite to Foo Camp. I want to come ponder something really really far out and new and then watch it awaken into existence.

I’m a lover of gadgets and have been collecting quantified self gadgets, doing presentations on the why/how of quantified self and talking data, patterns, and trends and i’ve been loving it all until.. well classically, it goes mainstream. I hesitate, am I hating the thing now because its going mainstream? Am I that predictable? (probably)

However yesterday, it dawned on me that maybe we, us, them, everyone, has gotten quantified self wrong. Wrong in that more data, while potentially useful does not always make the human better. I theorize on this because as of late, I’ve been trying to lose weight and well I basically am using this reduce calorie, meal replacement plan, and one of the first big wins out of the plan is not only weightloss which is awesome for me, but the reduction of choice in what to eat, is making my life simpler, and thats making me care about data less important.

I’ve tracking my calories via food logs for years. The past few weeks I haven’t tracked anything and i have results. I feel this massive rush of relief, free from the cognitive data overload grind. I am free of that logging task. Yes I have a set sort of meal plan thing now but this freedom is great. So this gets me to thinking, and actually helping me theorize more on the issues with the quanitified self. We track more, we get more data, we get more potential to learn yet we blow our frickin brains out. Is that really the big idea?

Right now I feel like I sit on the edge of this perceptual assurance, I have this feeling, I am on the right path, the design of the system is transparent, i am the living findings, my energy gain, my weight loss, my feels, or compass seems orientated properly, the quantified self aspects of what i’m trying to do are work in comparison to just living.

People in the quantified self space see this problem. More data doesn’t equate more change. More bookmarks don’t make users smarter, we just find more ways to save them. I could be highly delusional, yet that’s no different than a placebo having the intended effect a doc wants me to have. If perceptual assurance leads to good health, is really all that bad even if its delusional?

Right now a whole world is hyper focused on the data to turn our lives around, and now i think the data is nice, but our feeling that we’re turned around is better, how do we get to that feeling?