What can you learn about yourself from QS and biometrics?
This article is part of a series about the quantified self, wearables, and biohacking, and how it can help us to understand ourselves better.
The quantified self, or QS, refers to a movement towards quantifying life through modern tools and techniques. It is an approach to understanding oneself, and although it is not always done with the help of technology, it is often associated with wearables and other digital devices which help improve the self-understanding process.
Whilst some may use QS activities from a general scientific and purpose understanding perspective, it’s most often used to help improve our self-understanding.
Also called self-tracking, self-experimentation, N-of-1 research and single-subject research — QS tracking can help you gain insight into your physiology, psychology, decision-making and health, and help you set self-improvement goals.
What you can measure, you can manage.
By measuring different aspects of your life you can gain insight into what activities, products, and lifestyle changes improve your life, and which of these are counter-productive. By seeing improvements numerically you don’t need to guess whether something is working or not but have an objective and quantifiable measure.
If you’re using a scale to track your weight, set work goals or note down what you eat for weight-loss — you’re already using quantified methods to improve your life.
Historically the quantification is done semi-manually but increasingly it is being automated with the help of wearables and devices.
Anything can be quantified and coded in some way; the point is that it should be useful for the person doing the tracking, and help provide them insights. An example of this is genetic tests, which can reveal the probability of developing a particular disease or trait, historical heritage or the likelihood of your children having blue or brown eyes. A blood test is a tool which provides a momentary glimpse of a person’s current state. Although they can be incredibly useful (we recommend getting one done at least once every six months) the real power lies in tracking things continually. That way, you can see how the things you do affect you on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour or day-by-day basis.
Here are some automated ways you can quantify your life:
- Fitness trackers (such as Fitbit and Huawei Band)
- Heart rate wearables (Apple Watch, Garmin)
- Smart/digital scales for tracking weight and body fat
- Portable blood trackers, e.g. for glucose or ketone body tracking
Did you know that including clinical uses, over a quarter of US adults use a wearable at least once a day, such as smartwatches and other wearables?
Do we want to know everything?
Proponents of QS often point out that self-tracking helps to improve understanding of oneself, and one’s physiology, psychology or productivity, to make better decisions in life.
But there are some that call self-tracking reductionistic, arguing that you don’t need to understand everything and that they rather not know if they have a condition or health issue.
Devices or manual approaches to tracking and quantifying oneself are not perfect. Similarly to biases in machine learning and AI algorithms, data from oneself can lead to identifying false patterns. Some thorny ethical issues can also emerge — e.g. if you find out you are predisposed or have a particular medical condition, should you let your close family members know that they too might have it? What if it’s probabilistic, rather than deterministic? What if the device or data are wrong?
“It is said that knowledge is power, but I believe that knowledge acted out is power. My mission with Maaind is to use technology to help people understand themselves and their behaviours better, improving mental wellbeing, performance and decision making.”
We hope you enjoyed this introduction to QS. Next month we will continue to explore different tools, devices and techniques for self-tracking, to help you understand yourself better. If you enjoyed this post, follow us to get notified of new articles, give us a clap or share this article with a friend.
