To say ‘the thrill is gone’ as you did seems a pretty inaccurate descriptor of what her process was all about. She felt that measurement itself created a constant sense of not measuring up.

The main underlying problem as she said it, was that her self-worth was tied to the data. And, as others have said in the comments here, not only this, but it feels like the things they do aren’t even real if they are not measured. The focus isn’t on yourself, on what you are doing, but whether you can live up to something external to yourself – some idea of what the data is supposed to be. There is more alienation from self than self-knowledge going on there – if what isn’t measured, isn’t real, then your own experience of life becomes less and less real; and you become dependent on the data to have some sense of existing. So it is not only self-worth but a sense of even existing that becomes dependent on the data.

I know these aren’t quite the same thing, but it does seem a similar form of self-alienation – one which will vary depending on what your goals are – simply tracking for the sake of tracking or whether you have any targets you wish to change.

And really, I don’t think you have to subscribe to any kind of “extreme behaviour-change-through-public-humiliation” to use self-measurement in a was that is somewhat self-punishing, creating a sense of not measuring up. This has existed long before the quantified self movement – standardized school testing, weight watchers, you name it (just as the former QS said, made her feel she was failing at school exams). I find it odd that you would even seek to deny this, it seems quite obvious this is the purpose.

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Say you go for a run, it’s really enjoyable. Then you see your time and realize it was a lot slower than you thought. Shouldn’t matter for your pleasure, but it invariably does, because when you measure, you’ve already made that a more important goal. And if you aren’t measuring to pursue an improvement in the measurements, then I don’t really see the point. Even in those cases, I think it’s a natural tendency to become more focused on the measurement, probably unavoidable.

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Counting my running times, weighing myself everyday, etc. It all just became more sticks to beat myself with. I used to think those kinds of diet were better than ones which cut out certain foods but now I think these are the worst. There was a calculator in my head in the background all of the time, constantly planning how I was going to balance my exercise/calories throughout the day. A phenomenal waste of mental energy that just sucked the joy out of life.

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I’m reminded of a slogan I first heard in a 12-step program: “When you are what you do, when you don’t, you’re not” and thinking how some of the behaviors described in this post might reflect a slightly reworded perspective: “When you are what you track, when you don’t, you’re not”.

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