Keeping track of your health was a subjective task until the “Quantified Self” movement.

Before health trackers on your phone and other assistive devices such as smartwatches like the AppleWatch or an activity tracker from Garmin and Fitbit, you might have said, “I feel great,” “I feel kind of sick,” or “my head hurts” when talking about your health. Measuring health at home has been either weighing yourself with the scale in your bathroom or taking your temperature with a thermometer when you feel that you might have a fever. In short, the amount of health data you knew about yourself was limited.

With the popularity of smartphones, smartwatches, and activity trackers to measure your health, you can see a portrait of your health painted with quantifiable data. That data are metrics that you wouldn’t intentionally think about or causally track: steps, changes in heart rate, duration of your sleep states, glucose levels in your blood, stress, and your body fat composition (just to name a few).

What is the “Quantified Self” Movement?

The “Quantified Self” movement centers on the notion of “self-knowledge through self-tracking.” Those who identify themselves in the “Quantified Self” movement want to better their health and (ultimately) themselves from staying fit to having a more productive morning. They do this by being vigilant of measurable personal health data from tracking devices and answering questions like, “how many steps have I walked today?” and “when am I most stressed during the day?”

They created and popularized a new pastime of using mobile apps and always-on gadgets to track and analyze your body, mood, diet, and even spending – practically everything in your daily life measured in excruciating detail.

Within the community, there are informal get-togethers called “Show & Tells,” where individuals share their responses to three questions:

1. What did you do?

2. How did you do it?

3. And what did you learn?

Members of the “Quantified Self” movement are curious folk with an abundance of data on a quest to extract as much meaning about themselves as possible.

Does the Perspective of the “Quantified Self” Movement Show Your Full Picture of Health?

The focus of the “Quantified Self” movement is on utility – how can data be useful towards a productive end. It provided a fresh perspective of looking at your health objectively with a rational and analytical thinking style. There’s plenty of evidence of how self-tracking can help people manage their health and themselves. 

Ironically, “meaning” can mean several things. Your data portrait only shows a piece of the larger puzzle of yourself. That said, the act of self-tracking can be as stressful as it is helpful. At Wingspan Health, we believe that you should have a full picture of your health, and taking care of it shouldn’t feel like a full-time job. Although seeing all that data is interesting, it may confuse instead of enlightening you. When it comes to your health, self-tracking data might not mean much to you in the grand scheme of things like seeing many meaningless numbers, symbols, and letters. 

(As an aside and confession, the results for my cholesterol confuses me. What’s the deal with the two sets of numbers? It’s for showing the two types of cholesterol, but I digress.) 

TL;DR

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• With the popularity of smartphones, smartwatches, and activity trackers to measure your health, you can see a portrait of your health painted with quantifiable data.

• The “Quantified Self” is a popular social movement that centers on the notion of “self-knowledge through self-tracking” given the increased accessibility of personal health data.

• Although the Quantified Self Movement provided a new perspective of looking at your health objectively, it still doesn’t show the full picture.

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