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FitnessBe Careful What You Measure

Be Careful What You Measure

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What You Measure Matters

Last week, Wells Fargo fired a bunch of their remote employees. It turns out that these employees were “simulating keyboard activity” – with a program/device that automatically typed keys or jiggled their mouse when they weren’t at their computer. Why? Because that’s how these employees were evaluated: Not by how many clients they brought in, nor how many relationships they fostered, but by how many hours they were active on their computers.

Why did both of these comically bad lapses in judgment happen? Bloomberg’s Matt Levine said it well: “Two basic principles of management, and regulation, and life, are: You get what you measure. The thing that you measure will get gamed.”

We download Duolingo to learn to converse with a native speaker in their language. Months later, we’re checking in daily so we don’t get yelled at by the Owl, we are desperate to keep our daily streak active…and we can only say “I found a blue ostrich at the library.” We lie in bed, waiving our arm above our head like a madman, because our FitBit says we need 500 more steps to hit 10,000 for the day.

I once “meditated” every single day for 6 months so that I could build my meditation streak in Headspace. Sometimes I would even open the app and just let the meditation play so I got credit for it, even though I wasn’t meditating…THE WHOLE REASON I HAD DOWNLOADED THE APP.

We tell ourselves that we want to “read more,” but then we track how many books we read. This incentivizes us to read books quickly (without retaining any of it), instead of tackling bigger challenges like War & Peace or rereading our favorite books to glean more lessons.

All of these things weave a fascinating tapestry of how the human brain works, and just how good our brains are at taking a metric and learning the wrong lesson from that metric!

What Are You Measuring?

The majority of people visit NerdFitness.com to “lose weight.” This is the one metric that everybody is used to tracking. Every ad talks about how to lose weight fast. They see the number on the scale and let that number determine how they feel about themselves that day. This is the wrong metric to exclusively focus on: We don’t really want to “lose weight.” What we want is to lose fat while keeping the muscle we have (or building muscle).

If we focus solely on losing weight, severe calorie restriction and endless cardio might result in a lower number on the scale. BUT! If we don’t change our relationship with food, and consume enough of the right macronutrients and micronutrients, we’ll end up feeling lethargic, starved, and miserable…and then gorge ourselves as soon as life gets in the way.

What to Track, What NOT to Track

Remember, that which gets measured gets improved, so let’s be smart about what we’re tracking. We can ask, “What do I REALLY want to happen? Is this the right metric for that goal?”

* Trying to “eat better”: Track your protein intake and number of fruits/veggies eaten daily. If those are the first two things on your plate for each meal, your weight will start to shift without your focus on it.
* Trying to build a beach body: Great, let’s build some muscle. Track your workouts, and write down exactly how many sets and reps. Then, do ONE more next time. The goal? Progressive overload for the win! Get stronger…
* Want to read more? Don’t track “books read,” which might result in you picking shorter books or speed reading, but instead track “time spent reading.” This can include audiobooks, rereading old books, whatever.

Finally, there are many things we probably DON’T need to track, or we should be careful about when tracking.

* Unless you’re a diabetic and have been advised by a doctor, you do not need to wear a continuous glucose monitor. Temporary glucose spikes after eating a meal are perfectly normal.
* I used to track my sleep religiously with an Oura ring and AppleWatch, but then I would get anxious in the middle of the night and worry that I was ruining my “sleep score”…which negatively impacted the very activity I was trying to improve through tracking. These days, I worry far less about tracking “good sleep” and just do what I can to be in bed for 8ish hours, asleep or not.
* Be wary of how social media is warping the scorecard you’re using to track your progress in life! It’s really easy to get sucked into: “Work hard to make money to spend it on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t even like” Life success isn’t measured in the size of our house, or value of our car, or the number in our bank account.

Conclusion

In this post, we talked about how we need to be careful what we measure in our lives. If we focus too much on the wrong metric, we can get stuck in a never-ending cycle of achievement, but never truly getting where we want to go. Let’s take control of what we measure, and make sure that our metrics align with our true goals.

FAQs

What should I be tracking if I want to improve my health?

* Start by tracking progress towards your goals. If your goal is to lose weight, track your weight. If your goal is to build muscle, track your workouts.
* Make sure to set realistic goals and focus on sustainable progress, not perfection.

Is it okay to use a continuous glucose monitor?

* Only if you’re a diabetic and have been advised by a doctor to use one. Temporary glucose spikes after eating a meal are perfectly normal and don’t necessarily indicate a problem.

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