The Importance Of Metrics For Your Health
Recently I’ve been suffering from sleep issues. In addition to that, I have a dodgy knee. All in all, you could get the impression I’m falling to pieces. Now, life’s not that bad, but sometimes it seems like it.
Yesterday, I had a migraine and that’s continued into today. Add to that, the website went down overnight and I’ve been helping out with someone else’s tech issues. All in all, I’m not in a pleasant mood.
What has this got to do with you?
Nothing. I try and turn everything into a lesson though, and this is something I can write without looking at the screen. So here goes.
Metrics; Or How You Know If Life Is Great
After I realised the sleeping issues were a.) An actual issue (see this article on personality tests for diagnosing issues) and b.) Probably not going to go away on their own, I decided that I needed to do something about it.
I went to a doctor which wasn’t very helpful. I kind of expected that, but it’s always important to get a professional opinion before you take matters into your own hands.
So when you decided to take life into your own hands and fix your own problems, you’ll want to start by creating a list of contributing factors.
If you’re in trouble, chances are there’ll be a whole ton of mitigating factors and lifestyle changes you could probably make.
I decided to sit down, research and write all of the things that could contribute to sleep problems. Naturally, there was a whole bunch:
- Stress
- Diet
- Blue screens/computer time (haha)
- Eye strain
- Muscle imbalances
- Lack of certain minerals
A whole host of others.
When you put all of the things you can fix in your life, it looks quite alarming. That’s natural though. We’re not perfect and if you don’t observe stuff, it’ll be left to its own devices.
That can be good or bad. When it comes to your health – it’s probably not going to be great.
Anyway, it’s important to note exactly where you’re at – even if you’re at a low point. It’s also important to get regular metrics. Let me explain that.
Collect Data On Yourself
All things considered, humans are pretty subjective beings. When you get a big pay-cheque or a pretty girl asks you out, you feel like a world-conquering hero and everything is right with the world. When you’ve eaten something bad and your guts rebel against you or some idiot drives into the back of your car, chances are it’ll cause a cascade of things that make you feel like you hate life.
Many people get swept into those subjective things, begin to see only the bad and then cause themselves to end up in a deep, dark subjective whole where the objective world looks horrible.
You don’t want to fall prey to this.
Luckily, you can’t argue with cold, hard fact. Nor can you argue with video evidence.
Let’s say you have an injured knee. You finally drag yourself to a physiotherapist, and boy is it a humbling experience. Whilst you can do multiple squats with a reasonably heavy weight for multiples sets and reps, it turns out your flexibility is terrible.
Your physiotherapist asks you to turn your leg outwards and then simply lift it up. You can’t because there’s a muscle imbalance which is causing your pain.
That’s pretty embarrassing. But you should make a video of it. Then after a week of doing the therapy, make another video. Then do it after a month. When you make a physical record of things, it’s a lot harder to say, “I can’t be bothered to exercise today” or “I might have avoided cigarettes for 394 days… but today I really feel like one.”
Firstly, because the results speak for themselves and secondly, because once you’re aware and accountable, you’re less likely to give up.
There’ll Be Bad Days… It’s The Trend That Matters
You also need to keep data on yourself because you’re going to have bad days but it’s the trend that matters.
Let’s say you keep a food diary because you tend to eat junk and put on weight. You do this every day for a year.
One day, you get some bad news. Your girlfriend dumps you or something. Naturally, you don’t feel like cooking so you go and get a kebab, drink beers and then eat your now-ex-girlfriend’s tub of ice cream.
What starts as, “that’ll show her!” becomes “I feel really sick” and then, “I hate myself because I’ getting fat.”
In reality, one day of over-eating won’t make you fat. One day off from pursuing your goal won’t derail you forever and whilst you feel guilty and terrible, that one even won’t ruin your life.
Over the course of a year, extra calories add up to nothing and so one bad day, no matter how bad it is, won’t generally affect you. This can be used to pull you through a bad period, because you know there’ll be an upswing.
On the other hand, if over a period of time you notice a decrease in your performance (or whatever you’re tracking gets worse) then it’s time to identify the problem and set a course of action.
To continue the above example; if you start snacking excessively on a routine basis, you might not notice. But extra 2-300 calorie snacks build up and you’re putting on a couple of pounds of fat a month. Over the course of a year that adds up… and you want to address it.
A guy who looks in the mirror and says, “Where did that extra 50lbs come from?” could have avoided the issue by keeping a weekly tally of his weight.
Final Thoughts
You can amass hundreds of data points about the most obscure and seemingly trivial things. Yet those things add up.
I’m not saying you have to keep a note of everything in your life, but for big things:
- Work
- Health
- Relationships
You can keep some basic data and it’ll put things into perspective over a long period of time. As a real example, I’ve started monitoring my amount of time using computer screens and working.
What I found after a few months of just observing my behaviour passively, I’d learned that without doubt I spend too much time in front of a screen. I work, then look at a tablet. Reading, browsing, working, typing – all of those things are all close-up mostly-screen time.
So after a few months I decide to cut down my screen use. I have a couple of blocks of solid work and then a few minutes for fun and games. Other than that, a dramatic reduction all around.
Just having awareness and then making a simple change (I haven’t quit my business or thrown my computers out or whatever) makes a massive difference. In the same way – most people could lose weight just by doing an honest food diary and then cutting a couple of snacks out.
Anyway, the benefits are two-fold:
- You’ll notice long term trends and can adjust
- Bad days affect you less because you’ll have a better understanding of the long term picture
That’s all for today. Go and make some notes about stuff you can track in your life. I’ll revisit this topic in less rambling detail at another point.