Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
Quantified self helps you to use technology to collect data about yourself and with that,
make the best decisions.
You have probably tried to achieve some goal that was kind of abstract and ended up having
difficulty.
Perhaps you have said that you want to be healthier, have more success in your profession
or even be a more motivated person.
The problem with this type of goal is that it’s very vague, imprecise, difficult to
measure.
And that makes the goal hard to be accomplished.
When do you know if you are or aren’t healthier?
How do you define if you have been successful in your career?
What does it mean to be a more motivated person?
One of the ways to solve this problem is to use the popular method SMART to make your
goals more specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely.
This is good, but you can go further.
If you are having trouble achieving any goal, a technique for advancing that goal is to
turn everything into numbers and use mathematics to measure your progress.
Numbers can be the path to transforming abstract dreams into concrete reality.
You may have heard the tip that to achieve a goal, it’s best if it’s more objective.
For example, instead of defining that you want to lose weight, define that you want
to lose nine kilos in the next three months using a flexible diet and practice swimming
twice a week.
However, often defining the final goal in numbers isn’t enough.
In the same way that you transform your final objective into something measurable, you can
go further and transform your whole path until reaching that objective in numbers.
Numbers are an excellent tool for you to achieve goals because you can’t distort math.
Saying that you achieved financial success is very subjective.
But checking if you have one million invested in the bank or if your net worth is evolving
five per cent per month is simpler.
When you transform your objectives into numbers, each action you take to obtain that goal can
be measured.
Every advance or setback towards the final goal can be observed and analyzed for you
to make more of what works and avoid what doesn’t.
You can think of math as a tool that transforms a path that was once abstract, subjective,
hard to define, into something that right now is much more concrete, exact, objective.
To transform your goals into numbers, you need the right parameters and limit your options.
Almost all goals can be transformed into numbers.
But you need to define parameters that you will use to make this conversion of abstract
dreams into concrete objectives.
Some goals are very obvious.
In the case of losing weight, for example, you can define a final number that you want
to see on the scale, on the tape measure or on the fat percentage meter.
In the case of enrichment, you can define exactly how much you want invested to be considered
a rich person.
Even in the case of professional success, you can transform your goals into something
more concrete by defining which salary from which position represents that the goal has
been achieved.
But you should be careful.
It’s not because you CAN transform all of your goals into numbers that you SHOULD do
that.
Tracking your progress correctly using math is hard.
You need to collect data, analyze numbers, observe how these numbers are impacting your
results… it’s as if you used the scientific method that I talked about in episode 174
from the series Hello!
Seiiti Arata [http://arata.se/hello174] to be your own data scientist.
Doing this data analysis with one or two goals is one thing.
But don’t exaggerate.
Doing this with ALL of your goals from ALL of the areas in your life can end up being
counterproductive.
Therefore, make your options limited.
Even if you have a lot of goals, choose only one or two to transform them into numbers
and keep up with it rigorously.
After you’ve fulfilled those first goals, you can do the same with other objectives.
Quantified self only works if you use the right tools.
The monitoring must be constant.
A few years ago, when wearable devices and smartwatches started to become popular, a
self knowledge movement arose based on data known as Quantified Self.
The idea of Quantified Self is to use technology to collect data about yourself and with that,
make decisions based on numbers to improve your body, your mind and your productivity.
To transform your goals into numbers, you need to have the right tools to collect and
analyze data.
For example, your goal of being a more physically active person could mean taking a certain
amount of steps per day.
Without a technology that does that automatically, it’s impracticable to count the whole day,
everyday, each step that you take.
Lots of data can be collected by the smartphone in your hand.
The amount of tasks that you accomplished throughout the day, how much you spent, how
many calories you gained, how many hours going through social media, even how many steps
you took.
Other types of data need specific devices like watches, bracelets or smart rings.
Nevertheless, nowadays the data collection is the easiest part.
The most difficult is to analyze this data and see how it’s impacting your goals.
Is taking that number of steps a day helping with your weight loss goal?
Or is the extra exercise making you more hungry and the amount of calories you eat the most
so it is greater than what you spent to reach the step goal?
Keep in mind that the idea isn’t to transform only your final goal into a specific and reachable
number.
The ideal is that each action you take can be measured.
In such cases, what seems obvious is not always so obvious.
Therefore you need to act like your own data scientist and analyze how your actions are
impacting your results.
Like a scientist, you need a method.
Define a period for you to analyze the data.
I suggest that within one week, you analyze the results and create improvement cycles
using the PDCA technique, like I explained in episode 203 in the series Hello!
Seiiti Arata [https://arata.se/hello203].
But you must choose the period that is most suitable for your specific goal.
Life is more than numbers.
Never use exact Sciences to measure what is abstract.
One of the biggest criticisms that is made to books, videos and courses about personal
development is that everything is very abstract, subjective, sometimes even esoteric.
Words like power, motivation, success, energy and other similar words are very common when
it comes to personal development.
Transforming goals into numbers solves a part of the problem.
With concrete objectives and every measurable action, you transform your journey into something
much more tangible.
But math isn’t the solution to all your desires.
Not everything in life comes down to numbers.
You can’t measure in exact numbers the satisfaction of having a recognized job, the happiness
of taking a trip to somewhere special or the satisfaction of drinking coffee with childhood
friends.
Don’t make the mistake of wanting to use math to measure abstract things.
Leave the numbers for your goals and actions that can be quantified and explore other ways
to confirm the length of a goal in the case of less concrete objectives.
The numbers can be excellent allies to transform abstract dreams into concrete objectives.
You can transform not only your final goal into something measurable, but also transform
into numbers your whole journey towards that goal.
To do that, you need to have the right tools and periodically analyze the data to find
actions that bring the best results for your case.
It requires a lot of resilience from your end.
If you want to know how to use resilience to persist in your goals, I recorded a very
special class from the course Planning Your Life about how to be more resilient.
You can see that class by accessing http://arata.se/resilience