If you have to explain QS to someone in 30 seconds, what do you tell them?
You only improve what you track.
This is not entirely true.
“You can only know if you’re improving something if you’re tracking it.”
“You can only know if you’re improving something if you’re tracking it.”
Well, that’s not entirely true either! What if you try a diet and manages to see your body shrink?
Self tracking makes the whole process quantifiable and subject to the scientific method.
I track various aspects of my life because I find it rewarding in that it helps me see causation, aids in motivation as well as helps me gamify the aspects of life I’d otherwise find mundane.
If you have to explain QS to someone in 30 seconds, what do you tell them?
I have already been doing this in about 30 seconds or less to a variety of people but there must always be some sort of lead-in to the topic that we are already discussing. If the lead-in is there, I say something like:
Quantified self is an awesome place where people meet in groups throughout the world simply to make observations that improve everyone’s lives. The idea is that there is a huge amount of amazing information, or data that is lost every day because we don’t have a culture to collect this data. We always wait for Universities or other bottlenecked research centers to make observations, and progress is very slow. The goal is to associate our positive emotions and social scenes with the truth of making simple, scientific observations, sharing them, and then making great correlations that help everyone’s lives; have fun with it. Enjoy it! A positive social life is whatever we decide to make it, and it can be anything, so we may as well tune our positive emotions into accomplish something amazing and useful while enjoying being social! It just makes sense, and we gotta wonder why we didn’t do this decades ago.
*** End pitch ***
Now during this “pitch” which I prefer to call a conversation, the other person will likely add their own thoughts so it’s not like I simply give a speech in the form of that “pitch.” It’s a live, updated conversation that goes in whatever direction is natural, and it contains the general spirit of what is stated above.