Over the extended life of this retirement blog I have written on a number of occasions about the role, of what I have called, ‘data’ in supporting a quality of life particularly as I have undoubtedly got older. Some people have associated this activity with, what has been called, (as in the article I am about to reference) as ‘the quest for self-knowledge’. But this is not quite my interest in the topic.
This general love of data should come as no surprise to myself particularly given that, in my career as an educational psychologist, I would frequently extol the virtues to (sometimes reluctant teachers) of collecting data about a particular problem (child) that they were struggling with. Their approach was more like never mind the data let’s just get on with the solutions.
So now, all those years later, my philosophy of problem-solving has come back (did it ever go away?) to haunt me or help me, you decide. I have written several blogs over the period of my retirement about the importance of collecting and you would guess using, day to day data on how things are going. A general one back in 2018 entitled appropriately ‘Retirement and so much data‘ and a second one more obliquely called Thank goodness for a Diary. This latter one written since my various medical problems. More of which in a moment.
The article in question, Every Step You Take by Tom Faber in The Guardian this weekend (see above), started by describing the behaviour of a friend of his who set up a spreadsheet ‘recording the minutiae of his life with dozens of columns tracking every element of his daily routine.’ He goes on to say that, ‘gathering data … now is just an everyday activity for many of us. We track our step counts, calories consumed, exercise completed, menstrual cycle or hours slept. we list books we’ve read, our top films…’
And so on. You get the idea. But the key message is that, ‘Beneath all this is a promise: understand your life better with data, and you can improve it’. Again as the article says, ‘the idea is seductive’. It goes on to say at the end of the article (quite a long one) that the data either a) only helps with expert* interpretation or b) doesn’t tell you much you didn’t already know or c) actually doesn’t help at all. Which is obviously disappointing and which, in my humble opinion misses one or two points.
The first point is that a scatter-gun approach to collecting data is never likely to be successful. You need to collect data (as with a ‘problem’ child about a specific problem /issue). And more to the point, in my case, is that my reason for, as I wrote in the last blog above, ‘numeriscing’ the information I write in my diary is that the data, in difficult times, gives me a sense of being more in control. Yes that old control freak thing again. And yet here’s the thing I don’t have to actually do anything with the data, knowing that it is there is sufficient. I might even say that it is there if I need it, which sometimes I do, but that is enough. So no great and obsessive need to be analysing the said data. You may find that puzzling. So be it.
So in my approach, the only problem I am trying to solve with the data is one of not having any data and consequently feeling buffeted by external forces like one’s health for example.
*If the data is any good (i.e. specific and accurate) then there is no better ‘expert’ at interpreting the data and for solving the problems than you.