A counter example:

I've been wearing an Apple Watch for close to 10 years. I've tracked my weight as well along those years but nothing crazy like OP. The Apple watch tracked plenty.

I had some strange symptoms and two doctors insisted I had a weak heart and potential heart failure. This was shocking! Turns out I do have a really "weak" rhythm, but heart failure is when your heart is progressively getting worse in it's pumping. I don't even remember which metric he looked at in my Apple health - but basically my heart has always been this way. A doctor looking at a single data point might think I have abnormally low blood pressure/heart rate, but if I've had this for 10 years with no change, the medical assessment is very different - it means nothing. Sometimes boring data is exactly what you need. For this reason, I will probably always wear an Apple watch (or equivalent) moving forward.

Data can feel useless for 10 years until one day it becomes critical. The benefit is spiky and uneven.

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nkrisc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But you didn’t spend hundreds of hours on it, so when it did happen to be useful it seemed like an outsized benefit.

I would wager that for most people, most data about themselves will be useless and not worth collecting.

Of course you can’t know what data will be useless or not, so unless the cost of collecting it is minimal or nil (wearing a smart watch, writing down your weight each day/week), it’s probably not worth it.

Spending hundreds of hours to build a solution to capture all data about yourself to find interesting patterns has a huge assumption baked into it: that there are interesting patterns to find.

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markh1967 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

About 9 years ago I had a run-in with stomach cancer. After a few months of chemo and a 7 hour operation I was eventually declared cancer free and have been ever since, but still have to live with the consequences of the treatment and be vigilant for any signs of it returning.

I still suffer intermittent stomach aches, especially in the early hours of the morning, and had a terrible time trying to decide if they were getting better or worse over time.

Our narrative voice is awful at detecting long term trends and tends to overcompensate for particularly good or bad patches so it was impossible for me to judge and I started keeping records of how bad the aches were each day.

Long story short, the average severity was mostly decreasing over time and the average time between bad aches was slowly increasing but it would have been impossible to tell if this was happening without keeping detailed records because it wasn't consistent - some months were much worse than others and completely skewed my perception of long term trends.

While most people hopefully won't ever need to do something like this, it did make me realise just how bad we are at picking up on long term trends so I can definitely see keeping daily records of, for instance, average daily happiness being eye-opening.

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cj 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Like anything else, I think it comes down to having a good use case.

I've gotten deep into weightlifting/bodybuilding over the past couple of years, and that's the kind of hobby where micro-optimizations and data tracking can have a pretty big impact on results (and sort of necessary, you can't fly blind with things like diet, especially)

E.g. I track and weigh everything I eat, take body measuraments on a weekly basis, Dexa scans every few months, etc - for me it's worth it because I know what I want to do with the data. If I didn't have a goal, all that tracking would clearly be overkill.

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afc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How long have you been tracking? Can you share an insight you've had from your data?

I've been weight lighting for ten years and initially tried to track things (down to how many reps I did of which exercise, with how much weight) and quickly came to the conclusion that is want worth it for me.

	▲	cj 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The goal in bodybuilding during a gaining phase is to be in a very slight calories surplus (200-300 calories above maintenance, at most) to maximize the amount of time you're building muscle before you need to cut again (bring calories back to a deficit to shed body fat). Tracking scale weight is difficult because shifts in water weight and hydration can swing the scale 5+ pounds in either direction without any change in body fat. So I pair scale weight with a 7-point skin caliper measurements taken on a weekly basis, along with waist circumference, in order to infer whether body fat is trending up or down. And also take weekly progress photos of 6 angles/poses with consistent lighting, which I share with a coach. And then you pair that with weighing and logging everything you eat, and you can make small adjustments to your meal plan on a monthly basis to try to stay in that 200-300 calorie per day surplus for as long as possible. (Although most bodybuilding coaches adjust diet based purely on how your physique is changing in weekly check-in photos without the need for measurements, but I like extra data) > down to how many reps I did of which exercise, with how much weight) I also do this. Track every exercise, every weight, number of reps. It's necessary for knowing whether you're progressively overloading over long periods of time. Progressive overload becomes harder to measure once you're past newbie gains because you can't increase weight every week, so some weeks the goal is just to squeeze out an extra couple of reps. Which adds up over time This is obviously excessive for 99% of people. But I enjoy doing it as a hobby. I would absolutely not recommend this level of tracking for health reasons (not necessary) - I find enjoyment in the process.
	▲	yoz-y 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I track the reps weights of every exercise (in my own app). But the historical values are only useful up to last couple of weeks just to now if the general trends go up and what is stalled. Unless your goals are the numbers themselves and not health, I don’t think there is a reason to track everything. But it is fun.

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nkrisc 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

True, if you have a current and real need for the data, then it makes sense to collect it. But that’s an entirely different scenario.

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Ajedi32 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Right, but you don't necessarily need to spend hundreds of hours to capture most of this; the data is already out there. If there were a tool that could collect it all in one place and give you insights with minimal effort that would be pretty neat.

	▲	noemit 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		agree. I would never do what OP did. But I also won't throw out my smart watch (Context: other people in the thread said they stopped using them because the data was useless)

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austy69 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Data can feel useless for 10 years until one day it becomes critical. The benefit is spiky and uneven.

Not sure if in your case the data was critical, since the doctor likely would have just had you wear a monitor for a while after to come to the same conclusion.

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ambicapter 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So what happened with your symptoms?