How much data is too much data? 📊

Disclaimer – I am not, nor do I claim to be a personal trainer. If I were, I would hope to be a few kgs lighter around the midriff… BUT, I grew up loving sports without any digital performance metrics.

As an executive coach a lot of my clients want to focus on increasing their performance outside of work, for events such as marathons, duathlons, triathlons and the plethora of challenges that exist in the sporting / endurance / long distance world (HYROX, Marathon de Sables and LEJOG to name but a few).

Why? Because when I coach, we consider the individual’s life holistically. For some clients, they want to have a better work-life balance, for others they want to focus on the things that matter outside of work to increase their performance and stamina in the office.

However, many of the same clients also articulate that they fixate on the data provided to them by devices such as WHOOP, FitBit and Garmin.

This can be highly addictive.

Constant assessment and feedback in the name of ‘improved performance’ and ‘physical fitness’ seems like a good idea, right?

I can relate. I also succumbed to the allure of data-driven training, using both WHOOP and a Garmin smart watch for years.

I normalised breaking down split timings, checking my HRV and RHR constantly and religiously monitoring my sleep. Rather than focusing on the enjoyment of the activity, I focused on beating personal bests. If I am honest, I also got a kick outperforming my friends and collecting ‘badges’ in the related Apps. I started to take social validation from a banal digital metric rather than enjoying the activity in the moment. Heaven forbid I went for a run or hit the gym and forgot to log the activity…

Recently, I dropped both devices.

I no longer use WHOOP and have deleted the Garmin App, using the watch solely for its designed purpose – to tell the time!

When I share this with my clients, they are often surprised. Perhaps an element of sunken cost fallacy plays in as these devices don’t come cheap. But for me, returning to a state where we measure our performance and output by how we feel during and after the activity, is a preferable way to live.

Don’t get me wrong, I learnt a lot about my body and how far to push myself, what rested felt like physiologically, and areas where I needed to increase focus. But I no longer want to be measuring my metrics constantly or deriving value from arbitrary badges created by software developers.

Do I still use my Garmin watch to measure a run, or to break down timings between sets in the gym? Yes. But without the app, it is purely to know how far I went or to keep track of the time during my workout.

I think that these devices are GREAT tools for learning about our physiological baselevels, but I would argue that if we are not guarded, we can forget why we are doing the activities that we profess to enjoy in the first place.

What do you think?