This is a chapter from my book, The Personal Health Tracking Blueprint. You can view the table of contents with links to the rest here.
In episode 241 of his award-winning podcast, Tim Ferriss, author, entrepreneur, and lifehacker extraordinaire, interviewed Esther Perel, a world-renowned psychotherapist and relationship expert.
During this interview, Tim told a story about a conversation he had over wine with a man in his sixties who had been in a successful open marriage for over twenty years.
The man explained to Tim that every quarter, he had his wife give him a “report card” made up of four categories: lover, husband, provider, and father. His objective was to achieve a minimum total score, regardless of the breakdown of scores by category.
Of course, this meant that during some quarters, he might have a low lover score (if he was traveling for business and sleeping around) but a high provider score. During other quarters, he may have had a high father and husband score, but a lower provider score.
I realize that most people will view something like this as pure insanity.
I, on the other hand, was intrigued.
Tim has a reputation for finding unconventional ways to solve problems and after reading several of his books and listening to his podcast for years, I had come to expect such a story from him.
But this segment hit a deeper nerve with me than most because it was the first example I had heard of someone quantifying something that is seemingly unmeasurable, like the quality of your relationship.
There are two things I took away from this story:
- Anything is quantifiable if you get creative enough. Maybe not with 100% accuracy, but you can always improve your methods and measurements over time. In the meantime, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
- What gets measured gets managed. Why did this dude go through the trouble of micromanaging himself with data? Because he cared deeply about his relationships and he knew when left to his own devices, he may default to not being the best husband and father.
Measurements provide feedback which helps install guard rails against degenerate behavior. In today’s modern-day environment with chronic disease rampant and obesity at all-time highs, we desperately need some guard rails for our health.
This story got me thinking about ways I could quantify certain important aspects of my life.
It was the spark that inspired me to develop my own insane-to-most-people report card for something I care even more about than my personal relationships: my health.
Next, I’ll discuss the 5 pillars of health tracking I focus on and give you an overview of the system I follow.
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