Wearing Wellness
Focusing on the metrics that matter
“What gets measured gets managed” - Peter Drucker
Health is difficult to define - it’s intuitive yet ambiguous. We generally have a sense of whether our daily choices lean toward better or worse health, but these decisions don’t add up to a simple “healthy” or “unhealthy” score. This search for clarity in our wellness is something that health and wellness companies capitalized on through wearables.
A recent McKinsey report showed that nearly one-third of wearable owners use their devices more than they did last year, and over 75% are open to continued or future use. As technology improves, the wearables industry will grow, especially as people increasingly seek ways to measure the return on their health investments. So, how do wearables supposedly provide value to their users?
Management guru Peter Drucker famously said, “what gets measured gets managed.” Drucker’s point is that tracking helps us focus on objectives, pushing us to make better decisions. Ideally, wearables work similarly: by offering insight into our health, they should support healthier choices. But there's a catch: “what gets measured gets managed” doesn’t mean “what gets measured has been managed.” In other words, tracking alone doesn’t make us healthier.
In my first newsletter, I laid out an approach to healthier living that starts with objectives, is grounded in strategy, and uses effective tactics for making it all happen. Wearables are none of these - they simply enable us to make more informed choices. They may help us improve our tactics (like sleep, exercise, or nutrition), but they can’t be substitutes for healthier living. Their true value lies in the decisions they inform. So, how do we decide which information matters and what to do with it?
Tracking What Matters
Based on a recent search, Garmin offers nearly 300 features across their smartwatches. With so many data points, it’s easy to get lost or end up tracking metrics that don’t matter to us. To make things simpler, we can look at health through five broad domains: Exercise, sleep, nutrition, exogenous molecules (like supplements), and emotional health. Right now, wearables are strongest in tracking the first three.
Exercise Tracking
Some of the most common metrics tracked by fitness wearables are heart rate, step count, calories burned and sport-specific tracking. In “Exercise: Understanding the role of fitness in our health” we discussed 3 broad adaptations that exercise drives: strength, stability, and aerobic capacity. Given these adaptations, we’re primarily concerned with tracking our movement patterns, heart rate, and calories burned. Wearables are limited in their capability to track movement patterns, so we rely on heart rate and calories as our main exercise measurements. A 2017 Stanford study showed that six out of seven devices measured heart rate within 5 percent but none measured energy expenditure well. This means we can rely on our fitness wearables to give accurate information on our heart rate which is important for cardiovascular training. Otherwise, wearables remain somewhat limited in their exercise tracking capabilities.
Sleep Tracking
As we discussed in, “Sleep: Fundamentals and Assessment” there are ‘four macronutrients’ of sleep: quantity, quality, regularity, and timing. I use the Garmin Venu to better understand my sleep duration and quality over time. For example, a typical goal of mine when starting a new phase of work is to improve my sleep, and the use of a sleep tracker enables me to measure this. Perhaps more importantly, I try to avoid paying much attention to day-to-day variability in my sleep score, a topic we’ll discuss further in the psychology of wearables.
Nutrition Tracking
As discussed in “The Nuance of Nutrition,” we’re primarily focused on our macronutrients, micronutrients, and total calories when it comes to nutrition. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the technology to automatically track these, but our body gives us pretty good indicators through how we look, how we feel, and how much we weigh. Continuous glucose monitors (CGM) provide another option for tracking “nutrition.” These small devices provide live measures of blood glucose levels, providing insight into our metabolic health. CGMs are the most intrusive of wearables but are particularly effective for those with metabolic concerns or those who are interested in the realm of nutrition.
Not all health tracking, however, requires a wearable. Keeping a food diary is one of the most effective methods for improving our dietary habits through the same exact mechanism as wearables - what gets measured gets managed.
The Psychology of Wearables
Wearing what the doctor ordered
It’s our doctor’s job to prescribe, not our wearable’s. With hundreds of data points at our disposal, we’ll never lack different ways to conceptualize our health. However, we should avoid letting these insights get in the way of how we actually feel. I’ve been guilty of poor sleep scores causing grogginess and irritability. This isn’t an argument for ignorant bliss, rather, it’s an argument to not let a measurement get in the way of a good day. It’s more important that you’re sleeping better this month than you were last month or that you’re exercising more this year than you were last year. That’s what it’s all about. Using what we learn about our health should enable us to become healthier one step at a time.
Wearing wasted time
The highest demand product of today’s age is not a piece of fitness technology, it’s our attention. Wearables have joined other technologies that continuously fight for our attention. If the goal is to improve our ability to make healthy decisions, it matters far less if we can call a friend on our nifty new watch and matters far more if we’re voting in favor of being the healthier version of ourselves.
Stepwise Strategies
If you already have a wearable, take note of all the tracking features at your disposal and ignore 90% of them. Pick the 3-4 metrics that truly move the needle and begin to track those, checking in regularly to see how they’re trending. Worry about moving the big rocks and let the rest fall into place.
If you’re considering buying a wearable, pick 3-4 metrics that don’t need any fancy technology to be tracked but are in favor improving health. Track these for 2 weeks and check back in. Do you really need a wearable, or is it simply the measurement that allows you to better manage your health?
Next Newsletter
We’ll discuss programming workouts