It’s easy to get lots of data on your activity, food and sleep. It is also easy to fall into the trap of relying on the data instead of your own awareness or chasing the data, always focusing on collecting more.

I sometimes get annoyed when my phone battery dies while out on a walk. “I didn’t get credit for my steps!” Wait a minute, I took the steps. Do I need to track the steps to get the benefit?

The real value of the data is learning what works well for you and what does not. Once the lesson is learned, you do not need to track the data. With my various data experiments, I have learned a few things:

• When I go to sleep by 1030pm I feel better the next day than if I stay up past 1100, even with the same amount of sleep.
• If I stay up really late or drink too much wine, my heart rate variability is really bad the next day.
• If I consistently feel unwell after eating, I have probably gained more than 10 pounds.

If you are using apps or a journal to track your data, what have you learned?