Self-Tracking

The flip side is, what choice do we really have? We can either try to improve ourselves with measurements that our brains may subconsciously game, or we just give up on improving ourselves.

My personal approach is to try to raise the bar past what a placebo can give me. Which is tough, because placebos can be pretty robust! It probably means I'm going to miss out on smaller-but-still-real improvements, but at least I have a chance to score the bigger ones. I don't know what else to do. Blinding yourself on which wine you are drinking is sort of possible, but a lot of interesting self-improvements can't be blinded even in principle; are you going to blind yourself to whether or not you're exercising?

I'm often more interested in cognitive improvements, but it's really hard to come up with a cognitive measure that is objective and doesn't naturally rise over time as I practice it daily. Waiting for those things to stabilize can be a problem too; it can be months or even years.

Article is much better than the title suggests. Worth a read.