Goodreads and smartwatches have the same problem, so I have given them both up

*Huge amount of thanks goes to Olly who featured my post about media in his blog <3*

There are many people who have stable and healthy relationship with tracking their data. I am not one of them.

And exactly the tracking lies in the heart of both Goodreads (to be honest, in any comparable application/website) and smartwatches. They allow one to look back on personal performances be it number of pages read or hours slept. This drove me mad.

I had been using Garmin for years solely for sleep&sport stuff, like steps done, km ridden, calories burnt, stages of sleep. The more sport I did, the more anxiety I got from all this data. There was even no need to compare the stats with other people, my own numbers had made me feel quite inadequate. The anecdote goes, that once you wake up in a good mood and then look at your watch, that aggressively says your sleep was garbage, you believe it. At least, I did. And this small thing could ruin the whole day. And it did it way too often.

The same goes for Goodreads. Pressure to read more, and now due to gamification and challenges to read specific books, can quickly spiral one down. I generally dislike social media, but the one with embedded competition is a nightmare. The quality of books made way for the quantity and this is a known problem. People want to hit their reading goal, tis natural. At one point it is highly likely that it becomes the sole purpose, though. You read to complete or compete and not to enjoy. 

Data in general can be abused for flexing. There are no tangible metrics for things like humour and kindness, but there are numbers of watts while pedalling or how many book you can finish in a month. This gives feeling of accomplishment and worthiness, while we all forget that the numbers give us only the part of the part of the part of the jumbled puzzle. There are instances where a good Garmin is necessary for serious training, or a reading statistics helping to maintain personal archive. These things are not inherently bad but neither are they good. These are tools. 

One of the problems of our society’s that tools change their role and become ubiquitous. I bet you cannot imagine, how people used to live without smartphones. Or how they rode bikes without GPS. Or how they stayed fit without knowing HRV. I asked myself these questions and got some funny insight - sometimes we invent problems to sell solutions. Is it really nice to have a gimmick on your wrist that bullies you to move? Yes, but the trade in is losing the ability to hear one’s own body. Does having a proof of reading 100 books/year elevate your social status? On the platform itself and social media probably yes as well. But is boosting your ego constantly seriously makes your life better? After being stuck in this situation, my answer is no, those are not long-term benefits. 

Do I suggest that you ditch your Garmin for a Casio as I did it? Nope 🙃

Is the aim of the article to make you delete your Goodreads account? Again, nope 🙈

But I wish that more people could genuinely ask themselves, why they use this or that thing. What does it bring? And if one notices stress and rising anxiety, that they could pinpoint the stuff that sips the fun out of life. For me it was all kind of stats. The only number I am a slave to is my salary, and it is more than enough in this timeline.