I never thought the Fitbit would exactly change my life – indeed, I bought it over the competition precisely because it was the cheapest way to dip my toe in the water of the ‘quantified self’ while still being able to export data that wasn’t in a proprietary system like magic Nikefuel units. (Maybe also slightly out of new toy/ gadget lust.)
But it strikes me that what I’m getting out, while obviously not comprehensive or necessarily even accurate, does have some use to me. It gives me a game to motivate myself, a broad outline of activity and once the data adds up, potentially some interesting patterns to ponder and learn from.
Strangely, one of the clearest signals it sends are days when I don’t do anything. The difference between slightly active and hugely active days is less interesting to me than the binary contrast of seeing which days are a total failure.