I've found that I'm actually a lot happier not tracking all this stuff about myself. I was tracking my sleep, my running, my eating, my stress, my time, etc. Then a few months ago decided that I needed to focus more on living life and less on just checking in to it.
I think that finding your optimal level of data tracking, or even ramping it down after building a habit is key to these sorts of things. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff, really. The thing is that the cost side is being changed by the fact that much of the data collection can be automated these days, and hopefully the analysis side can be automated as well, so that you don't have to focus as much on the numbers.
Right. How much you track and what you track is extremely important. For example, I was massively more motivated to exercise after I started actually tracking my performance. I'm a skinny nerd and my goal was to gain muscle mass, and on previous attempts I'd given up in frustration after I didn't gain any weight over several weeks. Rationally I knew the exercise had to be having an effect but it was still demotivating.
But when I started tracking I found that while my overall weight wasn't changing, my percentage of body fat was dropping, indicating that I was in fact gaining muscle. It's not like this was technically new information, but seeing the numbers triggered some sort of response in me which made it very easy to keep going to the gym.
This is a prime example of how QS is supposed to work. Many people talk about deliberate practice, but the truth is, you can't practice deliberately unless you are tracking what you want to change. Of course, the other half of deliberate practice is knowing the most effective way to induce change, but much like in programming, how do you know it is working if you aren't tracking/testing it? Temet nosce.
I find it useful if it's mostly automated. I use a basis band for sleep & activity, and a fitbit aria scale for weight. It being automated doesn't stress me out and it's useful to have a history to see trends.
I also find it fun to start some runkeeper app when I go on bike rides, and that only takes about a minute or two before I start it. I never actually look at the history of my cardio workouts, but it's fun to have the stats while I'm biking, and to see a map of where I went after I'm done.
My problem is that the tool I used isn't automatic. I just got too tired of pricking my skin for glucose tracking, noting down my weight, and resetting my pedometer everyday.
May be it was because you were tracking too many things? I think it is like tweeting/taking photos etc - done sparingly, it might be really useful (especially when tracking only important things), doing it too much might feel like a chore.
