I used to be an extreme Quantified Self adherent. I pricked my finger daily to measure glucose and ketones, tracked every meal and workout, logged every alcoholic drink and supplement, and much more.

(not even all the tabs of that spreadsheet…)

It was useful at times, and I empirically learned a lot about my body — alcohol wrecks my sleep; a stint on keto dramatically improved my body composition; rice and sweet potatoes don’t spike my blood glucose; I respond better to heavy lifting….

But I reached a point of diminishing returns (and still sometimes wonder if the returns were ever that good in the first place). I broadly understood what made me feel good and what didn’t, and the effort of tracking so many parameters no longer felt worthwhile.

I threw it all away, and tracked nothing. But that didn’t feel right either.

So I found a new path. Instead of bottoms-up measuring everything and trying to find insights in the data, I went top-down and asked myself:

On a day where I feel great, what 2-5 quantitative measures are likely to be true?

The answer to that question — your Minimum Effective Quantification (MEQ) — will be different for everyone. Here are mine:

  • I slept 8 hours the night before
  • I walked at least 12,000 steps
  • I did at least 100 pushups in scattered sets of 10 throughout the day (i.e. not part of a concentrated workout)
  • I did at least 4 pomodoros (25 minutes each) of deep, uninterrupted work

If those four criteria (my Minimum Effective Quantification) are true, it’s very likely I feel great at the end of the day.

Now, I simply measure those four each day. I write them down in my notebook — tallying pomodoros and sets of 10 pushups, looking at my pedometer at the end of the day, and logging sleep duration.

Then, each week, I write down how many days I hit the bar, and the totals: how many weekly steps, pushups, pomodoros…

I’m motivated to set absolute weekly numerical records, but more importantly, I try to get all four to 7/7 days each week. At the end of the day, if I’m at 10k steps, I go and walk around. If I’m at 80 pushups, I close out the last 20.

And as a result, I feel really, really good.

What’s your MEQ? Is it 60 minutes of yoga? Less than 2500 calories? An hour talking to friends or family?

Try answering the MEQ question for yourself and log your results for a couple weeks — adding an evening question of “how good did I feel today?” I bet you’ll like it.

A caveat: of course, quantification has multiple purposes:

  • feeling good daily
  • measuring experiments
  • improving/tracking health or performance long-term

The MEQ process is great for feeling good daily. But it doesn’t serve the others.

For the experiments: if I’m changing my diet, I might track my meals. If I’m adjusting my exercise routine, I’ll keep a closer eye on body composition. If I’m taking a new supplement, I’ll measure the relevant markers or outcomes.

For the long-term impacts, I still get regular blood and other biomarker tests and track my progress.

But all of that is low-lift or only occasional. The MEQ process is about getting the most out of a simple daily ritual, and making sure you feel great every day.

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