Today I want to talk about how hard it can be sometimes to see the positive things in life. I also want to talk about my Withings scale. I really like my Withings scale. It's this Wifi-enabled scale that takes my weight and uploads it to an app on my phone. Dorky, I know.
Let's ignore for the moment whether it's good for me to be concerned about my weight. I probably should just let go and not give a crap. But, I do give a crap. And I weigh myself often - sometimes once a day. Sometimes, I weigh less than the day before. Sometimes, I weigh more. One of the things I've learned is that my brain doesn't really always do a good job of picking out patterns in my life, especially when they're positive. In other words, it can be really hard to see positive change when it a) happens slowly and b) doesn't happen evenly. Some days there's a step back. I think it's common for us as human beings to only remember the negative things that happen. I have a theory that it's because, when we were out in the wild, it was way more important to remember the places where a lion tried to kill us then it was to remember where we saw that beautiful sunset. Anyway, combined with the brain's tendency to want to match patterns, it's very easy to look at a bunch of events in your life and become convinced that things are going right into the shitter, when in fact the exact opposite is happening. And one nice thing about this Withings stuff is that, for at least one tiny aspect of my life, it's able to show me - without bias - that I am clearly, obviously, and fairly consistently losing weight.
Now, this is not a post about weight loss, I hope that's clear. What this is, is a post about progress. Maybe you're trying to quit smoking, or get more fit, or be nicer to people, or find a better career. A lot of the things worth doing in life take a really long time and consistent, measured effort, and don't produce nice, clean results. I'm learning that it's important to look at the big picture; not whether I am better than I was yesterday, but whether I'm better than I was 3 years ago. And I think technology can help. Being able to look at data without the biases of the (kinda broken) human brain really helps in staying confident.