Thank you for this great article Steve. I’ve been getting frustrated with the data overload lately, even things like sleep score I try to ignore but sometimes even seeing it overrides how you thought you slept, how you really feel. I’m trying to get away from it as much as I can and stay in touch with my own subjective feel. I bought a nice fancy analog watch the other day for a wedding and haven’t taken it off since, other than for running where I just leave my Garmin on the clock date page with a beep and average pace readout each km. I’m loving that simplicity. Still wearing hr monitor for the training peaks data but not even having it visible during my runs has been amazing. I used to fixate on my heart rate and look at my watch a few times a minute. But my last trail run I just ran for an hour and then turned around and ran back adjusting my pace slightly based off the kilometre averages. The lack of data is liberating and made it so much more enjoyable.
Wearables helped point me in the right direction when I started. But I think they become a problem when the score becomes the judge. If your personality allows you to treat the data as information, they can be a good barometer. But you still own how you feel.
The 2014 flight study is the part I would put in front of everyone, because it finds the opposite of what the worry usually is. The hands held up. Instrument scanning and manual control were mostly intact. What went was the thinking: knowing where you were, deciding what came next, noticing that an instrument had failed. People brace for the loss of the skill they could watch themselves losing, and the one that actually goes is invisible, because nobody can feel their own judgment thinning. The selection framing is what makes this usable rather than just true. VanderBurgh did not say automation was the problem, he said choosing the wrong level for the task was, which turns it from something to resist into something to operate. And the rule that follows is the most practical line in the piece. When you catch yourself asking what is it doing now, step down a level. Kitchens have the same ladder and the same failure. A cook working off a ticket and a timer can put out the dish all night and still not know what the food is doing, and you find out on the day something is off and there is no number on the pass to tell them. The ones who could read it were never the ones who knew more recipes. They had kept the question.
Also, you don’t need to use all the watch thingies! You can just turn the data fields and haptics off. A few times every training block, me and my buddies will do that (or just tape over the screen) and see who can get closest to our goal workout times. The winner gets a beer or whatever else we wagered to make it fun, and we’ve all still got the previous data for after!
Joel Filliol's "athletes feel, coaches see" is how I've come to use mine. The watch stays passive while I'm running and I go on feel and RPE, then afterwards that supercomputer on my wrist helps me make sense of what my body was telling me. Your last line nails it: the tool should make me a better judge, not do the judging.
My watch tends to provide a guardrail for me. Especially on easy days. If I train without it or set it so that I can’t see metrics during the run (where it only displays the time of day or the map) I overdo it. Nearly without fail. I’ve tried it on and off over the years and every time I have weeks where I have terrible recovery it’s those “no watch/no data” weeks. I will often race without my watch because if I just run without thinking about anything - I always get better paces than I thought I could. It’s like my brain doesn’t understand the difference between “I can keep going” and “I’ve done enough”. Pushing feels more natural than restraint. For me, the watch provides restraint that I seem to lack.
As you know, I hate on measurables as much as you. Nothing spoils a nice walk more than someone telling you about their steps/zones or calories (except someone telling you to listen to a podcast instead of the birdsong).
However, one of our weightlifters works night shifts. He has taken to wearing a tracker because it reminds him that his disrupted sleep pattern does have a REAL effect on his ability to train: it's not just him being 'lazy.' This has stopped him forcing things when tired. I thought that was sensible.
The other point, for runners, is I see them looking at their watches all the time doing the British Milers Club and going for times led by a pacemaker. When it comes to racing, I don't think they are prepared for the hurly-burly and different surges: you know that better than me.
I'm a cyclist, not a runner, and funnily enough using just RPE and HR in my discipline counts as being less automated compared to the norm among those interested in performance. The reason is the widespread use of power meters. I only have that option available to me on my indoor setup, so I'm at a lower level of automation when I'm on the road. Even then, I frequently lapse into looking to my watch. Which is always a bit of a bummer when I should be just enjoying the view, the feel of riding, and just being outside. So I've been trying to emphasize RPE as my primary metric, which doubles as a nice on-the-bike mindfulness exercise.
But, I did just do an uphill time trial that is about an hour long, and a power meter could have been very helpful there. I paced based primarily on feel and definitely went out too hard. The ex-post analysis I got from Strava indicated that I lost about 25W during the second half of the effort. An hour long effort at a threshold-like pace is not something I do all that often, so my attunement to proper pacing in that context is more limited. I realllly want to do that ride in under an hour at some point in my life, so there is a temptation to gear-up to help me get there.
Love this. I started with a simple stopwatch when I got into the T&F team in college and did not upgrade to a GPS until 2017, a Forerunner, which I still have. Once it kicks (which I hope is not for a long time, thank you Garmin....) I will go back to a simple time/chrono watch - as simple as possible. As a person who works in the watch industry (mechancial and now moving into simple quartz) I love analog and hope my fellow semi-Luddites join me in running by feeling, and with good coaching.
Swimming has its own magenta line, and it beeps: the tempo trainer. A swimmer who holds 1:20/100 only while the beeper sets the stroke rate has outsourced the stroke's internal timing to a metronome — and an earlier generation learned the same dependence on the pace clock: remove the clock and the pacing wanders.
The 2014 pilot finding maps onto the pool in a useful way. Manual control (hands, stroke mechanics) held up when automation was removed; the thinking slipped. The swimmer's equivalent: the stroke can look intact on video while the pacing judgment that built it quietly belonged to the device. So the testable version of your question is a 400 with the beeper off, scored by stroke-count consistency rather than split time — does the degradation live in the mechanics of the strokes or in the judgment of the effort?
The beeper also inverts the "Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification" finding in a way worth noting. There, measuring made people do more of the activity but enjoy it less. In the pool, the beeper often gets swimmers to *tolerate* more of the painful middle-speed sets they would otherwise avoid — so the cost may arrive as tolerance rather than aversion. Different surface, same mechanism: the device reshapes the relationship to the effort, not just the numbers.
Which leaves the question: does beeper-paced swimming degrade stroke-count consistency when the beeper comes off — or does the feel hold up the way the pilots' hand-flying did?
The autopilot and flying stuff made me think about how I use Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) when I drive, like 90%+ of the time now. It works really well in almost all situations, and yes I've noticed I'm drifting my mind more and more as I accrue miles. I wonder when the point happens that I won't be able to confidently drive the vehicle anymore? And is that OK with me / use? Interesting things to ponder.
Thank you for this great article Steve. I’ve been getting frustrated with the data overload lately, even things like sleep score I try to ignore but sometimes even seeing it overrides how you thought you slept, how you really feel. I’m trying to get away from it as much as I can and stay in touch with my own subjective feel. I bought a nice fancy analog watch the other day for a wedding and haven’t taken it off since, other than for running where I just leave my Garmin on the clock date page with a beep and average pace readout each km. I’m loving that simplicity. Still wearing hr monitor for the training peaks data but not even having it visible during my runs has been amazing. I used to fixate on my heart rate and look at my watch a few times a minute. But my last trail run I just ran for an hour and then turned around and ran back adjusting my pace slightly based off the kilometre averages. The lack of data is liberating and made it so much more enjoyable.
Wearables helped point me in the right direction when I started. But I think they become a problem when the score becomes the judge. If your personality allows you to treat the data as information, they can be a good barometer. But you still own how you feel.
The 2014 flight study is the part I would put in front of everyone, because it finds the opposite of what the worry usually is. The hands held up. Instrument scanning and manual control were mostly intact. What went was the thinking: knowing where you were, deciding what came next, noticing that an instrument had failed. People brace for the loss of the skill they could watch themselves losing, and the one that actually goes is invisible, because nobody can feel their own judgment thinning. The selection framing is what makes this usable rather than just true. VanderBurgh did not say automation was the problem, he said choosing the wrong level for the task was, which turns it from something to resist into something to operate. And the rule that follows is the most practical line in the piece. When you catch yourself asking what is it doing now, step down a level. Kitchens have the same ladder and the same failure. A cook working off a ticket and a timer can put out the dish all night and still not know what the food is doing, and you find out on the day something is off and there is no number on the pass to tell them. The ones who could read it were never the ones who knew more recipes. They had kept the question.
Also, you don’t need to use all the watch thingies! You can just turn the data fields and haptics off. A few times every training block, me and my buddies will do that (or just tape over the screen) and see who can get closest to our goal workout times. The winner gets a beer or whatever else we wagered to make it fun, and we’ve all still got the previous data for after!
Joel Filliol's "athletes feel, coaches see" is how I've come to use mine. The watch stays passive while I'm running and I go on feel and RPE, then afterwards that supercomputer on my wrist helps me make sense of what my body was telling me. Your last line nails it: the tool should make me a better judge, not do the judging.
Let me share this thing I have recently learned, that aligns well with this article.
It applies to business planning, design, and operation (in all sorts of activities).
The idea is simple: start with the ESSENCE of your activity/design.
Start with the most simple and direct solution.
Do not add complications and tools and overheads and delegations etc for no reason.
When you start simple, complexity, overhead, delegations, tools, etc /if NECESSARY/,
NATURALLY come.
That is, if you want to delegate a business task, or add a complicated subsystem or component to a design,
or use a fancy tool, etc,
it must come naturally out of real need.
It should be justified /naturally/.
Otherwise, the opposite of this approach is bad:
I look at all the fancy tools out there, the third-party firms that offer secondary functions, etc.
Starting with a tools, fancy things, delegations, //overhead reduction// mindset,
is loss of focus on essence of activity.
So when I want to become a dentist, or open a new hospital, or make an airplane,
my sole and PRIMARY FOCUS should be: treating patients professionally, diagnoses & operation & accommodation, and aerodynamics (as an analogy).
This is not against tools and tech; it is about RATIONAL usage of tools and tech.
It also applies to learning and education.
In addition to 'living reality (accepting what it is and interacting with it)', rather than 'living on theories, methodologies, worldviews, etc',
this is a profound idea I am starting to adapt.
Perhaps a memorable quote could be:
'What distinguishes an engineer from a carpenter?
Not the math, physics, and science.
The PROBLEMS they deal with.
A wise carpenter would have to resort to stability analyses and maths if they were making something unusual.
An engineer would be silly and expensive to apply such analyses when making a chair.
Depending on the problem you confront, the right dose of tech, sophistication, and intellect come.'
My watch tends to provide a guardrail for me. Especially on easy days. If I train without it or set it so that I can’t see metrics during the run (where it only displays the time of day or the map) I overdo it. Nearly without fail. I’ve tried it on and off over the years and every time I have weeks where I have terrible recovery it’s those “no watch/no data” weeks. I will often race without my watch because if I just run without thinking about anything - I always get better paces than I thought I could. It’s like my brain doesn’t understand the difference between “I can keep going” and “I’ve done enough”. Pushing feels more natural than restraint. For me, the watch provides restraint that I seem to lack.
As you know, I hate on measurables as much as you. Nothing spoils a nice walk more than someone telling you about their steps/zones or calories (except someone telling you to listen to a podcast instead of the birdsong).
However, one of our weightlifters works night shifts. He has taken to wearing a tracker because it reminds him that his disrupted sleep pattern does have a REAL effect on his ability to train: it's not just him being 'lazy.' This has stopped him forcing things when tired. I thought that was sensible.
The other point, for runners, is I see them looking at their watches all the time doing the British Milers Club and going for times led by a pacemaker. When it comes to racing, I don't think they are prepared for the hurly-burly and different surges: you know that better than me.
I'm a cyclist, not a runner, and funnily enough using just RPE and HR in my discipline counts as being less automated compared to the norm among those interested in performance. The reason is the widespread use of power meters. I only have that option available to me on my indoor setup, so I'm at a lower level of automation when I'm on the road. Even then, I frequently lapse into looking to my watch. Which is always a bit of a bummer when I should be just enjoying the view, the feel of riding, and just being outside. So I've been trying to emphasize RPE as my primary metric, which doubles as a nice on-the-bike mindfulness exercise.
But, I did just do an uphill time trial that is about an hour long, and a power meter could have been very helpful there. I paced based primarily on feel and definitely went out too hard. The ex-post analysis I got from Strava indicated that I lost about 25W during the second half of the effort. An hour long effort at a threshold-like pace is not something I do all that often, so my attunement to proper pacing in that context is more limited. I realllly want to do that ride in under an hour at some point in my life, so there is a temptation to gear-up to help me get there.
Love this. I started with a simple stopwatch when I got into the T&F team in college and did not upgrade to a GPS until 2017, a Forerunner, which I still have. Once it kicks (which I hope is not for a long time, thank you Garmin....) I will go back to a simple time/chrono watch - as simple as possible. As a person who works in the watch industry (mechancial and now moving into simple quartz) I love analog and hope my fellow semi-Luddites join me in running by feeling, and with good coaching.
Swimming has its own magenta line, and it beeps: the tempo trainer. A swimmer who holds 1:20/100 only while the beeper sets the stroke rate has outsourced the stroke's internal timing to a metronome — and an earlier generation learned the same dependence on the pace clock: remove the clock and the pacing wanders.
The 2014 pilot finding maps onto the pool in a useful way. Manual control (hands, stroke mechanics) held up when automation was removed; the thinking slipped. The swimmer's equivalent: the stroke can look intact on video while the pacing judgment that built it quietly belonged to the device. So the testable version of your question is a 400 with the beeper off, scored by stroke-count consistency rather than split time — does the degradation live in the mechanics of the strokes or in the judgment of the effort?
The beeper also inverts the "Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification" finding in a way worth noting. There, measuring made people do more of the activity but enjoy it less. In the pool, the beeper often gets swimmers to *tolerate* more of the painful middle-speed sets they would otherwise avoid — so the cost may arrive as tolerance rather than aversion. Different surface, same mechanism: the device reshapes the relationship to the effort, not just the numbers.
Which leaves the question: does beeper-paced swimming degrade stroke-count consistency when the beeper comes off — or does the feel hold up the way the pilots' hand-flying did?
A piece that cuts through all the nonsense out there. Excellent!
Oh man, what a great article, thank you!
The autopilot and flying stuff made me think about how I use Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) when I drive, like 90%+ of the time now. It works really well in almost all situations, and yes I've noticed I'm drifting my mind more and more as I accrue miles. I wonder when the point happens that I won't be able to confidently drive the vehicle anymore? And is that OK with me / use? Interesting things to ponder.