A Call to Arms: Start Measuring the Right Things. The IMPORTANT Things.

I—the founder of Stomp—recently transitioned back to a flip phone. Yes, an old-school flip phone. If you were born after 2000, you might not even be familiar with the technology. I still keep my smartphone around for tasks that absolutely demand it, but my normal, everyday phone is now a TCL Flip 2—which I’m pretty sure is marketed toward the 60-and-up age group because of its massive buttons.

It's a phone. It makes calls, it sends texts, and I can even access my email with it. What it doesn't have is GPS, Uber, parking apps, or a mobile wallet. But most importantly, it doesn't have Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, Twitter, Bluesky, or YouTube... And as such, I no longer find myself staring blindly at a screen for hours.

I also ditched my Garmin app, my Whoop app, Strava, and the leaderboard app for my gym.

Well, why do those matter? Because just like social media apps, fitness apps gamify your daily life. But they also carry an unexpected consequence: constant, constant, constant comparison.

Do I have enough followers? Did I get enough likes? Do I look like that supermodel? Did I run further, go faster, or do more than the other people on the leaderboard?

As the expression goes, "Comparison is the thief of joy." I’ve learned—and am still learning—just how true that is. I find myself much more immersed in learning and enjoying things when I can only compare my performance to my own past self.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a self-proclaimed data nerd, and I love collecting data to track improvement. But on my own individual journey, I am discovering that most of the data we collect is absolutely useless.

The question I have started to ask myself with all of these tools and measurements is simply this: Does this actually improve my life?

• Did getting first on a workout leaderboard improve my quality of life?
• Did achieving a “green” recovery score improve my quality of life?
• Did getting more likes on a post improve my quality of life?
• Did chasing the longest Strava segment or the fastest Zwift route improve my life?

The answer to all of these is a resounding no. At least for me.

Through this process, I’ve started to rediscover where I actually find joy. I like learning new things. I like failing. I like improving and getting better. I go to the gym to improve my performance, but only compared to where I was yesterday. And honestly, I’m having a lot more fun measuring the things that really matter—the things that don't come from a smartphone or wearable tech.

Now, my daily checklist looks a bit more like this:

• Did I move my body?
• Did I do something that made me smile?
• Did I do something that scared me?
• Did I learn something?
• Did I spend meaningful time with my wife?
• Did I spend meaningful time with my kids?

These are way more important KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to me. What I am learning about myself and the way I interact with tech is that the more time I spend on a smartphone looking at superfluous datapoints that don’t matter, the less focus and time I have to work on the metrics that actually do.

I’m not advocating for you to blindly follow in my footsteps. But I am advocating for a little self-discovery. Truly sit down with yourself to understand what actually fills your cup versus what is just an unneeded distraction.

To put it concisely, my call to action is simple: SIMPLIFY.