Data over Intuition

We’ve become incredibly skilled at measuring ourselves, yet terrible at sensing ourselves.

Smart watches and rings have turned the body into a live stream of data - constantly tracking sleep, heart rate, stress, calories, steps and recovery.

There is something ironic about devices designed to improve wellness that can keep us in a constant state of self-monitoring. Does more data equal more control? Or does it create hyper-vigilance instead of health? Rest becomes performance. Sleep becomes a competition. Movement becomes quantified productivity rather than presence, joy or instinct.

This is where we have arrived culturally: deeply informed, endlessly measured, and increasingly disconnected from ourselves.

These wearable devices are sold under the language of ‘wellness’ and ‘self-awareness’. But they are not actually teaching us how to be in our bodies. They are teaching us how to monitor them.

The body used to communicate through sensation: hunger, fatigue, intuition, desire, tension, calm, motivation, energy. We learned through relationship with our body over time - noticing patterns, emotions, appetite, movement, energy, rest, rhythms.

The deeper issue is that metrics are replacing relationship. The human body evolved with an internal feedback system far more sophisticated than anything technology can replicate. Your body is constantly communicating context: emotional stress, nourishment, burnout, overstimulation, safety, connection. But are you listening ?

Technology tends to flatten complex experiences into measurable data. A watch can tell you your resting heart rate. It cannot tell you whether your exhaustion comes from grief, loneliness, emotional suppression, or simply needing a slow walk in the sun.

So many people are now so disconnected from their internal world that they no longer trust a feeling unless it has been validated externally. Losing the ability to interpret their own signals without technology translating them first.

Ironically, the more externalised awareness becomes, the harder it can be to actually inhabit the body. People are tracking sleep while scrolling until midnight. Tracking stress while remaining completely disconnected from the emotional, environmental and lifestyle factors driving it. Tracking recovery while ignoring the fact that they hate their job and haven’t had genuine rest in months. Viewing food as numbers, not nourishment.

Underlying all of this is the modern obsession with optimisation - the belief that every part of the human experience should be measured, improved and made more efficient. Health is no longer simply about feeling well enough to participate in life, but another full-time job. Tracking, analysing, supplementing, adjusting. The body becomes a project to manage and perfect rather than a place to live.

Some of the healthiest, happiest, and most grounded people I know are not tracking themselves constantly. They move their bodies because it feels good. They rest when they are tired. They eat with presence. They spend time outside. They laugh often. They are connected to people, purpose and rhythm.

This is not to say that all health data is inherently harmful. Pathology testing and investigations are incredibly valuable when used intentionally - helping to identify nutrient deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, inflammation, infections or other underlying drivers of symptoms. In clinical practice, testing can provide important pieces of a larger picture.

But there is a difference in using data as a tool to investigate a problem and living in a constant state of self-surveillance. Pathology does not need to become a monthly performance review of the body. Health cannot be reduced entirely to biomarkers and data. Some of the most important aspects of wellbeing - feeling connected, grounded, calm, energised and present in your own life - cannot be reduced to data.

Maybe the deeper loss is not just the body awareness, but trust. Trust in our own sensations. Trust that the body knows how to communicate when we are willing to listen.

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I hate smart watches