Self-Knowledge

Perfect self-knowledge is a dot on the horizon that’s always in view but seldom seems to get any closer, no matter how rapid or ardent our pace.

Unusual moments in time tend to amplify our propensity for navel-gazing, but for many of us the desire to know more about ourselves, why we do what we do, how we measure up—or fail to—and how we might improve according to various metrics is a constant background impulse.

It’s part of why we buy fitness trackers and thermometer-rings.

It’s part of why we journal and go to therapy.

It’s part of why the self-help book industry tends to flourish even when the rest of the industry is hobbled, and why concepts like mindfulness are so appealing.

I’m a big fan of self-analysis, as it gestures at the possibility of superior output for the same input: better results from the same expenditure of time, energy, and resources.

That’s the theory, at least. Results will vary from individual to individual, and they fluctuate greatly between practice, person, and product.

As with most things, I suspect there’s no one-size-fits-all method of gleaning more or more valuable wisdom about oneself.

The process of refining one’s information-gathering arsenal is as boundless and interminable as the time it takes to sieve the resulting data for meaning. The resulting data, too, is often disconcertingly fuzzy and of questionable inherent value.

That said, I’ve personally found a combination of elements, woven together, to be most useful for my purposes.

Fitness-tracking data melded with freeform notes, jotted down when I clock something unusual; journal entries serving as daily summaries, paired with calendar items that help me recall appointments, predefined habits, and holidays. A muddle of information I can reference for broad insights as to what might connect to what, which results may line up with which consequences, and how the jumbled mess of not-quite-knowledge might be alchemized into useable wisdom.

More often than not, such data points remain free-floating and “useless,” in the sense that they are recorded but tell me very little beyond my heart rate at a particular moment, or how I subjectively felt within the context of a truly unrepresentative collection of externally measurable micro-events.

Every once in a while, though, a few things line up, a few dots are imperfectly connected, and I emerge from my inventory of the pins on my self-map a little wiser—or bare-minimum, a little better informed—and can adjust my thinking or behaviors accordingly.

I don’t think I’ll ever achieve anything close to perfect self-knowledge, but I do think the exercise—the pursuit of this type of understanding—can itself be valuable, as long as we moderate our expectations and maintain a humble sense of the scope, scale, and shape of the undertaking.

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