In the beginning, it started small: calories, steps, glasses of water. The New Year period, and its punishing resolutions, is traditionally when millions re-examine how they live, often in terms of numbers: how often will you exercise this coming year? How many books will you read? For most people, these resolutions are doomed to fail, and the act of habit tracking – recording the details of our diets, exercise and other routines – only leads them to realise what they didn’t achieve. For others, though, small lifestyle changes are transformative, leaving them, 12 months later, healthier or better read.
Now, habit tracking has taken over our lives. In 2025, it’s trendy – even commonplace – to monitor any and every aspect of our days: our screen time, sleep, daily sun exposure, weekly social time, resting heart rate, meditation sessions, fasting periods, macronutrients. Some of these might feel basic, practically quaint, when you look at the booming market of hyper-specific habit trackers, particularly in the world of wellness, where healthy people spend hundreds of pounds to monitor their gut microbiome, blood sugar and fat intake, wearing monitors around the clock and sending their waste to companies like ZOE, Lingo and Vitl for even more detailed information. In the past year, health tracking “wearables” – such as “smart rings” that record changes in your body temperature alongside dozens of other biometrics – have become mainstream, despite the fact that they can cost £350 before the required monthly membership. (One forecast last year predicted this type of tech market would be worth $325bn by 2032.)
We are told that this type of habit tracking can help us treat our minds and bodies better. That armed with the data they yield – whether personally tracked or outsourced to a start-up – people can form new habits to resolve their newly discovered “problems”. That this isn’t an anxious or obsessive practice – it’s self-awareness. That this is what being healthy looks like.
The rise of habit tracking isn’t surprising. It aligns with a wider cultural shift towards self-help – a symptom of social and economic precarity, as people lacking real support seek cheap solutions – and an individualistic focus on “self-optimisation”. You can see it reflected in the popularity of books such as James Clear’s ubiquitous Atomic Habits and in social media trends such as bullet journaling. Online, influencers, self-help gurus and tech bros encourage hyper-examination as a modern way to live. All of this has caused a knock-on rise in the gathering and sharing of quotidian personal data, be it via apps that are purpose-built to record these minute details about how we live, or on social media, where many go to share their progress (whether it’s to gloat, get tips or post under the guise of “accountability”). Now, our personal habits aren’t just privately monitored or shared among friends, but broadcast to the world and collected by tech companies.
On the surface, this trend may seem like nothing more significant than the digitalisation of New Year’s resolutions. People entered January on self-improvement binges long before social media and the rise of Big Tech. But this habit tracking has become a perennial practice for many, a lifestyle in and of itself. Rather than being encouraged to make minor changes in a few small areas, we are now told that swathes of our lives never previously monitored are in urgent need of intervention – for murky reasons that come under the vague umbrella of “well-being”.
How many will truly benefit from tracking different parts of their lives? The problem with creating new habits is that it’s notoriously difficult: one study found that habits take an average of 66 days to become automatic, but the time span varies significantly – and can take up to 254 days. It’s also disappointing when, as often happens, habits fail to become routine. While becoming a regular gym-goer or especially hydrated requires some effort, the formation of habits such as these requires a level of attention equivalent to a part-time job. It’s hard to imagine that the purported benefits outweigh the gruelling reality of constant self-monitoring.
The whispered promise for creating new habits – whether cultivating the most diverse gut flora or maintaining an unbroken 75-day streak of a daily exercise routine – is a better life, even lasting happiness. But in attempting to smooth down the (supposedly) rough edges of our personhood, we end up highlighting false flaws. The reality is that no one needs to stick to or obsessively monitor the majority of these habits in order to be a healthy, well-rounded person. Instead, this “self-optimisation” traps us in a loop of constant, surround-sound negative feedback – which, of course, benefits those who profit from our insecurities, those who sell us the promise that their tips and apps will finally perfect us, for a low monthly fee, allowing us to finally escape self-hatred. The clever trap is that there is always some new territory in need of tweaking; a better, more flawless version of yourself that you’re only one subscription away from becoming.
Change can improve our lives, and not every piece of health and nutritional advice is toxic. Forming new habits, while challenging, can be rewarding and sustainable in the long term. But the over-examined life is not the only life worth living. Black-and-white, “self-optimisation” thinking obscures the fact that we need some personal scrutiny, without going to such extremes. Tracking all this data feels like learning, maybe even like progress – but a better life will not be found on the other side of it.
[See also: Ethel Cain’s American Gothic]
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