The Analysis of Life

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Yesterday, April 11th, 2024, kicked off the most prestigious tournament in golf: The Masters.

Set in the lush greenery of northern Georgia at Augusta National, the PGA tour major tournament brings out the most prolific linksmen on the planet.

All vying for the coveted green jacket (not to mention the $18,000,000 purse), the 4-day tourney will feature superstars from the likes of last year’s champion, Jon Rahm, to the legendary Tiger Woods.

With the competition at an all-time high, every single stroke counts.

No one takes this mantra more seriously than one of my favorite players and Master’s contender, Matt Fitzpatrick.

Since the age of 15, the Sheffield, England native has written down every single golf shot he has taken.

You see, the ‘baby-faced assassin’ does not look the part of a professional athlete in his 155-pound, 5 foot 10 frame.

He can’t hit the ball as far as some of his NFL-sized tour members like Scottie Sheffler or Dustin Johnson and for his last 10 years on tour, he has been much younger than many of his fellow golfers.

In his mind, elevating his game by a mere .1% can be the differentiator between winning, and losing.

To do so, he rigorously records his golf strokes, swing patterns, and more, analyzing this data to find where he can make even the smallest improvement.

The self-proclaimed data nerd has managed to improve his drive by nearly 15 yards since 2019 and is currently ranked among the top 10 best golfers in the world.

Fitzpatrick has religiously used his data to better inform his golf game. So far, it’s working.

Why don’t we employ a similar strategy to make improvements in our personal lives?

What Fitz is doing is not unique.

In our professional lives, we conduct complex mathematical and statistical analyses each day to answer difficult questions for the companies we work or consult for.

With the help of Microsoft Excel and modern statistical software, we regularly generate surprising and actionable insights to drive up revenues, cut costs, and (hopefully) earn a bigger bonus at year-end.

Yet, we rarely employ these same skills in our individual lives. Why? We spend hours upon hours trying to generate infinitesimal improvements for those we work for but don’t bother to analyze ourselves.

The problem?

A lack of data.

Every week for the past 4+ years, l have journaled about my life.

I can’t remember how or why I started, but I thought it would be a good idea to begin taking inventory before bed, writing down my key thoughts for the day, what I was grateful for, and what I was looking forward to for the next one.

While sometimes rushed, or skipped, or flat-out ignored, journaling fairly consistently over the years has helped me reflect on how my days went and given me a rough idea of where I was headed.

After posting an article a few weeks ago about the 23 ideas that shaped me at 23 years old, a friend from Purdue and former president of my fraternity Mr. David Kratzman, reached out to me with a message.

He told me about a data-driven monitoring system he had implemented in his own life that was radically changing his perspective.

I had to learn more.

For the past year, he has religiously filled out a Google Form he created on his phone that tracks key components of his day-to-day, like his work, hours slept, and mood.

Automatically, the data is pulled into a Google Sheet, where he then analyzes the results and determines the key learnings from his week, the last month, or year.

To me, this was an absolute revelation.

Over the past 4 years, I have written down countless ideas, facts about my day, and my mood, but not in an easily digestible way.

I have thousands of data points on paper but no way of quickly investigating them.

By using very primitive measures of data collection & analysis using my computer, a free Google form builder, and some basic charts, I can gain huge insights into “me”

Without delay, I have begun to track many of these same measures and build out charts to analyze the data of ‘me’, such as my sleep, mood, activity levels, and more.

The constant chaos of our world makes it very difficult to stop and ask yourself, “How’s it really going?”

While journaling or taking a few minutes before bed to think about your day can be a good exercise, it does not lead to any substantial or measurable growth.

However, suppose you were to take measures of different parts of your day, from your energy levels to your protein consumption, to your hours worked. In that case, you may begin to draw some pretty interesting determinations.

Are you happier on those days when you eat greater amounts of protein or drink more water?

How do you rank your mood on average when you work 10+ hours a day vs. only 8 hours?

Do you feel groggy when you wake up after drinking more than 2 coffees the day before?

These are the sorts of questions you could find answers to (as I hope to) if you begin taking a data-driven approach to your daily life.

While the correlation between these variables does not necessarily imply one caused another (Thank you ECON 360), you may be able to draw statistically significant conclusions that drive you to a happier, healthier reality.

While I am only about 2 weeks into tracking key parts of my day in this way, I am already feeling more self-aware about my different moods, what I am eating, and where I am headed.

I can’t say exactly how long I will keep this up, but I hope to post another article in a few months when I have sufficient data to speak on some significant trends I am observing in my life.

If any of this was at all interesting to you, definitely reach out and I’d be happy to share the sort of form I am using.

If you already have a similar system in place, it would be great to see how I can learn from you and improve upon my own.

When Fitzpatrick was asked what was the use in spending so much time trying to demystify his golf game using statistics, especially when the sport is already hard enough, he responded with the following.

In this great game of life, the easiest way to improve on anything is first to know what you’re doing wrong.

Stupid, be damned.

-John Henry

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