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Numbers have power and meaning - and I’m not talking about math here, just numbers themselves. Math is a whole different beast.

Ok, maybe it is not "just" numbers, but I’m talking about numbers as metrics. 100 is just a number, but it means completely different things if we’re talking about kilos or euros. The same number carries different weight and meaning for men versus women, for heavyweight lifters versus runners versus doctors. Numbers gain their power when they have context and information. They help us make plans ("I’ll save 100 euros monthly"), they can discourage us ("How did I reach 180 kilos? I was 80 just two months ago"), they show our progress ("We’ve grown our customer base by 20%"), and they can bring satisfaction ("Finally reached my goal weight of 75kg!").

Numbers vs. Metrics

Numbers by themselves don’t help us as much as numbers with units. And numbers with units are less useful when isolated. When we can compare numbers (against our history or others), that’s when they really shine. They provide a sense of progress and status. If the number moves, depending on the direction and what it measures, we feel better or worse than before - we become happy or frustrated.

If our numbers are better or worse than those of other people, we develop a sense of status, achievement, or belonging ("I’m now a runner because I managed to run X km in Y minutes").

Context Matters

Metrics are great, but only if we understand them. And for that, we need information and context. Is 100 kg body weight good or bad? It depends on your muscles, your stature, your body composition, your gender, your physical activity, your health, and many other factors. Many studies[1] show that focusing solely on weight can be misleading. The same applies to everything else. Is saving 100€ good? Sure! Unless you’ve stopped eating to save that money.

There are countless examples of how numbers help us when we understand them in context with sufficient information. I want to emphasize the words "context" and "information" again. In my last reflection, I wrote about information access, and before that about [the power of defaults](/the-power-of-defaults).

We now have access to abundant information (in much of the world, at least), but it’s so easy to avoid engaging with it thoughtfully (by relying on AI or treating social media posts as gospel). Even with access to vast data and numbers (and I’m sometimes guilty of this too), truly using and understanding them requires effort and time. And putting in work isn’t something everyone enjoys. Even if we frame it as "playing with numbers," it still takes focus and time to understand them properly. Once you do, you’ll be steps ahead of where you were. You’ll likely make better decisions and understand more of the big picture. But it takes time and effort - something we often take for granted or that prefer dedicate to something else.

Technology Changes Our Metrics

Technological advances help us in many ways, but they sometimes make us less capable (AKA dumber and lazier). It’s so easy to skip the work and still get by (at least temporarily) that we don’t notice how this erodes abilities we once had that got us where we are. And please don’t read that as if I were against technology…​ all the contrary. But I would say we need to be aware of how it influences and changes us, for good or bad.

The E-bike Example

A basic example is comparing an e-bike and a regular bike. I have both. For a specific route, my regular bike took me 30 minutes. Then I got an e-bike (a cargo bike) that took just 25 minutes and required less effort. Great! I arrived faster and sweated less.

Meanwhile, I got a smartwatch that calculates a PAI score[2] (a numeric value) and learned how it worked. After almost 2 years, my e-bike broke down, so I returned to my regular bike. Suddenly, my PAI jumped by 140 points in a single day!

That number means nothing if you don’t know what PAI is (again: numbers, context, and information). It’s a metric that quantifies your physical activity - like an index where higher is better. It calibrates according to your heart rate, meaning that as you get fitter, you need to work harder to earn the same points. With the e-bike, I was getting fewer than 10 points daily, sometimes none. Now I’m earning 140 points for essentially the same journey. Same distance, different tool, vastly different health impact.

E-bikes offer substantial health benefits, with research confirming that riding an electric bicycle provides significant health advantages compared to remaining sedentary.[3]

Choosing Better Metrics

So let’s extrapolate. If there’s such an enormous difference in health impact just from my choice of bike, what might happen if I change the metrics I use to optimize other aspects of life?

What if I coded with the metric of "write once, well-commented and documented" instead of "fast and under the make-it-work mentality"?

What if you read with a note-taking, explain-to-others approach? You’ll take longer, certainly, but you’ll also gain more from the same activity! Instead of reading a book 4 times and quickly forgetting the material, you’d have notes you understand and perhaps even a blog post explaining your understanding that you can share with others. When your memory gets foggy, you can refer back to these resources. The information gets embedded in your brain because you dedicated time, discussed topics with yourself, reflected on them, and made meaningful notes. It wasn’t wasted time - but this requires measuring success by different metrics, not just time and money.

Numbers Reveal What We Miss

Sometimes metrics help us understand things we wouldn’t otherwise grasp, like my PAI score. I noticed I was more out of breath covering the same distance on the regular bike, but I wouldn’t have thought the difference was so huge without seeing the numbers.

The same applies to habits. If you track time spent (automatically, like with screen time and app usage features), you’ll likely discover you don’t have a time problem but a priority and planning problem. It’s not that you don’t have time (though some genuinely don’t, and they should ignore this part), but that you haven’t set goals or metrics to follow. Three hours daily for a year adds up to 1000+ hours! That’s quite a lot and makes you (hopefully) reconsider the impact of certain decisions.

But ultimately, this reflection is about numbers as metrics and their power.

What do you think? Do they impact your life?

1. Misclassification of cardiometabolic health when using body mass index categories in NHANES 2005-2012

2. https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/personal-activity-intelligence

3. There are may studies about this. Here are a couple: Systematic review and meta‐analysis evaluating the effects electric bikes have on physiological parameters, Effect of E-Bike Versus Bike Commuting on Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Overweight Adults: A 4-Week Randomized Pilot Study