{"id":100103,"date":"2018-06-30T19:40:24","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T02:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=100103"},"modified":"2018-06-30T19:41:27","modified_gmt":"2018-07-01T02:41:27","slug":"demetricate-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/30\/demetricate-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Demetricate Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your life shouldn’t be tracked by numbers and percentage points; you should judge the progress of your own life, according to your own scale, your own ruler, your own barometer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Subscribe to ERIC KIM NEWSLETTER<\/a> to know once ZEN OF ERIC drops.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Download PDF: Demetricate your life<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

First question: why do we measure our life, and our self worth via numbers?<\/p>\n

Well, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy. We see a number or a bar graph go up, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to chart or track \u00e2\u20ac\u0153growth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. We get emotional with numbers \u00e2\u20ac\u201dconsider our relationship with our stock prices, the value of our home, the number of social media followers we have, the number of zeros and commas in your bank account, your weight, how much you can deadlift, etc.<\/p>\n

However, to track your progress in life in numbers is silly. Why?<\/p>\n

Well, first of all, numbers aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t significant. Numbers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have personal meaning. Numbers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give us satisfaction or a sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

For example in video games like Diablo, we collect gold along our adventures. Yet, it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gold we want. We want rare items, we want to defeat difficult bosses, and we want to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153level up\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Also even at a certain point (when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re level 99, the maximum level, you get bored, and you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s any more point or purpose. So you either stop playing, or you perhaps build a new character from scratch.)<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Too much of modern life is quantified via numbers. Consider the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153self quantification\u00e2\u20ac\u009d movement that has popped up, in which people try to track everything in their lives (hours slept, their blood cholesterol numbers, etc). But to me, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good concept \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but it reduces the amazing human being into just binary code. And we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so much more than that!<\/p>\n

If we just reduced all food to calorie numbers, protein grams, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153net carbs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, fat, etc \u00e2\u20ac\u201d would food even be good anymore? Could anyone say how good a dish tastes, just by looking at the nutrition numbers on the back of a box? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so.<\/p>\n

Similarly, can you or should you judge someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth by how rich they are, how many social media followers they have, etc? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so.<\/p>\n

The funny thing: you probably have more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153followers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d right now than Vincent Van Gogh ever had in his lifetime. More people have probably seen your photos than all the people in Rome did when seeing the work of Leonardo da Vinci.<\/p>\n

So friend, I think a more meaningful way to live life is this:<\/p>\n

\n Let us seek to make great artwork which impresses us, and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care about the numbers attributed to it.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

To take this analogy further, could you rate the work of Henri Cartier Bresson by how many megapixels his photo files have? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so.<\/p>\n

Do you measure the worth of a philosophers ideas based on how many books they have in their library? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so. Even Nietzsche warns philosophers to not read too many books.<\/p>\n

Do you measure the skill of a rapper by how many records he sells? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so.<\/p>\n

Numbers or popularity don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t signify worth. Otherwise, McDonald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s would be the best \u00e2\u20ac\u0153restaurant\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the world, and Starbucks would be the best coffee in the world.<\/p>\n

\n

Demetricating my life<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

I noticed this happen to me; I got very emotional over numbers.<\/p>\n

For example, when I saw the number of likes I got on my photos go down, I would feel shitty and depressed. Why? I feel like I was getting worse as a photographer \u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhereas in reality, my emotions were just getting toyed with by an algorithm (Facebook and Instagram news feed algorithm).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Since I noticed this, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve \u00e2\u20ac\u0153demetricated\u00e2\u20ac\u009d my life as much as possible. For example:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I disabled statistics on my website and blog the last 4 years, and as a result, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been writing and blogging more freely, with more fun, and with more innovative ideas.<\/li>\n
  2. I deleted my Instagram, and now I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry about perfectly timing uploading one photo a day (exactly at noon time), and now my focus is less scattered, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m less distracted, and I put more focus on this blog and my website portfolio.<\/li>\n
  3. I used \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Facebook demetricator\u00e2\u20ac\u009d plugin to disable all the notifications and numbers on Facebook, and have been using the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153block element\u00e2\u20ac\u009d tool in Adblock ultimate browser plugin to disable page views in my YouTube channel, etc.<\/li>\n
  4. I try to block and ignore subscriber numbers as much as possible. Thus I have less anxiety or concerns about my social media follower numbers. This allows me to focus on trying new things and new approaches in my photography and publishing!<\/li>\n
  5. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look at my savings, and funny enough \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as a result, my savings have actually been going up.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Anyways, just ask yourself:<\/p>\n

    \n If I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t measure myself with numbers, how would I measure myself and my life?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    HUSTLE MEANINGFULLY,
    \nERIC<\/p>\n

    Philosophy<\/a><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Your life shouldn’t be tracked by numbers and percentage points; you should judge the progress of your own life, according to your own scale, your own ruler, your own barometer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_ek_photo_artist_note":"","_ek_photo_thesis":"","_ek_photo_camera":"","_ek_photo_place":"","_ek_photo_human_moment":"","_ek_photo_sequence":"","_ek_photo_question":"","_ek_photo_canonical_claim":"","_ek_photo_ai_summary":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/img_5951-1.jpg?fit=1275%2C2061&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100112,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100103\/revisions\/100112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}