What Science Can’t Measure (And Why That’s a Good Thing)
Hello Friend,
Have you ever looked at your screen time report or your credit score and felt like a failure? Or maybe it was a test result, a personality type, a productivity tracker that make you feel a little smaller than you did before?
You’re not imagining that feeling. And you’re certainly not alone. Because most systems around you—algorithms, metrics, institutions—are built to measure you.
Not understand you. Not support you. Just measure. Coldly.
But the problem is: They’re using the wrong ruler.
Why You Feel Like You’re Falling Short (Even When You’re Not)
Our modern society isn’t optimized for human complexity. It’s optimized for what can be tracked, scored, and sold. So, it’s no surprise we’re seeing an epidemic of “not enough.”
According to research data:
A 2023 global review found that up to 60% of users experience negative self-comparison and diminished self-esteem while using social media.
A 2024 national survey showed that 53% of U.S. teens feel pressure to “be exceptional and impressive through their achievements.”
43% of adults say they feel more anxious this year than they did last year (American Psychiatric Association).
We are being measured constantly:
By step counters and smartwatches
By productivity trackers and algorithms
By comparison culture and performative metrics
By institutions that mistake “data” for “identity”
But here’s the fact that rarely gets said out loud:
The systems that keep measuring you benefit when you feel like you don’t measure up.
Because if they can reduce you to numbers, they can control the story. And if they control the story, they can sell you the solution. And keep you chasing it.
But if that’s the wrong ruler…
What’s the Right One?
So what’s the right ruler?
Well, it’s certainly not your follower count, your grades, your income bracket, or your mental health app report. It’s not something external.
The right ruler is internal. Living. Human.
To find the right measurement for you, try asking these questions:
Rhythm instead of ranking.
Are you moving at the pace that feels aligned to your body, your energy, your truth?Direction instead of destination.
Are you growing toward what actually matters to you, not what’s trending?Resonance instead of results.
Does your life feel honest and alive or optimized for optics?Self-reference instead of self-comparison.
Are you becoming more you or just trying to win someone else’s game?Wholeness instead of performance.
Are you honoring your entire self (thoughts, breath, stress, meaning) and not just your output?
The right ruler isn’t something handed to you. It’s something you can decide. And when you do that, the picture of your life changes, because the frame of what is important is truly your choice.
And isn’t it simply a miracle that you have the ability to make that choice?
The Science of Your Immeasurability
There’s more to this theme of measurement…
In science, there’s a concept called the coastline paradox, where the closer you try to measure a coastline, the longer, more chaotic it becomes. What looked clean and finite from afar becomes infinitely long and immeasurable the closer (or deeper) you look.
The same is true of you.
When more we try to measure the depth of any part of you with tidy, finite categories, the more impossible it becomes:
Your brain? It’s more complex than any supercomputer, with 86 billion neurons and over 100 trillion connections.
Your biology? It’s entirely unique down to your fingerprints and retinal patterns.
Your experiences? Dynamic. Emotional. Completely unrepeatable.
You’re not a formula. You’re a living edge. A wild pattern. A mystery in motion.
So when you try to measure yourself against a cold, limited, robotic metric, it’s literally forcing a square peg into a round hole.
Reclaim Your Mind & How You Measure It
So, if you’ve been feeling behind lately… If you’ve been judged, rated, scored, or sorted and walked away feeling small… It’s not clarity you’re feeling. It’s conditioning.
But your body already knows how to recalibrate.
Your mind already knows how to see through noise.
You were built to think. To discern. To feel when something’s off.
You don’t need a performance upgrade.
You simply need space to be more human.
And I believe this:
The pendulum is swinging back.
History is returning to human value.
And every one of us who pierces through the narrative, who sees the system for what it is and steps outside it, helps swing that pendulum back a little further and a little faster.
You don’t just reclaim yourself. You help rehumanize our culture and our future.
This Week’s Wonder
If this newsletter resonated with you, I think you’ll appreciate some of this week’s 1-Minute Wonder videos:
Monday: Why comparison is a shortcut to feeling small
Tuesday: How your brain rewires with every thought
Wednesday: What your fingerprints reveal about your biological originality
Thursday: How no one has ever (or will ever) live your life
Friday: Why even science can’t measure you
Saturday & Sunday: Why nature’s patterns never repeat, and neither do you
Until next week, stay well & wondrous,
~ Kay