Measuring the Immeasurable with Triangulation

Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, reality is often far more complex than our ability to measure it. Before we had Whoop and other data driven quantified-self products, imagine trying to measure your daily readiness for training. How would you measure it? Would you “measure” it just by how you feel? Any high performance individual knows that there are days you feel like crap where your training numbers are remarkable and visa versa. 

I’ll never forget how the good folks at the Art of Breath addressed this issue. They called it “triangulation”. While it’s imperfect, the method is so powerful that they encourage you to take any three metrics of readiness (2 quantitative, 1 qualitative) to “triangulate” readiness. For example, you could track your readiness to train for the day by plotting 1) your resting heart rate (quantitative), 2) timed exhale (quantitative), and 3) mood (qualitative). While it isn’t perfect, the aggregate of these three qualities gives a fuller picture of readiness. After all, this is a smaller expression of the aggregated data points that a service like Whoop is doing, anyway. 

Triangulation is a method for better understanding any complex, subjective measurement. In fact, my other company is a creative agency called Agency : Standard and we use triangulation for brand development in our A:S Multi-Sensory Brand Inquest to help companies better understand a brand through specific sense perception. This is invaluable because even someone who knows their brand intimately like a founder would have a difficult time answering the question, “What is the visual representation of your brand?” But, if I choose a trio of questions like:

1.“Describe your brand’s bedroom.”

2.“If your brand was a scene in a movie, what would it be?”

3.“What are your brand’s pantone colors?” 

As imperfect as it may be, this triangulation gives a more complete picture that we’d otherwise have. Whether you’ve got something complex or subjective you want to make more clear, courageously create a triangulation. I bet you’d be surprised at the results.