That sounds like the kind of people that gamify their life; reading X books per year, running Y miles, doing Z steps on their step counter, counting calories, quantifying sleep, working in 25 minute timed increments and counting how many you've achieved in a day, number of lines written, commits done, github contribution graph colour / activity streaks, etc.
It's like. Maybe you should find a hobby if you need to gamify things to keep doing them.
I count calories because I don't want to be fat again, having found fatness limiting. It has absolute nothing to do with meeting an arbitrary number and is not particularly gamified either. I need to track calories because otherwise I'll overeat.
This is a bizarre take on goal-setting in general. Would you complain about people who negotiate a raise of X dollars? No, you understand that money has value. Losing weight has value too, as do cardiovascular fitness and getting enough sleep. "Maybe you should find a hobby" is not an answer to me not wanting to be fat. It's a ridiculous non-sequitur. How on earth do you expect finding a hobby to stop me having a heart attack or losing a foot to diabetes?
2. They are talking about people who take the "data-driven decisions" to the extreme, where some of the data either doesn't make sense or doesn't help at all.
You kind of projected IMO. Their comment was absolutely not aimed at people like you who have a concrete goal in mind. They address people who constantly journal a ton of data about their lives (and not using most of it, but they wield the stress it gives them as a badge of honor).
"It's like; maybe you should find a hobby" sounds like complaining, or at least criticism, to me.
I read the reply as a straw man or weak man argument against tracking stats. I don't think there are many calorie counters, or frankly many book journallers or any of the other groups, who are doing it primarily for bragging rights. I reckon almost all of them are doing these things because they see real value in them, and some are incidentally bragging as well. The comment wasn't aimed at me, but it was aimed at a caricature or a handful of extreme examples often used to misrepresent people like me.
It's like. Maybe you should find a hobby if you need to gamify things to keep doing them.