The number of self-tracking devices and apps is growing continuously and there is now a plethora of gadgets available for measuring, interpreting and optimising everything from bodily activities to embodied experiences and emotions. Despite the increased attention paid to the growing field of self-tracking, little is known about the discursive underpinnings of how these devices are designed, and their imagined functionality. Self-tracking devices are often presented as means for users to navigate through the varying temporalities and contingencies of everyday life, and they are often implicitly imagined to solve a series of problems for users. Approaching self-tracking devices through a prism of social theory, this paper advances current understandings within the field of self-tracking studies by drawing attention to how the imagined possibilities of these devices are deeply intertwined with the general characteristics of contemporary late-modern society. In particular, this paper engages with Hartmut Rosa’s concepts ”social acceleration” and ”resonance” in order to understand how the problems that self-tracking devices claim to solve result from the same social processes that make the idea of self-tracking meaningful, while at the same time reflecting on possible alternative ways of engaging with self-tracking.