Measure What Matters: How to Avoid Wasting Time by Tracking the Things that Make an Impact

What gets tracked, gets measured. What gets measured, gets improved. But only if you’re measuring the things that make an impact towards your goals.

Those are called Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Anyone who has ever worked in the corporate world or served in the military is more than familiar with KPIs. And with how disastrous it is to make critical decisions using the wrong KPIs.

There are times when focusing on measuring specific events and details leads us to miss what really matters. We get caught up in correlations that aren’t relevant, connecting dots that have little connection to each other and no connection to the desired outcome.

Our brains are hardwired to find patterns in the chaos. This has kept us alive as a species for thousands of years, and allowed us to develop technology built on the patterns that we recognized.

No ancient technology is more predicated on patterns than numbers, which have become so deeply entwined with everyday life, we don’t often realize the effects they have on our subconscious.

Every moment of our lives is measured with numbers, by how much time has elapsed. Such existential dread is unnatural, nowhere else in nature do you find a creature counting down the moments until its death.

Go ahead, try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your computer, your phone and the dashboard of your car.

You have a schedule, a calendar, a reminder on your phone for a doctor’s appointment or a text with a time for a dinner date. Yet all around you, the keeping of time is ignored. Birds are not late. Deer do not fret over forgetting anniversaries.

Man alone tracks the passing of the hour. And because of this, he alone suffers from a fear that no other creature endures. The fear of time running out.

Because counting inevitably leads to counting down.

This fear of running out of time is the underlying tension beneath every conflict, every manmade catastrophe. We seek to hoard more of everything before it’s “too late.”

So, we created an entire language to measure the things we keep. Which is ironic when applied to the concept of time, as we never keep any of it. Even so, measurements serve a purpose.

If you’re building a house with an 8-foot ceiling, you better have a way to make sure the boards are 8 feet long. This is an easy enough task, as the measuring tape doesn’t change. The 8-foot mark will always be exactly 8 feet.

Where the problem lies is when we try to apply measurements to things that are subject to a high degree of uncertainty and complexity.

Many measurements oversimplify complex questions and only partially apply to the outcome we want to change or reach.

Such measurements give us the illusion of certainty and control. Because humans love certainty and control.

Let me give you an example of some measurements we use in society to simplify things which are by nature complex and uncertain:

• We measure career success in salary.
• We measure value by price tag.
• We measure student intelligence by GPA.
• We measure election outcomes first by polls and then by votes.
• We measure attractiveness by feet, inches and pounds.
• We measure victory by keeping score. Either with points, profit or death tolls.

If we’re measuring success by one number, we can do things to change that number and feel like we’ve improved. This makes us feel like we can control complex situations and predict future success.

If you see that 1,000 views earn you $100, you’ll start chasing 2,000 views in hopes of earning $200. Your mind sees a pattern, and makes a positive correlation between the rising of one number and the other.

But there’s a lot more going on besides views.

Writers learn that scaling up their output leads to increased revenue, so they start publishing 2, 3, even 4 times a day. But their earnings don’t increase by the same proportion, which leads to frustration and burnout.

Just because you publish twice as often, doesn’t mean you’ll earn twice as much. The same can be said for followers. Having more followers doesn’t always translate to more readers.

If you’re going to track anything as a writer on here, let it be your subscribers and the amount of engagement your stories you receive on average. Don’t get lost combing through data that ultimately doesn’t matter.

Data is a word that gets thrown around a lot in the present day, a reflection of man’s supplanting of what is natural with the artificial. Our entire world is now founded upon data.

“Studies suggest” is the scientific equivalent of “Trust me, bro.” This becomes laughably obvious once you realize that scientists define the nature of the universe by bickering about it. Perhaps this is why we see so many headlines about obvious implications juxtaposed with the words “Experts Baffled.”

But the only data that matters in the realm of measuring success, whether that be on Medium, at the gym, or in a war, is evidence. Evidence is data that tells a story.

So we see that just because you can quantify something, doesn’t mean you understand the greater context.

Take success for example. How do you define it? I bet if I asked every single one of you reading these words to give me an answer, I’d get as many possible variations on the concept as there are minutes in a week.

But the truth is, the average person, when not called upon to answer publicly, associates success with a dollar amount. It’s only partly their fault, society has trained them to think this way since birth.

It’s easy to measure career success in salary. Many people lean on that entirely. That’s the right way to go, if your only definition of success is solely the number in your bank account.

Whenever we simplify something complex, we should expect to lose nuance in the process. Information has a tendency to degrade as it’s downsized, just as an image file loses quality when it’s compressed. Look for what you’re missing. And if everything is constantly changing, pay attention to what remains the same.

I believe a lot of people confuse managing uncertainty with establishing absolute certainty. This is the birth of dogma.

When you look at your stats next, resist the urge to trace every positive correlation. Instead, look deeper, find what isn’t obvious. Look beyond the data and find evidence.

If you apply this to other areas of your life, you will see far more improvement than the superficial rituals of checking boxes and keeping tallies. Data isn’t truth, it’s just an observation. But evidence…

P.S. The people and things that come into your life are never late. They arrive at the precise time you’re meant to meet them. Which is often the moment you find yourself most in need of them, whether you realize this or not.