I’m crazy successful. Ask anyone. Or at least … ask me.
Am I the only one who thinks I’m successful? It might just be. But if I think I’m successful, isn’t that all that matters? Who are we trying to please anyway? I’m as happy as a clam in shallow waters off the coast of Barbados. Now that’s success! Right?
OK, fine. I live in La La Land. Totally admit it. Card-carrying citizen.
It turns out, it does matter. It matters because I don’t know how I’ve been doing or where I am or even where I’m going. I don’t measure results terribly deeply, so I don’t know if I’m doing better or worse than I was before. Does it matter? It does if you want to improve–or at least quantitatively understand that you’ve improved.
Then you might get into some interesting topics like what worked and what didn’t. Maybe even why something worked and how much it helped.
You see, dear reader, my dear listener, I’m on a new path in my life and although I have bundles of energy and I prance down the yellow brick road in unabashed glory, I actually want to know how I’m doing. Here’s the thing: I want to know how I’m doing so that I can get even better.
It’s March 30. Tomorrow is the end of the month. I hereby declare, ooh yuck, sounds so official. Here goes, I hereby declare, publicly for all to hear, that I will pursue a path of measurement, of progress, of reporting in such that I know what I have been doing has worked or not worked or needs work.
What to Measure?
is it just money? Just dollars or Euros? How else can we measure? I’ve written posts long ago about the weighted value of joy. Earning a little money for something I love doing is more important than earning more money for something I don’t like doing. But then there’s that whole food on the table issue. We have to make money. Unless we live on a compound in the woods and collect berries, we have bills to pay and there’s a good chance it’s you, yes, you, reading this who has to at least contribute. Oh yeah, me too.
So how will this work? I don’t know. I’m going start tomorrow and see if I can calculate how this month went. I’ll start with money and see if I can figure out how to value the weighted averages of happiness. When I get that done, I’ll sell the patent to the stock market and I’ll be able to put that in the win column.
This is going to be interesting. I would say fun, but I don’t know. I’m hesitant and a little weary, which is a good thing because that means there’s change involved.
- What Gets Measured Gets Done — Tom Peters
- What Gets Measured, Gets Managed — Sebastian Marshall
- 3 Way-Better Ways To Measure Your Success — The Muse, Forbes
- 6 Steps to Creating Your Own Measures of Success — Teawna Pinard, The Huffington Post