Metric Driven Life

I hate to beat a dead horse as I have talked about this already here, but I just cannot stand the way people set “resolutions”. It makes me think we live in a weak society that throws random, arbitrary goals out into the world and the world goes “ooooo….ahhhhh” and NOTHING HAPPENS. It’s like making a resolution makes you appear like you are actually trying to live a good life when we all know that NOTHING WILL HAPPEN with your resolutions and come the next year, you will be in the same boar.

How long will people stand for NOTHING HAPPENING in their life before they realize that there is SO MUCH MORE out there they can get. You need to put your nose to the grind stone, plan it out, set up metrics to your goal and get after it.

**deep breath**

Resolutions aren’t bad. They just set you up for failure by doing them once a year because you always have the “there is always next year” mentality. One of the main reason that mentality gets create is because there are never any metrics on anything. Look at some of the most typical resolutions people set.

Be healthy.

Lose weight.

Spend more time with family.

Save Money.

Those are fine – but they could mean different things to different people. If you really want to succeed on your resolutions, you need to put metrics on every single goal you set.

Think Metric Driven Life

heart_metricsI see this especially around the new year and the time of resolutions. People are attempting their resolutions for the new years – and it is all good and fun, but 99.999% of the resolutions I see won’t work for people because they have no metrics.

I don’t care what you are doing and what you want to accomplish, if you don’t put hard metrics on what you are doing you will never ever get there. How could you, you don’t know where “there” is without metrics.

Metrics and data is what drives results. You cannot improve if you do not have metrics. It simply isn’t possible. You need to be able to track where you are, make a plan for where you want to go and use METRICS to get where you are going.

Let’s take your health for example. Most people want to lose weight and/or get healthy. That isn’t a metric. Losing 1 pound is technically losing weight. Go to the moon, you will technically lost weight in the scientifically term. Take a big ‘ol poop and you lost weight technically. You need to put a metric behind it. I am XX pounds and want to get to XX pounds. That means I want to lose XX pounds. How you take that metric and use it will determine how you move forward.

Getting healthy is a great one. What does that even mean? Getting health could mean so many different things to different people. That could be stress levels, sleep levels, cholesterol, blood pressure, activity minutes, activity minutes, exercise level, diet, food intake, decreasing food intake…the list could go on and on! How do you know if you “got healthy” without some sort of metric to test on at the end of the year?

If you want to accomplish anything in your life, you need to put metrics on every single thing that you do. And you can put metrics on anything and everything.

One of my goals in 2015 is to walk more. Technically, with no metrics, that could be to the mail box and back every day.

BOOM! Goal met.

But I don’t roll that way. I put metrics on everything I want to do. Walking more means I am up out of this god-forsaken computer chair that I spend why to much time grinding my dreams out in. So I need more than to the mail box and back. So what did I do? I put metrics on it.

10,000 steps a day for 365 days for a total of 3,650,000 steps by December 31st for 2015.

10k steps a day pushes me. I wear a fitbit most every day (add me if you have one!) and I easily get 5k a steps each day. If I want to walk more, I need to double that. If I miss 10k steps one day, I need to gain it back somewhere for the total at the end of the year. Put a metric on it.

Another goal of mine is to increase readership here on TheFearlessHustle.com. Technically, one more person could read it and I get the goal. But that isn’t how I roll. Put a metric on it. 

Increase unique page views from 800/mo to 3000/mo by September 30th 2015.

It took me a year to get to 800, so doubling that growth means 1600. Again – push yourself further than you think – so I double that and rounded down to 3000. That is no easy feat – but doable. Put a metric on it. 

goals_largeBe healthy. I will lower my LDL cholesterol 30 points by the end of the year. I will run a 30 minute 5k by November 1st. I will practice yoga 3x a week for 30 minutes.

Lose weight. I will lose 30 pounds by June 1st, 2015. I will drop my BMI to under 25 by November 1st, 2015. I will lower my body fat percentage to 19% by July 4th weekend.

Spend more time with family. I will dedicate 2 more hours each and every day for play time with my son. I will spend all Saturdays with my family and do all work/chores on Sunday.

Save Money. I will save $5000 by Decemeber 31st, 2015. I will invest $1000 in S&P500 index by February 1st 2015.

If you want it, put a metric on it.

If you don’t, you won’t get it.

But don’t worry – I will be posting next year around this time another blog post very similar to this to make yourself feel better when you don’t put a metric on it, don’t hit your resolution and wander over here to find more motivation to do it all again.

What metrics are you tracking for your goals? Let me know in the comments below. No metrics? Let me know your goal and we will find you a metric.