Be Your Best

Todd Gifford – Success Coach

My 8 year old daughter came home from school recently with a pedometer hooked to her belt and a nice set of brochures talking about “What You Do, View, and Chew”.  It’s kind of a neat program they are using to get kids to exercise/move more, watch less TV, and eat healthier.  One of the ‘tools’ they supplied with the kit is a pedometer — one of those little devices that counts your steps as you move around all day.  The other parts of the kit were mainly data collection grids to track your individual performance.

There is a compelling reason, of course, I am bringing this program up, and it does not have to do with weight loss per se — it has to do with everything we do or want to accomplish.  I have noticed and learned some very interesting things while watching my daughter engage and go through this program over the past few weeks that applies to all of us.

You Pay Attention to What You Measure

As the old sayings go: “You become what you think about” and “Out of sight, out of mind”, consistent measurement that stays in front of you highly impacts what you think about.  And if the saying is correct “You become what you think about”, then it is not surprising that hooking a pedometer to your belt all the time causes you to lose weight over time. 

It is simply amazing what happens when you have a pedometer measurement device on your body.  All of a sudden you are tracking and measuring every move you make, how much exercise you are getting, and the information is tracked in real-time.  Once you have a feel as to how many steps are low, medium, or high for a day period, you now know exactly where your performance stands at any given moment.

Turning Wishes and Wants into Empirical Data

The next logical extension of this is to formulate a personal goal, and now you can measure yourself to that goal in real time.  One of the biggest challenges most of us have, including me, is first setting a clear goal (whatever it is).  But the tougher part is then translating that goal into specific actions and measurable data for each of those actions — empirical data.  This step of taking the goal and breaking it down into tactical pieces that are measureable by empirical data can be tough.  It’s tough for two reasons.  First, the logistics of measurement itself can be challenging.  Because we are on the ‘pedometer/weight’ example, have you ever tried to count calories during each day for a month?  The logistics of tracking that is pretty tough to maintain.  Secondly, we many times are not actually wanting to measure the data for fear of the ‘pain’ caused by knowing what the data will tell us.

If you can overcome the logistical issue and the emotional issue of measurement…

I watched my daughter become very aware of how many steps she could and should try to accomplish during a normal day.  I then watched her start to say to herself — “can I do more than 12,000 steps today?”  Then, she would achieve 13,800 steps during the day and proudly show me how she exceeded her “goal”.  Powerful stuff for an 8 year old let alone for anybody.  The pedometer overcame the logistics issue of measuring every step taken, and my daughter is not old enough to worry about taking too few steps nor does she care about X steps = “good”.  She just wanted to exceed her best previous score.  But I think the bigger point is that she was confident she could exceed the 12,000 steps/day because she had such good real time measurement systems in place right in front of her at all times.  By noon, she could do the math and adjust her behavior to guarantee she would exceed her goal.

The Tough Irony of Empirical Measurement

There is some real irony on empirical measurement.  On the one hand, real time measurement  of empirical  data against your goals is a sure way to meet and exceed your goals.  If you had a ’pedometer-like’ measurement device hooked on you for everything you wanted to meet your goals in, how much better results could you accomplish?  However, do you really ‘want’ all that data constantly measuring where you are at with all those things you consider to be important?  This is a tough one.

I do think we need to attempt to put in place more empirical, real-time (if possible) measurement systems that stay in front of us all the time to achieve greater success, results, and performance.  Whether it is a project goal, long range goal, or just a simple task — knowing where you are at with respect to your goal at any given time allows you to take corrective action right then and there, before you get too far off track.

Creatively thinking of ways to implement better real-time measurement like the good ‘ol pedometer could make a huge impact in whatever it is you want to accomplish.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford