If you listed the habits of successful people, tracking and measuring would be near the top of that list. I see it with people, companies, and teams that I work with. I see it in my own behavior.
When the Gotham Gal started making angel investments with our personal capital nearly a decade ago, I put together a spreadsheet to track all of them. That spreadsheet is now almost 100 rows long. If she wants to know how it is going, I can give her the numbers ten different ways. And we do that from time to time. A portfolio review of sorts.
When our best portfolio companies start building a new product or feature they scope out how much investment they are going to make in this new product or feature and they build a base case for what the results of this investment will be. They instrument the product or feature to make sure they can track the results they expect to get. And they track the actual investment vs budgeted investment and they measure the actual results vs the expected results. Not only do they know how they did versus expectations, they also know whether they got a positive return on the investment or not. This informs how they approach the next investment.
I see people doing this with their health, their education, their finances, and, most commonly, their work.
Technology helps immensely with this desire to track and measure things. From google sheets, to Fitbit, to Duolingo, to Foursquare, I find myself tracking and measuring more and more of my life every day, and its easier and easier to do so.
But technology alone will not get you there. You have to want to do this. Some of that is learned and some of that is innate. But it can be taught. I’ve tried to pass my track and measure habits on to our kids. And it makes me happy when I see them doing it.
If you want to get sharper and better at something, track it and measure it. It will help you do that.
