“What gets measured gets done.” No. Peter Drucker didn’t say that. The original quote was, “What gets measured gets managed.” Oh. Wait. That’s not it, either. It’s “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” But apparently Peter Drucker never said that either.
Why are we so obsessed with measurements, then?
Well, because under the right conditions they can really help.
Almost every day, I step on a Bluetooth scale and record my weight in an app on my phone. From April to November of 2019, I lost more than 20 pounds.
By February of 2023, I gained it all back, plus at least ten more.
And I have the daily records to show exactly how it happened.
I had faithfully measured my weight almost daily, but that wasn’t enough to keep it down.
What changed in 2019? Why did I go from losing weight to gaining it back?
I stopped tracking what I ate.
I was still measuring results, but I had stopped measuring my behaviors — my habits.
But a year and a half ago, I started tracking what I ate again. I have a daily calorie budget, and I record the ingredients and my portion size for everything I eat. Measuring my behavior against a target, I reached my target weight in November of 2023, and now, several months later, I’m still within the five-pound range that I set as my goal to sustain.
My calorie targets aren’t public. Nobody else is checking up on me to see whether I’m staying under budget. But if I want the external results I’m after – like health, energy, and clothes that fit properly – I need to take my behavior targets seriously, not just my result goal.
Do you have a result goal? What behavior targets have you set that will lead to that result? How are you measuring that behavior?
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