If you’re in business or management you have undoubtedly heard the saying “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”.
This week I have come to realize just how true that is for almost every aspect of change!
I have never been one to make New Years Resolutions.
I do, however, in or around the beginning of the year assess where I am and think about how close (or far) that is from where I want to be. This year, more than most years I have a laundry list of things I’d like to change!
Actually, there are very few areas of my life that I wish to remain untouched in 2013. This all fits very nicely with my phrase for 2013:
Nothing Changes Until You Change It.
What I am learning is that if you want to change it you first must have quantified it. For example, I often wax nostalgic about a time when I rarely watched Television. (I watched a total of less than 6 hours a week) However, changes creep in and although I still say “we don’t watch much television” the reality is once I began to track those numbers….I watch far too much!
I look at my body and wonder why I carry such extra poundage….yet when I began to track my daily calories…I eat way too much!
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see the true picture until I measured it. I couldn’t manage it until I measured it!
Measuring my television intake has helped me to be very mindful of what I watch and when (do I really need to see the same rerun of NCIS again?!?!?).
Measuring my calories makes me very mindful of where I want to waste my extra calories….it really isn’t one more soft drink! NOPE! I’d rather have some fabulous piece of dark chocolate.
I am starting to feel as if my life had been spent blindly wondering rather than deliberately acting.
I’m looking forward to beginning my journey of mindfully acting; of managing and measuring!
What about you? What are you doing without thinking? What are you not measuring?
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