You Can Manage What You Can Measure

We’ve all heard the adage that you can effectively manage only what you can measure.  I’ve worked with dozens of companies to identify their Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and how to track them.  Only recently did I begin to put this principle to work in my personal life.

For me, I’ve found that tracking information in three key categories has helped me to retain my focus and keep moving towards my goals.  The constant feedback on my activities helps ensure that I don’t stray too far off track in any area.

Time

I come from a public accounting background, so tracking my time to the nearest tenth of an hour was normal to me. I get that it’s not “normal” for lots of people, but there is powerful information to be gleaned from where we spend our time.  And not just at work.  In the past, I had quite a bit of difficulty tracking my time when I was away from my desk – which was frequently.  But with all of the apps available on the iPhone, this challenge is no more.  I’m currently utilizing Timewerks and love it.

I don’t use it for just my business clients.  Instead, I have configured it such that my “clients” are the main categories of my productive life.  In my last post, I outlined my goals for how I want to spend my time.  Without tracking it, I’ll have no idea how well I’m doing.  I can tell you that when I reflect back and estimate how I’ve spent my day, I’m often quite wrong.  It may seem cumbersome, but takes just a few seconds to record my activities throughout the day (about as long as it takes to post to Twitter).

Money

There’s no silver bullet when it comes to our finances, but I would venture to say that most of us do not function well when we don’t have a handle on where our money is going.  And not even CPA’s are immune; I can promise you that from experience.  We may know a lot, but without the discipline to keep track, our own financial situations can become a mess real quick.  If this is an area where you’ve struggled as well, there’s good news.  Check out Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and Ramit Sethi’s best-selling book I Will Teach You To Be Rich.  They both have great systems for organizing and tracking your finances.

There’s no shortage of tools to help in this area as well.  My husband and I own nine businesses so we’re pretty well tied down to QuickBooks, even for our personal finances.  (I know that’s a bit anal, but what can you expect with two CPA’s?)  For those of you registering a little lower on the OCD meter, tools like Mint.com and Less Accounting would be great solutions.  The important thing is to know what you have, have a budget, and get regular feedback about how well you’re following it.

Health

For most of us, there comes an age where our bodies begin to rebel.  The eating all day, not working out, and not sleeping well starts to catch up to us.  For me, a decade and a half of pushing as hard as I could through college and career meant that I felt far closer to 60 just before my 30th birthday.  But wandering through B&N on the weekend after I’d submitted my resignation from my corporate executive position, I happened to pick up Jillian Michaels‘ latest book Master Your Metabolism.  And it made sense to me.  I started following her advice and strategies almost immediately.

There are literally hundred of tools to help you track your various health and fitness goals.  I’m really a minimalist at heart, so I settled on just two: Food IQ and iFitness.

I enter everything I eat in Food IQ.  It’s pre-loaded with thousands of foods and very easy to add custom foods.  Then I can get a snapshot of how well I’ve followed my nutrition goals for the day – or even adjust throughout the day.  It also has a great weight tracker so I can enter the data as I weigh each morning.  Sitting 25 pounds lighter, I can guarantee that tracking this data has helped me tremendously.  I bet I used to consume nearly 3,000 calories a day; now I do just fine on 1200-1400.

iFitness does the same for your workouts.  You can log your activities each day and get an accurate picture of how well you’re maintaining your fitness level.

If you have goals, but feel like you’re not getting much closer to achieving them, consider tracking your personal KPI’s.  Only you know the critical areas that are important to your success, and hopefully I’ve identified a few strategies and tools that can help you get started.  It takes some time, but the rewards are well worth the effort.