Identify what you want, then you can measure it.

Have you ever tried to measure the unknown?

It doesn’t go well.

Now, this sounds like a basic concept, obviously, you can’t measure something if you don’t know what it is.

However, you may be surprised by how often we act in contradiction to this basic logic. Many of us say we want a healthy diet, however, we haven’t established what that looks like. So we try to measure the unknown by checking the grams of sugar and calorie count on the back of our groceries ever so often to.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve recently taken on the challenge of intermittent fasting.

This means you don’t eat for a large part of your day, allowing your body to burn stored fat.

The structure I’ve chosen is to not eat for 19 hours and then eating for 5. You can do any variation with the most popular being 8 and 16. Reflecting on the past two weeks where I’ve practiced intermittent fasting I realize I’ve made this exact mistake.

I have not established what I wanted and found myself a)not being able to measure success b) not really getting anywhere in the long run.

The problem, I tried to measure a metric I hadn’t identified.

How often do we try measuring what we have not identified?