Monday, February 08, 2016

What Gets Tracked, Gets Done

I love my Fitbit.

My children gave me a new upgraded Fitbit for Christmas.   It not only measures steps (goal 10,000/day but 20,000 in a good day) but it measures flights of stairs (goal 20 flights but 50 in a good one).  Because I live on a hill, when I walk in the neighbourhood, the Fitbit gives me credit for stairs when they are not actually stairs which is how I manage to get 50 flights in.

So why does Fitbit work?  Partly because it tracks what gets done.  Prior to Fitbit, I would track my workouts in a notebook and I still do off an on.

But tracking extends beyond fitness.  The same principle works for any goal.

For example, at Danby I want to come up with an extra $100,000,000 in business.  So I have a book where I track the ideas and the progress.  The challenge with "bigger" ideas like this is they need to be broken down or they can be too daunting.

EG.  We started selling Berghoff in Canada so I put that in for $4-5M.  We opened a factory outlet at our warehouse on Whitelaw Rd in Guelph so I put that in for $1M.  We got a truck to do truckload sales so another $1.5M etc.

So tracking helps get me to the goal.

I am listening to an audiobook now - "The Practising Mind" by Tom Sterner who reminds us though that it is the process - not the goal that is important.  So trying to be more mindful.
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I was approached by a friend who had recently had what he considered to be a big failure (although as with most things, it was bigger in his mind that it was to other people).  He asked for advice on how to get over it.  The following is my email response to him.

2 expressions:

“Fail often, fail fast, fail cheap”.  This makes for success.   Those that do not try never fail and never succeed either.

“having a failure does not make you a failure”

I truly believe much of my success has been because I have failed.  And often I kick myself about those failures because “I should have known better, I should have researched better, I should have…”.  

Time cures a lot.


And it is not how many times you fall down, it is how many times you get up that count.  Shake it off.  It was not a fatal error.  You will not go hungry tonight.  
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Some concerns Xavier is not practising my frugality - surely 1 tissue would suffice.



1 Comments:

At 8:46 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jim, this quote from you has stuck with me for years...still live by it! :)

“Fail often, fail fast, fail cheap”

 

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