SUCCESS IS A BAD METRIC

2 minutes ago

4 min read

Hand-drawn Venn diagram of two circles, focusing on the outcome and ignoring the process, with the dark overlap labeled feels productive but is it.

❝Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.❞ -Epictetus

You control the effort. You don't control the outcome.

I'm in my office finishing my 35th book of the year. It feels exciting. I have a goal of 60, and I'm on pace.

Then I think about Steven Pinker. People I respect keep referencing his work. I should probably read him. Then I remember his books are 600 pages long, and I talk myself out of it. That's a month. I could read three or four books in that time.

And Pinker makes you think. I'd have to stop every few pages, sit with an idea, and sketch something out. That's thinking, not reading. It doesn't count toward my goal of 60 books.

So I keep reading shorter books. Books I can finish. Books that get me closer to the number.

A couple of years later, it finally occurred to me that fixating on the annual target was defeating the purpose of reading in the first place. Avoiding Pinker and Kahneman to protect a number meant I was optimizing for the metric rather than what it was supposed to represent. The point of reading is to sit with new ideas and work out how they connect to what you already know. I was measuring the wrong thing, and measuring the wrong thing was producing the wrong behavior.

THE HIDDEN COST OF OUTCOME-BASED SUCCESS

This happens in more places than reading.

Financial success measured by portfolio value. Health success measured by the scale. Career success measured by title. These metrics seem reasonable. It's good to have financial, health, and career goals. The problem is that focusing on outcomes carries a hidden cost: you end up optimizing for the number rather than what the number was supposed to give you.

What's worth doing and what's easy to measure are rarely the same thing. When you optimize for what's easy to measure, you often move away from what's worth doing.

Hand-drawn Venn diagram of two separate circles, what's worth doing and what's easy to measure, arrow labeled rarely the same between them.

WHAT'S IN YOUR CONTROL

Much of the outcome is outside your control. Two people can put in the same work; one meets the right person at the right time, and one doesn't. Luck is real. So are markets, tax codes, other people's decisions, and circumstances you didn't choose.

Defining success by outcomes means defining success by things you don't fully control. That's a setup for frustration regardless of how hard you work.

What you can control: your behavior, your process, your systems, how you show up.

Hand-drawn circle labeled what you can control holding process, systems, behavior, and effort, with outcomes and luck scattered outside it.

The Three-Dimensional Meaning in Life Scale assesses three dimensions of meaning in life: coherence, purpose, and significance. Coherence is the feeling that your life makes sense. Purpose is having direction in life. Significance is the belief that your life has value.

FOCUS ON SYSTEMS

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, writes about this distinction in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. His argument is that goals are target outcomes while systems are the behaviors you commit to regardless of the outcome.

A few examples:

Gunning for your boss's job is a goal. Doing things every day to improve your marketability is a system.

Losing ten pounds is a goal. Stocking your fridge with the right foods and eating well is a system.

Running a marathon in under four hours is a goal. Being active every day is a system.

Goals are largely outside your control. The promotion depends on your boss leaving, the company's needs, timing, and a dozen other things you can't manage. The ten pounds is a moving target; you could be in better shape and weigh the same or more because you've built muscle. The scale doesn't know the difference. And the marathon time depends on the weather, how you slept, and whether your knee holds up, but more importantly, some people use a marathon as a forcing function to get into shape. Once the race is over, so is the motivation.

Being active every day doesn't have a finish line to cross and then abandon.

The system is what you control. And the system, followed consistently, tends to produce better outcomes than fixating on the outcome does.

Hand-drawn equation reading outcome equals process plus luck, with an arrow pointing to process labeled focus here and one under luck labeled not here.

If success is a number, like books finished, pounds lost, dollars accumulated, then you're measuring something that's partly outside your control, partly misleading, and almost certainly not the thing you actually wanted. The number was supposed to represent something. It was supposed to mean you were reading well, living healthily, building financial security. When you optimize for the number, you often lose the thing it was pointing at.

Define success by the behavior instead. Read an hour a day. Eat well. Save consistently. Show up for the work. Those are things you can actually control, and they're much closer to what you wanted in the first place.

You get one life; live intentionally.

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