Know Thyself: Count What Matters In Your Work and Life
/“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.” William Bruce Cameron (often attributed to Albert Einstein).
We quantify and count so many things (steps, calories, emails left in our inboxes, code commits, likes), but do we count the things that matter, and do we use that data to improve the things that count? It’s time to focus on the data we already have and take the time to discover how it can help us in our life, education, and work.
Thanks to Anat Itay-Sarig, Ph.D., Ment.io’s Head of Partnerships and User Well Being, for joining me in this post. Ment.io offers an artificial intelligence (AI) discussion tool used by enterprises and universities for remote inclusive discussions.
Time and personal productivity consultants offer many solutions for our overly busy days. Moments of reflection at the beginning and end of the day; the value of prioritizing, focus, and breaks. Mindfulness is receiving increasing attention, as we can see in the Google Trends chart below, but are we being mindful about the right things?
In discussing these issues, we found that we approach these questions in different ways. Terri tends to focus on goals, while Anat focuses more on opportunities. Here, we present both views and look for valuable connections.
Opportunity: Anat’s Thoughts
While I spend my day thinking about how data helps us with our thought processes at work and school, for this post I wanted to expand that focus. What can we learn from experiences in life more generally regarding the way we change or improve? I choose to see data through the lens of opportunities. What do opportunities mean? They can mean opening oneself to the possibility to improve and excel, without marking a set, defined, goal.
The shutdown offers a recent example. With no travel scheduled, I started guitar lessons declaring a very minor goal: I will practice and do my best, and we will see. As the high achiever that I am, I really had to suppress the little voice saying “what are you aiming for?? And when will you get there??” because the truth of the matter is that if I practice properly, I can achieve far more than I can currently imagine. Why settle for the goal of “playing simple songs,” when I get to so much more if I only treat this as an opportunity and not as a goal? Why limit ourselves to only what we can see at the moment? I will know so much more about playing in two months and maybe then it will be more realistic to set the goals that are right for me.
Ment.io’s Analytics
Ment.io does not set goals; the platform provides an arena for us to express what we think and articulate those thoughts. Ment.io invites the users to take a chance and see where it leads with the hope that the discussion will be better for having seen the data. We will be able to improve by learning from others in the discussion, and from the analytics, about ourselves. While Ment.io provides an assessment score that instructors can consider, the real opportunity is personal.
My favorite feature in Ment.io analytics is the “my analytics” page. The dashboard reflects for each user individually who they interact with most, where they excel, and where they need to improve. The dashboard also reveals the agreements and disagreements in general within the group - relative to oneself. I love those analytics since they do not push me to excel, but offer the opportunity to do so. While students can be assessed according to their contribution, it is still a personal choice regarding which element to focus on to improve your assessment. That is still a personal path to improvement, using personal data.
Data to Help Us Craft Our Work: Terri’s Thoughts
Anat’s comments help us see some specific data to help us make better contributions to discussions and decisions. I’ve looked at more than 200 articles over the last month or so looking for more advice on data that matters to how we do our work. I can share that there is little direct advice on how to use the data you have to help you craft your work. While it is clear that mindfulness matters, we have little guidance pointing us to the data we should track to improve our work practices.
Helpful, Actionable Data
Actionable data can dramatically change your workflow. I’m thinking here of my use of Grammarly, the automated writing assistant that highlights a variety of issues and makes suggestions for edits. That said, the weekly summary of my vocabulary use is more fun than action.
Harmful Data
Apple recently shared that the new Apple Watch sleep tracking tool will not give you a “sleep score” like some other sleep trackers. Their internal research suggests that such data is counterproductive as it can increase the stress people have about their sleep. Instead, they track the “wind-down” you do before going to bed.
Adjustments Supporting Innovation
One of the articles from my literature review stands out for this discussion:
Bindl, Unsworth, Gibson, and Stride, took on a series of three studies focused on how different approaches to self-adjustment of work result in more or less innovative work performance. (They measured innovative work performance in a survey with items like, “I searched out new technologies, processes, techniques, and/or product ideas.”) Related to Anat’s opportunity perspective, there were differences in terms of whether the approach the person took was more focused on goals for gains (what they call a promotion orientation) versus goals against losses (a prevention orientation). Whether focused on task adjustments, adjustments to people worked with, or how they thought about their work, the gain focused approaches were more likely to result in self-reports of more innovative work performance.
What Should We Do? Know Thyself And Discover What Counts.
Whether we look at the data or not, we are all more quantified than we were in the past. Let’s be better as a result - not more stressed. To improve -- to be innovative -- be mindful and search out already-available actionable data related to opportunities in your particular context. Different parts of your life or work will likely have you focus on different types of data, but your process of mindfulness will carry over.
We’ll be back soon with another post on some specific data sources we’ve found valuable. Take the time now to identify at least five sources of data related to your life and work. What are they telling you that can be helpful? Please share your thoughts and discoveries in the comment section below and we’ll add them to the mix in our future posts.
