I Was Told There Was No Math (Invent Your Own To Be More Productive)

When I was growing up, my parents told me to be a doctor or a lawyer.  Although both my mom and dad were very successful (Dad: business owner, Mom: mayor of our town), neither of them went to college.  Given this fact, they tried to steer me into a ‘classic’ career because it fit their ideas of success. 

(FYI: Generational career advice is bad.  I digress.)

Since I don’t like math or science, I became a lawyer.  I did not have to engage with math very much during my legal career, but now that I run a writing as a service business, it has become a necessary evil.

Fancy pants business people throw around words like “metrics” and “KPIs” in an attempt to make the most mundane of things, i.e. numbers, into something magical.  As a result, new entrepreneurs fall into the “Perfect Chair” syndrome.  Never heard of it?  Well, that is because I made it up.  Still, it is as real as restless legs after a 20-hour flight to see the Antarctic pyramids.

Perfect Chair Syndrome

There was this guy named Plato.  Perhaps, you have heard of him.  He had this cockamamie theory that everything in existence was an imperfect copy of something else, somewhere else.  In other words, the chair that I am sitting in is but a sad version of a perfect chair that exists in some unreachable place (like my wife’s heart).

If you ascribe to this belief, it leads to all sorts of bad outcomes because you are constantly dissatisfied with everything in the impossible pursuit of perfection.  

“Wade, nobody believes this today.”  You say.

Wrong.  This thinking happens all the time. Take relationships, for example. People compare their current dating situation against an unknown mate in the future and give that future person all sorts of impossible qualities.  Either impossible because humans don’t work that way, or impossible to get because they don’t have the status to attract that person.

(Even status is no guarantee of success.  Gisele Bundchen cheated on Tom Brady with a nameless Jujitsu instructor. I don’t know what happened there but they both lost.)  

This type of thinking leads people astray because there is no perfect relationship or person.  There is also no perfect client acquisition strategy, marketing framework, or set of metrics.

If you try to find such things in your writing as a service business, you will never begin because the search for perfection never ends.  If you want to be productive now, you must be alright with good enough.  Commit to finding the best starting point you can.  Then, work from there. Otherwise, you will be filled with doubt and hesitation. 

Do not fret about picking the wrong entry point because choosing literally anything in the universe will give you something invaluable: a baseline.

You Cannot Improve On Nothing (But You Can Improve On Zero)

I love toying around with ideas.  For a long time, I would jump from idea to idea like a methed out frog on a Phoenix sidewalk in the summer.  I was rewarded with constant dopamine doing this, but I experienced very little in the way of results.  I had it in my mind that I could just willy nilly take action and eventually something would work out.

This was dumb

There is no way to know if something is working unless you have a baseline metric that you can look at as it establishes a trend over time.

Without this, you cannot have the proper frame or context for the issue at hand.  If you don't have something that you can observe over time to see trends, you have NOTHING.

And you can't improve upon nothing.

Thought experiments don't count for (curse word starting with S).

You can't improve upon nothing but you can improve upon zero.  Zero is a result of a recorded metric.  Metrics can be tracked.  If you aren't tracking something, every time you act you are guessing.  This inevitably results in bad outcomes.

If you accept this premise, the question then becomes:  What metric do I pick?  

Answer:  Don’t worry about it.  It doesn’t matter.

The Superpower Of No, Metrics Can Be Personal (Don’t Let The Suits Tell You What To Do)

Elite level marketers love it when you are indecisive and unsure.  When you are in this state, they can stoke those emotions and then provide “the answer”.  It doesn’t matter that the tactics they sell only work in a time that no longer exists because today's marketplace is different from yesterday's marketplace.

You buy and hope.  When it doesn’t work, the cycle repeats until you quit.  

(On the bright side, you do have 157 unused domain names.  So there is that.)

Elite level marketers can be defeated, but it takes a super power to do it.  The good news is there is a free superpower out there for anyone who wants it.  It is a very small word: “no”.

The ability to say “no" is a super power.

The way you get it is by defining your own metrics of success.  Don’t let anyone tell you where to begin.  They are not you.  They do not have your advantages.  More importantly, they don’t have your disadvantages.

There is no magic metric.

The magic is in learning the process of picking a metric, taking action, getting feedback, and course correcting.  Where you learn this process is irrelevant.  Maybe you aren’t ready to start a writing as a service business.  Fine.  Find an area in your life you want to improve and take your best guess on a metric to track.  It probably won’t be the right one.  Who cares? 

Pick a metric that seems important, do the thing, and track your results.  

The resulting numbers become a forcing function for your thinking.  There are an infinite number of actions that can be taken when trying to do anything.  A baseline metric closes the universe and creates boundaries to work in.

If someone tries to sell you something outside these boundaries, it is the easiest thing in the world to say no. If their offer is within the boundaries, you can consider it.

(Pro Tip: Buying for the future is expensive. Don’t do it.)

Everything becomes easy in this space.  You will discover better metrics over time.  You will get better at interpreting feedback and course correcting.  The process will lead you to where you want to go.

Approached this way, success is inevitable.

The great part is when someone asks you the secret to your success you can say with a straight face “I got really good at the diatonic harmonica, specifically the 10-hole version.” 

Go get your super power now.  Pick a personal metric and take action. Your future self will thank you.

Irregular Means Irregular

If you haven’t noticed, this newsletter comes out inconsistently.  This is by design.  I get to it when I get to it.  If you want to hear from me on these topics on a much more regular basis (daily-ish), you can opt-in to my email list here: Understory Bard Email List Opt-in.

More in a bit . . . Wade, The Understory Bard

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