Tag: metrics

Two Problems with Net Worth

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In the early days of blogging, the Rational Walk was an easy entry to investing. Focusing on Buffett and Berkshire, they made an intimidating topic accessible.

One of their suggestions was to track net worth (this was early in my education in finance and investing). Rather than income or savings, net worth was how much a person was actually worth. It was the proper way. The intelligent way. And who doesn’t want that?

So I tracked it.

It’s been great! To see a number rise thanks to mortgage payments, investing gains, and raises feels wonderful. It doesn’t go up every time, but the number goes up over time.

However, like a lot of numbers, it provides a false sense of authority. It’s just a number, and it has two problems.

First, it’s not cash. Our net worth includes a house, 401k, and brokerage accounts. To convert all to spendable money is a task. Selling a house is an ordeal, a 401k included penalties up to a certain age, and brokerage accounts need liquidity. Someone has to buy what a person is selling. Plus, you know, crypto.

Second, it’s not the solution. Money may lead to a solution, but it’s not the goal. This is the heart of one of my favorite books, that there are many creative ways to live well and we stink at coming up with them! We can pay for services – or do them ourselves. The latter just takes some time and the right YouTube instructions.

It’s nice to be reminded of these things. Life is dynamic and asks for balance. Have things boiled down to a number? It might not help, but it’s probably not the answer.

How does information flow? 

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As a family we used to play this Nintendo game called Overcooked 2.  The goal was to make food orders. My high school experience at Wendy’s was never this fun. 

In Overcooked, your team must notice orders (they look like thought bubbles), prepare the order (cook meat, chop vegetables, wash plates clean), and deliver the requested combination. 

Like all good games, it’s was just hard enough. That ‘hard enough’ meant there was no doubt about the order. The NPC doesn’t fib or change their mind. 

Life’s different. 

Life is a game of telephone.  

“The goal is to flatten the org structure, not to the point where no one knows who’s in charge, but flat enough so ideas move fast,” Brad Jacobs wrote. 

“I’ve seen org charts where there are nine layers between the customer and the CEO. That’s bureaucracy. The shorter and more direct the line from problem to decision, the better.”

We also tend to measure the easy thing not the right thing. It’s the easy metrics that get us in trouble. 

In my high school class it’s easier to see “time on task” or “quietly working diligently” than learning. So teachers, me included sometimes, get lost and track who’s not doing their work. 

That can be a good proxy. If someone is watching YouTube all the time, they probably aren’t learning. But, man, I’ll tell ya, these kids are an enigma wrapped in a riddle. You just don’t now. 

So sometimes, usually after a calm Sunday, I head back to work wary. Wary of telephone and wary of easy metrics. 

Framing Resolutions

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Reframing metrics is catnip. In book form this is Moneyball, but there are many posts about framing and metrics.

How might we frame a meaningful life? And what metrics?

“Ultimately, the number of things you did can’t be definition of a. meaningful life. It’s got to be what you did and whether you did it in the spirit of showing up for it.”

That’s Oliver Burkeman’s advice to Rich Roll (November 2025). Burkeman’s book, 4000 Weeks, was one of my favorites last year. Happy New Year.

Mental Accounting: Joy

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When message board posters wondered about how much money Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak might have if he hadn’t sold his stock he told them.

But in his accounting:

“I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.”

https://m.slashdot.org/story/445414

Four Thousand Weeks (book review)

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Likely one of the best books I’ll read this year.

I have soft spots. For movies it’s one last job. For books it’s This is Water.

There’s this thing that everyone talks about but everyone talks about it wrongly. That’s a soft spot.

That’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. According to author Oliver Burkeman, we are doing time management all wrong. We are swimming through water without really knowing what it is.

And water is a good analogy because water, like time, isn’t something we can grasp. It’s something we have to accept. We can scoop water. We can vacuum water. We can pour water – but these are on water’s terms. To paraphrase high school science: water does what water does.

That is also how to think about time. We act like we manage time, “time management”, but only in the same way we manage water: creating spaces for it to be.

You should read this book!

It’s difficult to review for the same reasons productivity feels important. We check things off a list. We progressed. We got-things-done. But are these the right metrics or just the easy ones?

Productivity isn’t the goal. Accomplishment isn’t either. Living. L-I-V-I-N (a similar book) is the goal.

How to live is a messy question relative to How to be productive.

But here’s a tip. An honest-to-goodness fact. This is as close to a guarantee as you’ll ever get.

Spend time with people. Optimize community. Aim for togetherness. Move from ‘me’ to unity. Move from ego to love. Less get more done, and more to-get-her.

Be that way. That’s a productivity hack.

Living…for time

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Metrics tag.

A huge goal of living well is living intentionally. Do the things I do do align with the things I want to do. Intentionality is why design is such large issue.

We can get lost in the abstraction. Such-and-such leads to end-result but we focus on such-and-such to the detriment of end-result. When my daughters were younger we tried to have family dinners as often as possible. I planned, prepped, and cooked the food. Sometimes they wanted something different, sometimes they wanted to help, sometimes life got in the way and dinner was canceled.

Sometimes this bugged the crap out of me. I put all this time, and effort, and blah blah blah. It was pure ego. And I’d lost sight of the end.

Kelly Starrett has a good podcast with Andrew Huberman talking about this (and many other things!). Kelly frames exercise as “earning credits”. The point isn’t the exercise, the point is to go and spend credits – being physically active with the people you love. Don’t do burpees to see how many burpees you can do in twenty minutes. Do them to have a more enjoyable hike with your kids.

From Huberman Lab: Dr. Kelly Starrett: How to Improve Your Mobility, Posture & Flexibility, Dec 9, 2024
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-kelly-starrett-how-to-improve-your-mobility-posture/id1545953110?i=1000679727148&r=8703

Food Metrics

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Is this right? It is important.

A helpful question to regularly ask is: What do these numbers really mean? I used to love looking through the Sunday Best Buy ad and comparing computer hardware. RAM, hard drive, monitor size – all catnip to a teenage boy in the 90s.

But what did those numbers actually mean?

Jobs theory is about finding the meaning behind something. See “90 calories” and, click-whirr, must be healthy. That’s the meaning we associate. But is that the right connection?

Or is Eddie correct? Is number of ingredients a better signal?

Metrics, numbers, figures — whatever our attention catches is not accidental. Someone chose that, they framed the context around that scene. It’s up to us to ask, is this right?

How to make baseball fans

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You don’t teach them the history of baseball, give them the baseball encyclopedia, quiz them about Abner Doubleday, and if they do well on the test, let them go to a game. What you do is get them enrolled in the journey of being a baseball fan because five minutes of it was fun, and they want it again. The next thing you know, they’re learning statistics because they want to. They’re learning facts because they want to, not because there’s going to be a test.

Seth Godin

How do you make someone anything?

There’s directional, measurable, logical. We will design this using our expertise. We are accountable.

But there’s also “it was fun and I want to do more”. That’s Alchemy.

But it’s not a choice between the two.

The rules of the system dictate the choice. Incentives. Norms. The business model.

Change the system to change the choice.

The 11th Commandment

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You don’t go to church to learn the 11th commandment.

Posts written. Tasks completed. Books read.

It feels good. It looks good. It makes sense.

But it’s not always right.

New and more feels like progress.

New clients. More calls. New products. More sales.

But sometimes it’s not.

Sometimes we have what need, we just need to use it.

You don’t go to church to learn the 11th commandment.

Visualizing Tradeoffs

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In Uncommon Service the authors note that customers want businesses to suck at something. It’s a Never Split the Different vibe. Or in terms of a karaoke bar: Play the hits!

A visualization from the book:

Restaurants have different attributes: food quality, pacing, pricing, ambiance, and so on. For a celebration, people are willing to trade price for service. This is the sort of “context” at the heart of JTBD.

“Our business,” listings read, “has 100 years of combined experience.” Well, that sounds like a lot. But is it two people with fifty years or ten people with ten? Then again, is fifty years of experience good? Do you want a doctor who went to medical school in the 70s?

20,000×1 != 1×20,000

There’s no answer, it’s all contextual.

But we do make trade-offs and must be honest about what they are and what that means.