As far as I can tell, at least from the pop culture perspective, the quantified self movement has lost steam. Or, more to the point, it’s become more embedded into our machine lives and less a conscious element of our own idiosyncratic expression. They quantify us and make billions by doing calculations. I think that is a loss.
I value contemplation & thoughtfulness about what I do and how I do it, so I make the hand-entered calculations of key data into Google spreadsheets daily. These are some of my churches. It’s impossible for me to be an ethical person unless I have a fact-based view of myself— unless I have the data, and consider it fully.
In my consulting practice, which I call Civic Operator, I do “ethnographic management consulting”. I think I coined the term. Here’s what I say about it on my website:
I meld design thinking, group ideation, photography, and other forms of documentation & listening to help organizations form and execute on strategy, build the best teams, and make things better in the world.
In that practice, I develop balanced scorecard or key performance indicator rubrics that allow a business or organization to consider what’s important and track their facts through time.
I developed this method I use for KPIs starting in 2014, when I started a spreadsheet tracking how much I time I spent with my children and another one marking how often I did my physical therapy for spinal stenosis.
In order to effectively eyeball something fast, you need a rubric– a structure through which you can view and analyze your data quickly. My rubric has three parts: my body, my people, and my output. For each of these, I have three KPIs. Here’s a schematic.
KPI Rubric
I’ve learned that if I track these things and think about the relationships among them, I will be able to see whether or not I’m leaving my best life. Here’s mine:
And here’s my 2018 life:
Following is a detailed breakdown of what’s up.
My body
Average calories consumed per day
I consumed an average of 2,002 calories per day in 2018. I use Fitbit calorie counter to log every single item I consume. Hit me up if you want this dataset.
The idea here is simple: eat less; lose weight. The system worked great— I went from 191.6 average in January 2018 to 186.7 in July. As is often the case for humans, I put weight back on, and by December I was a 193.9.
The key in analyzing oneself in a rubric is to see how one measure affects others. During the time in late 2018 that I gained weight, my average caloric intake was pretty steady, hovering within 10-15% of my average. My exercise had gone down quite a bit (often in the 14,000 – 15,000 steps/ day), but that was still a *lot* of activity— 4.5 to 5.5 miles per day. What I realized, by looking at the data, was that the number of times I ate a shit-ton of food went up by a lot— 13 times in November and December alone.
That’s when I decided to make three adjustments:
- Stop obsessing over steps
- And different and more vigorous exercise to my days
- Stop going off the food rails and Track mega-days more closely
Number of days over 3000 calories
When I actually took a look, I saw that ate more than 3,000 calories 44 times in 2018. Nine of those were over 4,000. I almost hit 5,000 on November 24. Salotta food. This is a good example of a measure that I wasn’t even really tracking but that becomes crystal upon further reflection.
Steps per day.
I walked an average of 17,002 steps per day, which is about 7.5 miles. This is my core tracking life— I started with a Fitbit in 2011 and it changed a lot for me. Here’s a 2012 post on that experience.
Steps, steps, steps. I’ve been obsessed with steps. In 2019 I’m tracking other exercise— stretching, racquetball, calisthenics— more closely and it’s working. I’ve lost an average of 6 pounds so far this year.
The other thing about steps is it takes a lot of time and can mess up one’s output. One thing that I’m doing for 2019 is to use voice dictation to increase productivity while walking. For example, I composed the bulk of this post– 1,500 words– while walking from Wheaton Public Library to Blackberry Market in Glen Ellyn.
Also: I wrote the bulk of my book, “Arte Agora: Art made, sold, or placed in the public way”. Part of it was dictation and part of it was walking around stealing posters from the street.
What I don’t want to do is cannibalize thinking time. Walking allows me to work through something– not typing, but thinking. I seek balance. Still, I’ve got to get through the physical reality of my production in healthier ways.
My people
Number of days with my children
This is pretty much my original KPI. I started this in 2014 where I just wanted to make sure that I was coming through for my children as a father. I spent 14.83 days per month with one or more of my children in 2018.
I am divorced from the mother of my children and they have lived about 50 minutes away from my home for the last 18 years. That is a structural fact. Lots of organizations have structural facts that they have to consider when trying to execute on their vision, or build their obituary a day at a time.
I’ve developed a ritual– every time I get on a plane I put two feet flay on the ramp, put my right hand on the side of the plane, usually in the circle that includes the logo of the plane company, and I count the three. Then I pick up my suitcase and enter the plane.
Then, as we are taking off, I put both feet flat on the floor, put my hands on my legs, and I think it myself, “Did I do everything I could? Did I do everything that I could for my children. Is there anything I could have done differently. Is there anything I left unsaid or undone to show them that I love them?” I would review everything since the last time I got on a plane, and do as thorough and honest review as is allowed in the taxiing experience. In order to track if I did everything I could, and add more integrity to the process, I decided to track the number of days that I’m physically with them.
My work-around is that I make sure that my children get what they need from me, and that includes my physical presence with them. What we do when we’re together is set by the structures of parenting through time— changing diapers, going through schoolbags, reading books before bed, prepping for the SAT, deciding on college, talking about what’s important. All of this is work. Work is love. Love happens in front of others.
Number of days with my wife
I have been with my wife since 2008 and we have been married since 2011. After I started my spreadsheet tracking days with my children, my assumption was that I was with her whenever I’m not with my children, because we live together. I spent 14.33 days per month doing something special with my spouse in 2018.
But it’s more than that. This isn’t a measure about physical presence, it’s about whether or not we’re spending real time with her. As a divorced father, there is a natural intensity to time spent with them, especially when they were very young. Since I didn’t parent from home, there’s a hyper-attention we get into– asking questions, doing errands, covering homework details, and s on. There’s no coasting, only communion.
So I started this metric to count the meaningful interactions that I had with my wife. It can mean going on a legitimate date, going to Whole Foods together, taking a walk, and so on. The idea is that we are counting moments of intensity and communion.
Hours in community
This is a new measure that I just made up. It includes time spent working with colleagues on nonprofit boards, going to Mass, being in AA meetings, sponsoring other alcoholics, and so on. More to come on this.
My output
Number of blog posts
This is a measure of the number of blog posts I publish on my career website and my personal blog combined. I did something worth writing about (according to me 🙂 an average of 5.3 times a month.
Creation is core. I purposely do not make a distinction between the two. One life to live, everybody.
Number of days traveling for work
I averaged 4.6 days of work travel per month in 2018.
My family is at the center, but people with whom and for whom I work matter to me as well. Work travel includes conferences and other items related to actual revenue generation as well as my work on boards. These relate closely to output because I’m either launching something big for work or I am attending a museum and writing that up and or I going to a jazz show and writing up a pastiche. Travel sparks creativity for me.
Amount of revenue generated per year
This is a natural one. You gotta have munny to get along in late-stage capitalism. I like to share, but I am not exposing my income here 🙂
Keep going. Be intense. Measure intensity.