What Is the One Metric That Matters to You?

Photo by Harry Sandhu on Unsplash

Have you ever thought about the one measurable thing that matters most to you?

I read a tweet recently that asked the following questions:

The question caught me off guard in its simplicity and clarity. I often think about my own “victory condition” (hat tip to Rich Mulholland for introducing this concept to me) for certain scenarios in business but very rarely do I hear people talking about this in their personal lives. 

Life is a big experiment. Every day we do things that we aren’t sure of. We make statements that could end well or badly. We get into a car that is statistically likely to end up in an accident eventually. We fly in planes, exercise, eat, drink and are merry. We experiment. 

But experiments are only effective if they have a desired outcome or are being analyzed. I don’t think that we analyze our experiments (life) often enough. 

We plod along eating what we eat, doing what we do, living the life we live without much introspection or review. 

When I invest in or consult with startups I often ask them for a single true metric that represents their business. It could be revenue, it could be a viral coefficient, it could be user retention, staff retention or any metric that moves their needle. Most often the startup has no idea which single metric matters most to them. This isn’t unusual at all but there is a definite correlation between clarity of thought, execution and understanding a single true metric that matters in a business. Thinking about your daily work right now, do you have a single metric that you can look at come the end of the day to decide if your day was successful or not?

I believe the same can be said for your day to day life. What one true metric matters to you? It’s OK if that metric is something simple or complex or if other people scoff at it or copy it. There are no right or wrong answers here. 

I’m more interested in the existence of any answer in my life. 

I value time. 

Time is the one metric that matters to me. 

Do I have the time to do the things that I want? Do I have the time to enjoy the thing I am doing right now? Or am I rushing off to the next meeting/event/sight without taking it all in? Do I have the time to spend with the people that matter to me most? Do I have the time to sit and think about the things I want to think about?

From this one true metric, everything else emerges. 

To have sufficient time I need to have sufficient resources. To have sufficient resources I need sufficient experience to gain the resources. To have the experience I needed to take the time to learn, experiment and gain experience. It all comes back to time for me. 

I’m not sure if this will always be my one true metric, but for right now it makes sense. 

A friend of mine, Rob Hope, replied to the above tweet with a pretty simple answer that I loved: Freedom. 

Freedom is a fantastic true metric to align your life to. However, jumping back to the victory condition, you can only be free if you have defined what freedom means to you in your daily life. Take the time to think about what matters to you and how you define victory in your day, week, month, year, life. 

Then answer me this question: What is your one true metric?

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Nic Haralambous is an obsessive entrepreneur and keynote speaker. You can book him for your next conference, sign up for his newsletter or follow him on Twitter.

An Honest Conversation with Aisha Pandor, SweepSouth co-founder

I am obsessed with getting the real, honest story from smart people building difficult and interesting things. Last year I hosted a series of conversations with a variety of people. Below is the conversation that I had with Aisha Pandor, the incredibly smart and talented co-founder of one of South Africa’s top startups, SweepSouth.

Aisha is one of those rare finds, an Expert Generalist who has studied microbiology, biochemistry and a has a PHD in human genetics. She then decided to build a business. She has a wide breadth of knowledge and a deep set of skills that make her an impressive startup founder to listen to and learn from.