Latest / The Daily Writer / Redefine Success Pt. 1 - Track Your Metrics

Transcript

Redefine Success Pt. 1 - Track Your Metrics · The Daily Writer

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Smart Business Writing Podcast, the show that helps you share your message, increase your impact, and grow your business through the power of writing.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a child of the 1980s and I love 1980s music.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, I listened to a lot of what was called contemporary Christian music back in the 80s.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most popular artists in that genre was a guy named Steve Taylor.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved his music because it was fun, it was quirky, it was a little bit sarcastic, and it was always very, very thoughtful.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: His best album, in my opinion, is one called I Predict 1990.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I Predict 1990 was made in 1987, so that was when 1990 was still a couple of years into the future.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the other day I was on Spotify just listening to some old Christian music that I loved back in the 80s.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I was listening to this album, I Predict 1990, and I came to this song called What is the Measure of Your Success?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the song itself is kind of a satire, as a lot of Steve Taylor's music is, and it's kind of a warning against pursuing the wrong kinds of things.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, disregarding like the actual meaning of the song, the title really struck me because I thought to myself, you know, as writers, as business people, as creatives, we need to be asking ourselves this question on a regular basis.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: What is the measure of your success?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I ask you on this episode, how do we measure our success as writers or as business people?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so many times we measure our success in terms of how we're doing compared to others.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: For example, we might think, hey, my book, my business, my podcast, my email subscriber list, those are all doing great.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: But then we see somebody else's numbers that are much bigger than ours or much more desirable than what we have, and then we wind up feeling like a failure.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: My friend Andrew Mundy, who is a coach and a very good coach for that matter, he challenged me a couple of months ago to come up with a way where I could make my week a win no matter what happened.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I needed to update my definition of success so that it was totally within my control, so that every single week I could say I had a win if I would do these certain things, whatever I determined would create a win for me.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in this four-part mini-series on redefining success, I want to suggest a few ways to do that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: To guarantee that you have some wins each and every week.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this means you're defining the win so that it's always achievable.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this is part one of this series on redefining success.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to give you a really quick tip today, and that is track your metrics.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Metrics are just numbers that gauge success.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this might be a number of sales calls or contacts you make within a week.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a daily word count for your writing, or it could be something else.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Any way you slice it, it's a metric that determines your input.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now the reality is that you can't determine the results of what you do.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you can't always determine the outcome, but you can always determine what your input is.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the better input that we have, the more likely it's going to be that we have a better end result.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just like at a sporting event, you can't really control if you win because there's other factors besides just you.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can control how much you practice or what your input is.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you track whatever it is that you're measuring?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's up to you.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are all kinds of apps out there to measure habits, to measure progress and word count, and all those kinds of things.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can use a planner, a journal, an Excel spreadsheet, or any of a number of other kinds of things.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Personally, when it comes to tracking my metrics and tracking my daily habits, I go very old school with this.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have a document that I've created that's personal to my habits and metrics.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a half sheet of paper, and it has spaces for each day of the week for the metrics I'm tracking.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what I do is at the beginning of each week, actually I do it the previous week because I do my planning on Thursday nights.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know that sounds kind of weird.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Most people do their planning on like Fridays or Sundays, but I consider Friday the day that I go through kind of my self-scoring for the week and I determine my goals and my plan for the coming week so that I can go into the weekend not having to worry about doing that planning on Sunday night and that kind of a thing.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's a little bit besides the point, I guess.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But what I do is I print that off and I tape that half sheet of paper to the inside of a notebook that I carry everywhere I go.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And literally it's that simple.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day or at the beginning of the next day, I just go through that sheet and I just check off whether I did the things that I was supposed to do.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I really like keeping this on paper because to me it feels more real and intimate.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: I love handwriting.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, as much as I love apps and computers and all that stuff, I still love the ability to open up my notebook and see that piece of paper in the front part of my journal and just mark off whether I've done the things that I said I was going to do.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That to me feels very good, and I really enjoy that process.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you have to do it that way, of course.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can do this on an app or on an Excel spreadsheet or something else.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just the way that I do it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Before I sign off on this episode, I want to mention one more thing, and that is that I really think you should check out the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because as we're talking about tracking your metrics, and of course that's very closely related to habits and so forth, the best book that I know on habits by a long shot is Atomic Habits Again by James Clear.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: You probably have heard of this book, or maybe even read part of it or all of it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, that's awesome.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't heard of it, I'd recommend you get on Amazon and order it right now because it's superb.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, those are my thoughts for this episode as we go into this short, four-part series on redefining success.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you, again, to track your metrics.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: This way you every week you can have a win because you're determining what it means to have a win, and you're tracking those things, and you can clearly see whether or not you've won.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And more important, you can control the inputs that determine whether you've had a win for that week.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can shoot me a message on Twitter at Kent Sanders by email at Kent at KentSanders.net or on Facebook where you can find me.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I'm just called Kent Sanders there on Facebook.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate your time.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, remember that your writing has the power to change people's lives.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.