92 - Measuring Personal Performance

Do you ever have days where you have a plan to do something in particular, but when you start to work on it, you think maybe there's something different you should be doing?  That's me this morning.  More on that in a minute but first...

I want to wish my son, Matthew, a Happy 30th Birthday today.  He's on his way to Texas to get lost at big Bend National Park with his little brother.  I know they'll have a blast and I wish I could have gone with them. 

Other than that, I'm struggling a little with what to talk about this morning.  I had planned to wrap up a conversation I started last week about visual management systems.  The plan was to talk about measuring quality and cost at different tiers, but I made the mistake of stepping on the scale to measure my own weight and was disappointed with the result. 

Since the pandemic began, I've managed to gain about 15 pounds.  This despite being home most of the time; despite still walking a bunch.  Sadly, I've also eaten voraciously with lots of delivered and take out food - often not the healthiest.

Part of my initial strategy for this webcast was to mix up topics with leadership, lean thinking, travel, and personal development.  I've pretty much left off the personal development piece, so I think I'm going to fix that starting today and ask a big favor from all of you.

I'm going to set a target weight of 190 lbs.  I have an app that actually says my "normal" weight is between 132.2 and 178.6, but I in 2018 I managed to get as low as 186 and I thought I looked like I was a patient dying of something horrible.  What I will ask of you is encouragement and accountability.

Just like with what you measure at work, you have results metrics and process metrics.  I usually use weight loss as an example of the difference.  My target weight is set so that's my result metric.  I don't expect to hit that target for about 6 months.  So I need an intermediate target that will make this more manageable. 

The intermediate target is 1.5 pounds per week.  So I'll get on the scale every Friday and check to see if I've lost my 1.5 pounds.  But that's not a process metric, it's still an after-the-fact result metric.  If all I do is weigh myself, I can't see making much progress - same applies at work.

The process metric involves how I plan to lose this weight.  I don't ever stick to fad diets, so the rule is simply, consume fewer calories and burn more calories.  Eat Less.  Move more.

So I'm working on the details of those daily targets, particularly with walking because I want to get back to my half-marathon challenge as soon as the pandemic is over.

Help me stick to it, please.  I've done this 3 times before in private.  I know exactly what works, but the mind games work hard on me so I really think I need your help this time around.

Thanks in advance!

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow!