Many times measuring the wrong thing can be more harmful than not measuring at all. Whether it is personal health goals or goals to grow your business, be sure that what you are measuring actually drives you to make behavioral changes towards your desired outcome, and not away from it. The wrong measurement could skew your course and lead you to a dead end full of metrics, but with no clear action for correction.
Think through what-if scenarios when setting your metrics. What's your reaction when your page views are flat? Do you change direction for future content immediately and declare your strategy a failure? What do you think constant strategy changes will do to your motivation? How will the measurement help you understand what changes to make? Are the outcomes cause and effect or poorly correlated?
Yes, you can over think this, but don't let your brain's System 1 desire to solve your problem be the sole arbiter of what to measure. Often we chose measurements based on what we think is a typical metric and fail to consider the impact and next step reaction to it. How many times have you heard to not judge your health by the numbers on a scale? When you began that exercise program you could not walk a flight of stairs without getting winded, but now your covering three miles a day!
Your metrics should influence your behavior, but plan your reactions. Understand your bias towards action and use this to drive to success.
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