What gets measured gets managed – Peter Drucker

I’m with Drucker on this one so I track things quantitatively:

• revenues by client;
• revenues by date (lots of businesses have seasons);
• revenues by type of offering (sometimes ideas don’t do as well as you think they will!);
• revenues by historical comparison (it’s helpful to understand exactly how you’re growing);
• costs – whether recurring or one-time;
• costs – whether fixed or variable.

On the personal side, I track my spending and my time (so I know whether or not I exercise as much as I intend to!).

…people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou

That said, sometimes feelings are the better metric. I’m not as good at this one, so I think of this quote often. If you prove a point but at the expense of the other person’s feelings, you probably still won’t get anywhere.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. —  Albert Einstein 

Einstein has it exactly right. There is no one suitable metric for everything. You have to run the numbers and understand your data. But not everything can be boiled down to numbers, nor should it.

What do you measure in your business and in your personal life? How do you measure it?