My typical day starts by having a look at my Facebook feed. I’ll quickly get a summary of the number of miles that Marie-Julie, Alex or Christine ran. If I posted something the night before, I’ll expect, I’ll hope, I’ll pray that I got more Likes overnight. Then I will get ready and have my breakfast. Usually a yogurt with fruits: 3 Weight Watcher points is a reasonable start.
At the office, I’ll grab a tea, listening to colleagues comparing the number of Followers they have on Twitter or highlight how they have improve their performances at Crossfit (Deadlifts and Burpees series are among the favorites benchmarks.). I’ll then sit in front of my computer to monitor and evaluate different data. This morning, Mireille popped in my chat window:
- – Would you like to be my Fitbit friend?
- – Your what?
- – My Fitbit friend.
- – Yes. Sure.
- – Thanks.
- – Uh… What is it for?
- – We’ll share data and can compare our steps.
- – You mean we’ll compete on the number of steps we walk daily?
- – Yes!
I excused myself and I finally turned down her offer. I cannot imagine competing for the number of steps walked daily. I love Mireille but, sincerely, I don’t care how many steps she’s walking! Like I don’t really care about the number of miles my Facebook friends run. I want to measure up with myself.
To me, it’s important to evaluate and track my own performance because I put time, energy and I care that all those efforts worth it. Measurement is definitely an important part of the process when you want to be able to correct and improve a result.
Maybe it’s why I’m so surprised to see that some people don’t seem to follow up on the newsletters they send. They take time to build a nice newsletter, work a lot on their layout, they put efforts to build a great list and, finally they just don’t have a single look at it after they have pressed the SEND button.
Looking at results helps me answer:
Is what I’m doing worth my time and energy?
And, if the answer is “No” the next step is “How can I make it so”.
Looking at the results is actually the first step to any process we want to improve. The first step to make the next newsletter better and more interesting to subscribers:
- Did they open the email they received?
- Did they click to get information?
- Where did they click?
- What caught their interest?
I might not be interested to compete with anyone on how many hours I slept, especially since I have so little control on it, but I certainly want to find ways to send the content that interests the most my subscribers!
And you? What do you measure? Would you like to be Fitbit friend with Mireille?
