Anecdote. During a training session I was presenting to a group that sells durable goods worth a few thousand dollars, I asked a participant: How many sales did you make last week? He said, I don’t know.

I will continue. In that case, how many prospects did you meet with in your week? Answer: I don’t know, 10-15, I don’t calculate. I ask again. How many sales do you expect to make in the next month? Answer: As many as possible. End of story.

Later in the day I had the opportunity to ask the boss of the group: How well does this salesman, to whom I happened to ask these questions, perform? Answer: He’s my worst. Of course, I was not surprised at all.

Measuring and comparing yourself is motivating!

There is a huge corollary to be made between measuring our results and our success. The title of this text is well known. Everything that is measured improves and everything that is not measured stagnates or deteriorates.

This applies to all areas of life. When I was obese (before 2005), I never weighed myself. It scared me too much. I knew I’d be disappointed, so I never weighed myself. I made the decision to lose weight after weighing myself (which took a lot of courage). That’s when I said to myself “this is it, I’ve got to get a grip on myself”.

It’s the same in sports. Imagine that no sports performance is timed. Nobody knows how long it takes to run a 100-metre race. Nobody knows how many goals were scored tonight. Twenty thousand people just watched ten guys push a rubber puck for three twenty-minute periods. Oh no, that’s right, imagine not counting the length of the periods. You can see that it doesn’t look good. What a boring life it is to never measure anything.

So why doesn’t this salesman measure his actions and results? For the same reason I didn’t weigh myself. For fear of facing the truth.

It is healthy to measure oneself, to compare oneself with oneself, with others. This is life. It is what stimulates us, motivates us, makes us want to surpass ourselves, to improve. We just have to imagine what the famous fishing stories would be without measurement…

The great champions of all fields are those who accept to measure, compare and judge themselves every day of their lives. This pressure to perform, which so many people decry, is what allows you to feel proud of yourself because you have improved over the last month.

Try to measure everything you do and see what effect it has.

That’s what I wish for the salesman I had asked. To have the courage to measure himself to realise that he is at the back of the queue. Deep down, he knows it, but he doesn’t want to confirm it to himself.

Let’s face it: Everything that can be measured gets better!

Good success!