Don’t over-monitor your goals

people2

Leadership Tip of week #7

adapted from HBR

Having goals is a good thing. But the current trend of self-monitoring, whether through time trackers such as Toggl or fitness trackers such as Fitbit, means we’re constantly evaluating ourselves — the sales we make, the hours we work, or the miles we run.

Overmonitoring can get tiring and cause us to lose sight of what really matters. Avoid this trap by taking a more humane approach:

  1. Assess yourself. If you’re constantly measuring what you’re doing and feeling uneasy about things you actually want to do, it’s time to loosen up.
  2. Reevaluate the why. Think about whether you’re monitoring habits because they work for you or because it’s what you think you should do.
  3. Disappoint people. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the things people expect you to do and be. Let some of them go.
  4. Be brave. Stop looking at your self-worth as a scorecard.

Adapted from “The Perils of Overmonitoring Your Behavior and Goals,” by Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Author: Andrew Mann

Managing Partner at NorthBailey. Having had senior marketing & insight roles at Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Coop and M&S, I'm now using my experience & network to solve strategic marketing problems for NorthBailey clients

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: