Habit #6 — Measure

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“What gets measured gets managed.” I’m sure you’ve probably heard that quote before. You don’t have to do too much reading or living before someone, somewhere is going to share that little axiom with you.

I’ve come across that quote, attributed to Peter Drucker, time and time again throughout my life. Or at least variations of it. According to the quote, what ever gets measured is where you see improvement. And looking back at my life I can see how that has been (at least generally) true. So, for this habit, I’m going to start measuring something. Particularly my daily food intake.

I’ve been working on this habit since Monday of last week and I’ve been amazed at what I eat in a day when I can see it all in one place. It is surprisingly easy for me to eat over 1,000 calories in a single meal, and that’s not even fast-food! However, since I started keeping track I’ve seen the number of calories I eat in a day gradually decline.

Some changes are really easy to make. They hardly take any thought at all, and then only at first. Other changes are incredibly difficult and take a lot of attention to manage. This habit is definitely one of the latter.

It takes a lot of planning and intentionality to accurately measure what I consume. But that same intentionality can translate later into intentionality, not only about measuring what I eat, but about choosing what I eat.

It’s hard to track. But tracking will make it easier to make better choices as a part of a later habit.

What do you measure?

What do you need to measure?