Looking back at my career, I absolutely can confirm that “what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed” is true. What I can also confirm is that obsessing over measurements – coming up with even more metrics, measuring at lower levels of granularity, or measuring more frequently doesn’t help manage something – and often have really bad consequences. Another point – maybe something the world of business doesn’t want to acknowledge – is that not everything that is measured gets
managed!
These lessons are not new for me – but I didn’t quite take it to heart when I started working actively on my health in May 2023. I was extremely overweight and the blood-work results were all looking bad. But this was not new – I was always heavy and I had known that the blood-work results were not trending well for a while. And I largely ignored it. What happened in May 2023 was that I got two deliveries of dog food from chewy that were about 50 lbs each. I realized that it took me more effort to bring them inside the house than I thought was necessary.
I just grabbed my car keys – drove to the gym – and signed up with a personal trainer. I also called my doctor and took an appointment to do blood-work etc again to get a new baseline
I knew I needed help. I did not have any understanding beyond “eat less and exercise more” as a strategy. Thomas, the trainer, was a great fit style wise to how I work. Similarly my doctor was happy to sit me down and give me a realistic idea of how long it will take to get the bloodwork results to a normal range and gave me a basic idea of what is helpful and what wouldn’t.
The two measuring instruments that helped me along the way were the Renpho scale that measures a few more things than just weight, and the wearable called Whoop that keeps track of heart rate, sleep, recovery etc.
The first challenge I had to overcome was to not give up after the weight not budging despite eating less and exercising more. Thanks to the heavy dose of motivation – I started learning more about diet and exercise. This was a massive challenge – for a beginner like me, there is an overwhelming level of content on internet. On top of that, there is an army of influencers out there. It took me several months to figure out what works and whose advice to take. One lesson I did learn the hard way is that what worked for my friends didn’t always translate as such in my case. I had to invest a lot of time into this learning and I am glad I did. Perhaps the two biggest lessons were
- There is no way I can put exercise a bad diet
- If I don’t push myself hard, I won’t know what my body is capable of.
This is where I had to think hard about the value of measurements
When I started, I was counting calories and measuring the quantity of everything I ate. This was a lot of effort and I didn’t think I can sustain it. I realized eventually that I don’t need to be super precise to get decent results. So I just switched to a few principles and thumb rules and it has worked out great so far
- Don’t buy things that can derail the diet. Fruit juice is a good example. I still love orange juice but since I don’t buy it, I don’t drink it
- When eating out, just divide the plate into two and pack one half to take back home and eat it another time
- Give up on alcohol
- Rotate between eggs, fish and lean meat frequently for protein
- Set a max for carbs – which in my case is one cup of cooked rice
- And don’t beat myself up if I break a rule once in a while – like when visiting my mom in India. Everything can be undone with a bit of focus
A very similar approach evolved on the exercise front. Whoop captures most of what I need to keep track and the Renpho scale keeps track of trends in weight and muscle mass and so on.
What I realized is that looking at the data everyday was quite counter productive. Trends are way more useful than the data for any particular day, or data for any particular exercise routine. if I see my weight not budging for say ten days at a time, I stop and look at what changed in my diet and exercise and tweak as needed. But I stopped worrying about day to day changes after about 6 months or so – and it did reduce my anxiety quite a bit and that did help a lot with staying on the journey and enjoying it.
For both diet and exercise, the one thing that has helped me the most is the idea of adding what works most of the time to my routine. Now I have a routine that I follow – one weekly trip for shopping food, 14 hrs of fasting per day, 5 days of walking and average of 5 miles, and 3 days of strength training. It doesn’t happen every week – but when it doesn’t, I can see the results and that gives me the motivation to get back on plan.
I have lost about 80 lbs of weight and about 14 inches from my waist size so far. My doctor is happy with the test results. I am within reach of my goals – and now the challenge is that the last mile is proving to be way harder than the journey so far. Sleep continues to be the final frontier to conquer – I am slowly getting better at it.
Bringing this back to the business world
The contrast of measurements for weight loss to the world of business is sharp when it comes to measurements
In the corporate world, we tend to overdo measurements in every way possible. Steve Jobs famously said once that content and product should trump process. I have heard the CEOs of ASML and NVidia say similar things as well. They are the exceptions – not the rule. The rule in the corporate world generally is that process discipline is what drives scale – which is true. What we also need to realize is that process helps only when the underlying problems are sufficiently addressed. Otherwise the frequent and granular measurements only result in more anxiety and grief, and waste everyone’s time – with no improvement in the business itself.
And Vijay Says... 