Establishing Metrics That Actually Matter

What You’ll Learn

You’ll learn how to identify and define metrics that directly measure progress toward your goals, rather than vanity metrics that feel good but don’t reflect real results. This skill is essential for making things happen because you can’t improve what you don’t measure, and measuring the wrong things wastes energy and creates false confidence.

Key Concepts

Effective metrics for making things happen connect directly to your core objectives and provide actionable feedback. The best metrics are quantifiable, tied to specific time periods, and reveal whether your actions are actually moving you closer to your desired outcome. Most people fall into the trap of tracking what’s easy to measure rather than what matters most. True progress metrics show real impact on your goal, not just activity or effort.

• Outcome Metrics vs. Activity Metrics: Outcome metrics measure the actual result you want (revenue generated, relationships deepened, skills acquired), while activity metrics track effort (hours worked, emails sent, books read). Focus primarily on outcome metrics because they directly answer whether you’re making things happen.
• Leading and Lagging Indicators: Lagging indicators show results after the fact (final sales, completed project), while leading indicators predict future results (proposals submitted, practice sessions completed). Track both—leading indicators let you adjust course early, and lagging indicators confirm your strategy actually worked.
• The Specificity Principle: A metric like “improve fitness” is too vague; “run 5km three times weekly and track completion rate” is specific and measurable. Specificity removes ambiguity about whether you’re actually making progress, which is critical for sustained momentum.
• Baseline and Target Setting: Before you can measure progress, establish where you’re starting from and what success looks like numerically. If you’re making things happen in sales, your baseline might be “currently closing 2 deals per month,” with a target of “8 deals per month within six months.”

Practical Application

Today, write down your primary goal for making things happen and list three metrics that directly measure success toward that goal—make each metric specific, quantifiable, and tied to a time period. Then establish your current baseline number for each metric and determine your target number within 30, 60, and 90 days.