Product Manage Your Life: Measure What Matters

This is the third article in a series about applying product management principles to your life. My goal with this series is to help you incorporate principles that product managers use to reduce the amount of chaos you experience in your day to day while increasing your peace, joy, and satisfaction along the way!

The first article gave you an introduction to the concept of using product management principles in your life. The second article focused on how to avoid overwhelm when you realize how many opportunities you have in your problem space, along with quick tips for tracking and prioritizing those opportunities. I'm crafting all the articles in this series to take only about five minutes to read. I know you’re busy! I hope you'll read a few, take away what you need, and leave the rest.

As always, reach out to me over social media or email if you’d like to chat or have topic suggestions!

What Does it Mean to Measure What Matters? 

When product managers release software, we are very interested in measuring how users are interacting with it. Are they using it in the ways we expected, do they enjoy using it, are they quitting in the middle of using it, and other things like that. So before we release software we normally know what we'll be measuring. Sometimes the measures change based on what we find out, but we normally have a pretty good idea of what matters most and we start out measuring it. 

In our personal lives, we can take a similar approach. If you've read the first two articles in this series, you already know the basics and have a good idea of what your opportunities look like. So now it's time to figure out how to measure change so you can identify what's working. 

How Do We Know if What We're Doing is Working?

If you want to know if what you're doing is working, you need to figure out how to measure it. A couple points to consider when figuring out your measurement: 

·      Keep it simple. The simplest measurement is often the most effective. I suggest thinking of all the ways you could measure your progress, and then picking the simplest one as your starting measure. If it doesn't work, you can always try one of the others off your list. Measuring your progress shouldn't take any more time or effort than necessary - you want to save that time and effort for work towards your actual goal, not measurement! 

·      Make it easy to measure. There are probably a handful of different ways you could measure your progress, so again - pick the easiest to start. I'll say it again - don't spend any more time or effort on measuring than necessary. 

·      Align it to your goal. If your measurement doesn't align with your goal, does it even matter? Your measurement should provide you confirmation that your work is moving you in the direction you want to go. So align your measurement with your goal to make sure you're moving in the right direction. 

What Kind of Quantitative Measures Can I Use in My Personal Life?

We measure things in our personal lives all the time. We mark days on the calendar, we look at the number of emails in our inbox, we look at our weight on the scale. So marking progress towards our goals is not much different. Your measurement will vary based on what you're working towards, but here are a few suggestions.

· Trying to make more time for personal development or self-care? Count how many of those activities you complete, or how much time you spend on those activities, over a week or a month. 

· Want to spend more quality time with your family? Count how many family meals or family meetings you have in a month. 

· Want to read more books? Count them. 

· Want to hit the gym more? Count the number of consecutive days you stay on your plan (not every day has to be a gym day on your plan and that still counts - just stick with your plan!). 

What About Qualitative Information?

Qualitative information is incredibly important to consider when measuring your progress. Let's say you're working on spending more quality time with your family. Ask your family if they think you're spending more quality time with them! Their feedback is really important qualitative data. Not all data has to have a number put to it. Sometimes the most important data we receive is anecdotal. 

Is Measuring My Personal Life Weird?

When I talk with people in real life about this topic, inevitably this question comes up. For some reason, we think putting numbers around our personal goals feels weird. Like I mentioned earlier in the article, we already to it for all sorts of things. So I don't think it's a stretch to measure our progress, but I understand it might feel uncomfortable to start.

Try it out and see how you like it. See if it helps you. Maybe after you try it for a week or two it won't feel so uncomfortable - you won't know unless you try. The biggest benefit of measuring is knowing that you're headed in the right direction, and being able to make small changes to ensure that eventually, you'll meet your goals. 

Next Time

What can you do when you've tried your hardest and things still just haven't worked out the way you want? You didn't get the job, the software release failed, the marriage failed, you didn't pass the class, pick your disappointment. Next time I'll talk about how to deal with disappointment and recover well. I have plenty of personal examples to pull from, so it should be a fun one! Stay tuned! 

This article was original published on 2/17/2020.