Metrics are simplified expressions of complex concepts. For instance, it’s difficult to measure happiness. Is your neighbor happier than you? Well, which one of you went on vacation in the last six months? Obviously, that person is happier. No? Well, how would you measure happiness? Birth of a child? The start of a new relationship or the enduring of a relationship? Possessing the time, money, and energy to pursue a hobby?
Where you can’t directly measure and compare something, metrics become a substitute. An inadequate one, I’d argue, and one with the potential to distort your understanding of the world, and hence, your behaviour.
The problem is that metrics are easier to live with than the uncertainty of the complex concepts they mask, so people rely on them. The advertizing industry encourages you to do so. Think back a few decades to the cigarette brand Marlborough and their Marlborough Man. How did you measure, and hence, demonstrate your manliness? Why, you smoked Marlboroughs, and the more, the manlier (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating “the more the manlier”, but am I?).
Simplified metrics are applied and shared (how else to compare yourself to others) far readier than engaging in reflective discourse. This means that the person (politician, salesperson, religious leader, etc) who can produce and communicate a metric that simplifies and reassures (via its banishment of complexity and moral dilemmas) will dominate public understanding of a concept, and hence, direct the behaviour surrounding it.
As Mark Twain said, there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” What we measure shapes our society and our individual lives.
As an author, the metric that matters is the number of books I sell. This is not a metric that measures the quality of my books or my success. Other people would argue that sales do, indeed, define success. No. I choose to define success as whether my books resonate with readers, and I measure that (informally) by readers’ messages, their reviews, and by pre-orders for the next book (which, yes, is a percentage of sales), also by word of mouth recommendations (and my books, or my marketing of my books, falls down on this last point).
The reason I separate success from sales, but still call sales the metric that matters, is because sales determine whether I can continue as an author. It is a metric that decides my future (and unfortunately, it is influenced by Amazon’s algorithms and other mysteries as much as by my efforts). However, it does not define my success as an author or my happiness.
Use metrics, but don’t let them define you.
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