Vanity Metrics Will Make You Crazy. Sanity Metrics Will Keep You Grounded.
In the world of online business, we are drowning in “vanity metrics.” These are the numbers that are easy to measure and look good on the surface, but don’t necessarily correlate with the health of your business or your happiness. Think follower counts, likes, and page views.
Chasing vanity metrics is a game you can’t win. It’s an endless treadmill of comparison and “not enough.”
A nurtured business requires a different kind of dashboard. It requires you to create your own metrics of success, based on what actually matters to you. Let’s call them “sanity metrics.”
Sanity metrics are personal. They are a reflection of your “enough” point and your definition of a successful life.
Your sanity metrics might include:
- Hours of deep work per week: A measure of focus.
- Number of “heck yes!” clients: A measure of alignment.
- Days per month with zero meetings: A measure of freedom.
- Your “end of day” energy level (on a scale of 1-10): A measure of sustainability.
- Profit saved in your “Profit First” account: A measure of true financial health.
When you shift your focus from vanity metrics to sanity metrics, the entire game changes. You stop competing with others and start collaborating with yourself. You build a business that feels good, not just looks good.
Actionable Nurturing Step: What is ONE “sanity metric” you could start tracking this week that would be more meaningful to you than any vanity metric?
I think that, no matter what you do, it’s far better to collaborate with yourself, as opposed to competing with others. As an artist, my goal is growth and I look at my old artwork and see how I’ve improved and how I’ve changed and how I’ve grown into my style. Other artists are on a different journey, and they are at different places in their journey. If I spent all my time comparing myself to them, as I did when I was a teenager, I would give it up because there will always be artists who are more skillful than I am. In fact, as a teenager, I did give up art because I believed that I had no talent and that I couldn’t compete with others. Only to find out, years later, that it really wasn’t a contest.
I love the idea of sanity metrics over vanity metrics. This is a great perspective shift of collaborating with ourselves over competing with other! This is very helpful. Thank you!
Jennifer, as business we have enough to do and watching materics that don’t nuture the business but vanity metrics definitely cause us to compare ourselves to others. What sanity metric would you track?
Alice I love that you finally went back to your art and stop letting others influnce you doing what you love. Reading the story and seeing the art work you posted on your blog shows me how much you are enjoying it and not competing with others.