Why do some people pay thousands of dollars for a used baseball? Why do some people spend $1000 on an iPhone application that does nothing except show others that they have way too much money?
Because people have different ways of measuring value. Everyone uses a different yardstick.
But this article is not about those people. This article is about YOU, and how you can use the right yardstick for each situation.
Why weight and grades don’t really matter
Do you know anyone who measures their fitness by how much they weigh? Or do you even do it yourself?
Unless you’re a professional boxer or a fashion model, your weight doesn’t really matter.
What matters more are your energy levels, your strength, and your endurance. I mostly measure my fitness by how energized I feel.
So instead of picking a diet to lose weight, I eat foods that leave me energized and happy. Because I use a different yardstick.
Or, in high school, I always valued learning over grades. In my last year, I had an average of 8.4 out of 10, where 10 is best and 6 is a pass. I also had a 3 for chemistry… because I disagreed with my teacher’s teaching methodology and found most of the tasks she gave us useless at best, and downright counter-productive at worst.
Sure, you might be in a situation where grades DO matter to you. The point is, always make sure what’s most important to you. Use the right yardstick. If you want to feel energized and look good, forget about measuring your weight (muscles weigh more than fat anyway).
Set goals according to your yardstick
Once you know your values, you can set goals better.
I could measure my blog’s success in at least 3 ways. I could measure the traffic. Or the number of comments. Or the number of RSS subscribers.
I decided to use RSS subscribers as my yardstick, because when someone subscribes to my RSS feed, it means they get consistent value out of my blog, and want to read more. So my strategy is to provide the kind of value that gets readers to subscribe, rather than, say, writing controversial posts that draw lots of comments.
In my social life, I used to feel insecure and worry what others think of me. I worried what kind of impression I’m making, if I’m looking cool, etc. etc.
Then I realized that’s not helping me. So I swapped my yardstick, and started to focus on having fun. Ironically, I find that it makes a lot better impression on people than TRYING to make an impression.
Don’t let others force their yardstick on you
Sometimes you’ll find people who think their yardstick is the ultimate measurement, and they’ll try to force it on you. People like that might claim weight is all that matters about your fitness, or that salary is all that matters about your job.
Listen to those people, but make sure you figure out what’s the best yardstick for YOU.
When I started learning esperanto, I had a couple people tell me “Wtf, Esperanto? Why don’t you learn a language that’s actually USEFUL, like Spanish.”
Well, my yardstick for learning a new language is how much fun it allows me to have. And Esperanto wins that contest hands down over any other language. (Well, maybe except Klingon. I’ll have to look into that one a bit more 
)
Are there any areas where you use a different yardstick from most people, and it’s worked for you really well? Let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for better ways to view the world
Summary
Here’s a quick summary, to help you remember the main points:
- Figure out what’s the best yardstick for you in each situation
- Set your goals by that yardstick
- Measure your success by YOUR yardstick, and nobody else’s
Until next time. Long days and pleasant nights.
[tags]productivity, measuring, goals[/tags]
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Good for you – having fun is a good yardstick.
You mentioned Esperanto. The ability to speak Esperanto has not boosted my earning power, but it has enriched my life in other ways. I have visited families in France, Italy in Germany. I have stayed with some fascinating people in other countries, learning far more about their lifestyle than I ever would have by staying in hotels.
I wish you good luck with your learning of Esperanto.
When I as a late teenager learnt esperanto just to fun (to have a secret language with my best friend) I could never guess what it would mean to me 40 years later.
The language har brought to me work(a profession in library) friends in 5 continents and travels between south Bulgaria up to north Norway, from east Finland(Imatra) to west England (Morecombe), guests from several countries, numbers of contacts in internet and so on.
I know German, some French and Spanish but those languages were not so useful to me as esperanto. But when you play cards the best card is the Ace, Esperanto is one ace, English is another ace, Spanish could be the third ace, you want them all.
On my foreign travels speaking English, German, French, Spanish, Greek and some Italian and Serbo-Croatian never got me invited into any private homes anywhere – but speaking Esperanto most certainly did! And thus gave me quite a different take on life in Bulgaria, Mexico, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Belgium, Romania than I would have got as a regular tourist. Try it – Esperanto can be as useful as you yourself like to make it! Try this in Slovakia, for starters:
http://skej.esperanto.sk/artikoloj.php?akcia=clanok&ID_clanok=213&lingvo=eo
Yay! It seems like a lot of other people think the Esperanto community is totally awesome. Guess it’s not just me, then
Maybe I’ll write an article about Esperanto, so others can find out what exactly this Esperanto thingy IS.
Yes please! On the Esperanto article. I’m very interested in learning a new language, largely so I can think in a different way. I’ve only put any research effort into Lojban so far (it does look pretty wicked.) Would love to hear your take on Esperanto, maybe that’s the better option. Certainly the opportunity to take Esperanto abroad is a huge advantage on Lojban. I’m being convinced already…and you haven’t even written the article