Choosing your metrics, KPIs, etc...
how to measure what matters + philosophical musings on whether the important things can be measured
sari and
Choosing your metrics, KPIs, etc...
there’s simply no way around the fact that we’re pretty fed up with a certain philosophical framework in Silicon Valley. It has many names: the growth mindset. OKRs. KPIs. Even Minimalism — the predominant aesthetic of our era. But at its core, it all comes down to one thing: the relentless optimization of everything in our world.
this mindset has l... See more
this mindset has l... See more
The Browser Company • Optimizing for Feelings
Too Much Efficiency Makes Everything Worse: Overfitting and the Strong Version of Goodhart's Law
Jascha Sohl-Dicksteinsohl-dickstein.github.ioKiwi SaaS Metrics That Matter 2023^LLJ r2.2.pdf
slideshare.net
Which leads on to my next point. See, not only do numbers not capture what matters (love, happiness, awe, spirituality, creativity are by definition unquantifiable beyond mere surface appearances) they are also extremely open to manipulation.
thomasjbevan.substack.com • The Tyranny of Numbers - By Thomas J Bevan - The Commonplace
Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
Charles Eisenstein • 5 highlights
amazon.com
How did people respond? Did I strike an emotional nerve? This goes beyond easy, legible metrics like pageviews or social media likes, or even comments, which are at best hazy approximations of external resonance. It’s about looking for signals that something genuinely MATTERED to one or more humans, and elicited a response that’s out of proportion with the average digital interaction. Lots of likes is an okay-ish signal. Lots of comments is a clearer signal. A small handful of comments or private replies from people saying they’ve never felt so seen or understood by a piece of writing – that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to discern and quantify here.
There are things that can be measured. There are things that are worth measuring. But what can be measured is not always what is worth measuring; what gets measured may have no relationship to what we really want to know. The costs of measuring may be greater than the benefits. The things that get measured may draw effort away from the things we re... See more
The Tyranny of Metrics Quotes by Jerry Z. Muller
When Steve Jobs set goals, he kept them shockingly simple and didn't include any metrics or benchmarks.
Are specific, measurable goals a waste of time?