What Are You Counting?

Done doesn’t always mean it made a difference.

If we only count what was completed, we may miss the more important question: Did it move anything that mattered?

Why completed tasks aren’t always the best measure of a good day—or good work.

I’m a list maker.

There’s something deeply satisfying about taking a pen to a finished task and drawing a line through it.

• Feed the horses.

• Answer my emails.

• Finish the client project.

• Make the phone call.

• Order the thing.

• Fix the other thing.

Done. Done. Done.

On a particularly productive day, I can look at a page full of crossed-out tasks and feel pretty darn accomplished.

But lately, I’ve been wondering if that’s a particularly good way to measure a day.

Because some of the best parts of mine never make the list.

• Standing at the fence a few minutes more because one of the horses wandered over.

• Laughing at something ridiculous one of the dogs did.

• A conversation that went longer than expected.

• Sitting with a cup of coffee before opening the laptop.

• Looking up long enough to notice the light changing across the pasture.

None of those things earn a checkmark.

And yet, I’m beginning to suspect some of them are the point.

We tend to count what’s easy to count

Maybe this is why I see the same thing happen so often in business.

We count the things that are easy to measure.

• How many posts went out?

• How many emails did we send?

• How many projects did we finish?

• How many meetings did we have?

• How many items did we cross off the marketing calendar?

There’s nothing wrong with tracking activity. Things do, after all, have to get done.

But completion tells us only that something was completed.

It doesn’t tell us whether it mattered.

That distinction has been on my mind a lot lately.

• A marketing team can publish every scheduled post and still fail to connect with the people they’re trying to reach.

• A campaign can launch perfectly and still solve the wrong problem.

• A website can have every requested update and still leave a customer wondering what the business actually does.

• A meeting can cover every agenda item without anyone asking the question that really needed to be asked.

The boxes are checked.

But if we only count what was completed, we may miss the more important question: Did it move anything that mattered?

Some of the things that matter most don’t fit neatly into a project plan.

Years ago, when I managed projects, my world was full of schedules, milestones, dependencies, and deliverables.

But even then, the plan was never just about the work.

I built my team’s vacation days into the schedule.

Not because time off was something to work around, but because people were part of the plan. A schedule that only worked if everyone operated at full capacity every day wasn’t a particularly good schedule.

It mattered to me then.

It matters even more to me now.

I still believe in good project management. I still love a well-organized plan. And I’m probably never going to lose my appreciation for a nice green status indicator.

But the older I get—and the more time I spend at the strategy table—the more I appreciate something a project plan can’t always capture:

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is stop doing long enough to notice.

• Notice the customer who keeps asking the same question.

• Notice the offer nobody quite understands.

• Notice that the team is spending an extraordinary amount of energy maintaining something that contributes very little.

• Notice that everyone is completing their assigned task, but those tasks aren’t adding up to the result the business actually needs.

That kind of noticing rarely gives us the immediate satisfaction of crossing something off a list.

In fact, sometimes it creates more work.

But it can also keep us from spending the next six months efficiently doing the wrong thing.

Maybe the better question is: What mattered?

I don’t think I’m giving up my lists anytime soon.

There will always be horses to feed, emails to answer, projects to finish, and things around here that mysteriously need fixing.

And there will always be businesses that need calendars, campaigns, deliverables, and deadlines.

Those things matter.

I just don’t want to confuse what got done with what made a difference.

So maybe, at the end of the day, it’s worth looking beyond what we accomplished and asking ourselves:

• What did I notice?

• What became clearer?

• Who did I connect with?

• What deserves more of my attention, and what deserves less?

• What actually mattered today?

Some days, the answer may be a finished project.

Other days, it might be a conversation.

A decision not to do something.

A problem finally seen clearly.

Or ten quiet minutes at the fence that accomplished absolutely nothing.

At least according to the list.

I think I’m learning to count those, too.