The Cardinal Sin of Systems Building
The Amplified Impact Podcast
January 26th, 2023
So, I stumbled upon this idea that’s been buzzing on Twitter and I had to share my take.
A buddy suggested tracking your happiness data, but here’s the thing: chasing endless data might just be a distraction from taking real action.
Been there, done that.
Collecting endless data might not be the game-changer we think it is.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“If you wanted to hurt a business, what would you do? And his answer was, well, you would not track data.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Alright, so the other day, this fella who I follow on Twitter, who is a great thinker, I love his content. His name is George Mack. He put out a piece of content that I strongly disagreed with and I rebutted it, I wrote about it, and I wanted to share it with you guys here because I think what he was sharing is fundamentally one of the cardinal sins of entrepreneurship and life in general. And it’s a trap that I have fallen into so many times. And so before I tell you what that cardinal sin is, let me just explain his post. His post was simply this. And on the surface, it makes a lot of sense. He said, if you wanted to hurt a business, what would you do? And his answer was, well, you would not track data.
You would collect no data from your decision making. Right. And so then he drew the corollary from not tracking data within your business to the fact that the reason people aren’t happy is because they’re not tracking the data around what makes them happy and what doesn’t make them happy. And so he went into providing a system that would help people do that. And he called it the happiness PNL, a profit and loss statement. And so the idea is that you create this spreadsheet that lives on your phone, on the home screen, and every day when you feel happy, when you feel in a good mood, or when you feel in a bad mood, you fill it in and you say, oh, I feel good right now. Here’s why. Here’s what just happened.
And over time, his idea is that in 30 days, 90 days, 100 days, at the end of the year, you’re going to have all these data points that you can collect and then review in the spreadsheet to say, okay, these are the things that make me happy. These are the things that don’t make me happy. And I could not disagree with not the premise but the execution of it. This is, I think, very, very problematic in the cardinal sin of entrepreneurship and life that I have fallen, I’ve committed so many times, is to create solutions to problems that don’t exist. And I think this is an example of that. Let me explain. The premise here is that the reason you are unhappy is because you lack data, that you don’t know what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad. And this is wrong.
This is false. You don’t need to collect data that shows you feel good when you work out and you get a great night’s sleep. In the same way, you don’t need to collect data showing that you feel like shit after drinking and fighting with your spouse. But here’s the thing. We lie to ourselves. We convince ourselves that the reason we aren’t where we want to be in life is because we don’t know what to do. And so we distract ourselves from the real issue by going on convoluted fact finding missions to discover the root of a problem that doesn’t actually exist. I consider this to be mental masturbation disguised as productivity.
Listen, I’m saying this like as the guy, the poster child of the guy who has wasted days, weeks, months, years of my life constructing convoluted systems to track things rather than do things. I spent decades collecting dots. But my life didn’t change even a little bit until I started connecting dots. In my experience, in most cases, you already know what to do. You just aren’t doing it. So the system you actually need to create is one that increases the likelihood of you taking the actions which will move you towards your goals. If your goal is to be happy and you know that working out makes you happy, then the system you need is one that increases your likelihood of working out today. If your goal is to be happy and you know that fighting with your spouse makes you unhappy, then the system you need is one that decreases the likelihood of you fighting.
And maybe this means, like, you schedule daily check ins with your partner to make sure the pathways of communication, they’re staying open, and everybody feels seen, heard, and valued. But regardless of what the goal is, just understand this. Nothing will change if you don’t change what you do. So tracking data is fine and dandy, but if you spend more time tracking the data than you do acting on the data, then don’t be surprised if that system ultimately just makes you more unhappy. And I think that’s what this system that George proposed is going to do for most people. Most people, they will think this sounds like a great idea, and then they will go and they will spend an hour implementing it. They will sit down, and they’ll put all the pieces together, and they will use it for exactly four days, and then they will stop because it’s not making them happy. Tracking the information doesn’t change anything.
So there will be a very small percentage of people who continually do this. But my guess is those people are already successful because they’ve already discovered how to build a system that they actually adhere to. And that’s the real value, right? Like, the data here is very clear. We know what makes humans happy and unhappy. This isn’t brain surgery, guys. Right? Generally, if you want to be happy, you need to have meaningful relationships. You need to have good health, which is a result of sleeping, eating, and working out right. We need to have our financial needs met.
We know what those things are that make us happy. We know what things don’t make us happy. So tracking the data isn’t fundamentally going to change anything. However, I’m not against tracking data broadly. I’m just against tracking data in this kind of anal and extensive way. You don’t need to track this every single day for a year. In fact, I believe you could track your moods for a single week and you would have enough of a data point to point to and say, okay, these are the days when I felt good. This is what I did.
These are the things that made me feel bad. And just work on that, work on that. I think you know what to do. The answer isn’t that you need to go collect more information and discover the source of your issues. It’s that you’re not doing. You’re not acting on the things you know you should do. So create a system that incentivizes you to go and do that thing. Please.
Your life will change for the better. I promise you. So that’s me off of my soapbox now. Done preaching. Got a little riled up on that one. But I hope this helps somebody out there avoid the pitfall that I have fallen into so many times. Like at some point in my life, I will make available all the spreadsheets and convoluted systems that I have designed over the years to track things that ultimately did not matter. I will share that with you at some point in my life.
How not today? Because it is still too fresh and raw and embarrassing. So going to keep those under lock and key for now, but that’s going to do it for me. Guys and gals, I appreciate you as always. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you in the next episode. Stay hyperfokes, my friends. Bye.
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