A palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware, made a list of the top 5 most common themes that surfaced again and again from people nearing the end of their lives. They are: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn’t […]
Time Is The Ultimate Self-Improvement Metric
A tech startup watches Daily Active Users. An eCommerce site tracks Conversion Rate. The stock market obsesses over Earnings Per Share. So what metric should we be focusing on when measuring ourselves? Time. Whether we like it or not, time is the best indicator for what is most important to us. Time explains why we […]
Measuring Daily Word Count To Write A Novel
437 days ago I began writing my second novel and I just self-published it this week. During those 437 days I learned a lot about how to write a novel. I’ve also come to terms with the fact that almost no one will ever read it. So I thought I would share my thoughts on […]
The Point Of Self-Tracking Is Not The Data
There are multiple tools out there to easily record data about yourself: steps taken in a day can be tracked with Fitbit, Mint.com will track all of your spending and Apple Watch will track your sleep. Steps, expenses and sleep could all be tracked before these tools became available but the record-keeping was time-consuming, requiring […]
The Double-Edged Sword Of Measurement
“You get what you measure.†This is great news for anyone wanting to lose weight or learn a new skill—just start measuring. Measurement provides the information needed to improve, as well as subconsciously invoking positive results. The problem with measurement is that it leads us to focus our lives on those things that are easiest […]
Want To Change? Measure Yourself.
Is it the data that’s collected that helps us improve or is it the mere effort of measuring that makes the difference? A 2006 study in a German hospital found that simply telling staff that their “hygienic performance†was being monitored improved hand washing by 55%. In another study, two groups of teenagers were told […]
Measuring Relationships With Quantity Time
Some things appear to not be measurable. Things like love for a significant other. Presenting a number for how much you love someone would not be an easy task. But what if there was a metric that gave you an indication of how much you loved someone? Its purpose wouldn’t be to see how much […]
Zach’s Best Of 2015
This year I watched 102 movies, almost the same as last year (103) and 174 episodes of TV – a 40% increase over last year (still 20% less than the high in 2013 of 216). The best ones were: Whiplash (the best movie I’ve seen in many years) Cheap Thrills Coherence Blue Ruin Fury Star […]
Site Wide Conversion Rate Is A Pretty Crappy Metric
When you look at your site wide conversion rate, what does it tell you? What action does it inspire? What would you do differently if your site had a 1% conversion rate versus your site having a 3% conversion rate? The answer to all of those questions is that there is no action to take. […]
Two Sides To Using Web Analtyics
Marketing Optimization relates to measuring success by marketing channel – paid search, display, retargeting, affiliate, email, social and then using that information to alter the marketing investment and the marketing tactics. When you see a low conversion rate for certain marketing channels you might decide to decrease your spending in those areas or change the […]