I don't run with a watch.
No GPS. No Strava. No Garmin. Not even a FitBit.
When I head out the door, the only thing I'm tracking is how my legs feel under me.
People find this strange, especially other runners. We live in an age where every split gets logged, every mile gets posted, and your worth as an athlete is apparently measured in monthly mileage totals. I've had runners look at me like I admitted to training in blue jeans.
But you know what I realized? For me, a good way to ruin a great run is to spend it staring at my wrist. The moment I started worrying about pace, the run stopped being about running. It became about the number. And the number, almost without fail, made me feel worse.
So I ditched the watch and waited to see what happened.
Runs that would have registered as "slow" started feeling strong. I started noticing things I'd been moving too fast (mentally) to notice before. I started finishing runs energized, rather than vaguely disappointed that I hadn't hit some arbitrary target. The whole experience got better when I stopped trying to quantify it.
Does Quantifying Success Ruin Everything?
We measure obsessively in business, and I get why. Revenue, margins, close rates, churn — these numbers exist for good reason. I'm not arguing against data. But I've watched smart people, myself included, make the mistake of treating the measurable numbers as the whole story while ignoring the things that are harder to put in a spreadsheet:
Whether your team trusts you.
Whether a client feels like a partner or a transaction.
Whether the people around you are growing or just executing.
Whether you're building something with staying power or merely a strong quarter.
Every single one of them will eventually show up in your results, whether you track them or not. It just takes longer, and the connection is harder to trace.
There's a concept in management theory called Goodhart's Law that basically says: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. You've seen this play out when sales teams hit their numbers by cherry-picking easy accounts. Or when customer service reps close tickets fast without actually solving problems. Leaders who look great on paper, while their best people start looking elsewhere.
The metric was fine, but the obsession with the metric broke it.
I think about this when I'm out on a run, and I feel genuinely good — fluid, strong, like I could go another hour without fighting myself. That feeling doesn't show up in any data, but it’s often a better signal about where I am physically than any number.
The same logic applies to businesses, where some of our best indicators are qualitative. Do our clients refer other investors without being asked? Do employees bring problems to us before they become crises, because they trust that we'll engage honestly? Do the people we work with feel like they're growing? These questions are often more predictive than the KPIs sitting in our reports.
But again, we’re not ignoring the numbers. We have KPIs we all strive for.
The discipline, I've found, is leaving room for both. Use the numbers, but don't let them crowd out the other, less obvious signals. If you’re getting bogged down in the metrics, start by asking:
When did you last ask someone on your team what's frustrating them — and actually wait for the real answer?
Are your best clients referring people to you without being asked?
When something goes wrong, do people come to you first or try to fix it before you find out?
Are the people around you getting better at what they do?
These questions will help reveal what you can’t measure that drives your business’s success.
The watch is useful. I'm not saying throw it out (especially knowing what some of them cost). But if you're only running toward what you can measure, you're going to miss a lot of the run.
What's one thing in your business that you know matters but can't easily measure? Let me know what you’re paying attention to in the comments.