There are many metrics that are easy to measure: money, promotions, number of friends on Facebook etc., number of gym memberships, and, for every one of these, there are metrics that are hard to measure – success, impact, depth of relationships, fitness.

I am reminded of Clay Christensen’s anecdote about parenting.

While it was easy for him to measure success in his career, he found it very hard to gauge if he was doing well as a parent.

It is only after his kids turned 20 that he finally felt satisfied that he had done a good enough job.

Even if there are many apps that make it easy to quantify aspects of life that were not quantifiable before, many of these ideas will continue to be hard to measure.

My experiences have taught me that the actions with metrics that are hardest to measure are often the most worthwhile.

Love, patience, caring, focus, perseverance, are some of the things not easy to measure.

These are the sorts of investments you make in yourself and others which, for the longest time, do not seem to have any impact you can see or feel.

Until they do…

Just because you cannot measure it, does not mean it is not important.