Most of us have misplaced objectives who value tea-cup more than tea. Seth Godin has a good post "Speedometer confusion" that offers us insight into how we shape our lives with what we have vs what we want.
The number on the speedometer isn't always an indication of how fast you're getting to where you're going.
You might, after all, be driving in circles, really quickly.
Campbell's Law tells us that as soon as a number is used as the measurement for something, someone will get confused and start gaming the number, believing that they're also improving the underlying metric, when, in actuallity, they're merely making the number go up.
Here are a few measurements that are often the result of speedometer confusion:
- Book sales vs. Impact
- Money vs. Happiness
- Twitter followers vs. Anything
- Money raised vs. Votes earned
- Weight vs. Health
- Income vs. Skill
- Facebook likes vs. Liked
- Tenure vs. Competence
- Length vs. Quality
- Faster? How about better?
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