What Gets Measured…
"What gets measured gets done." —Peter Drucker or Mason Haire?
I can't remember where I first heard that quote, and I haven't thought about it since I left my regular day job ten years ago, but it popped into my head the other day.
I tell myself I drink a lot of water. I tell myself that I always meet or exceed my goal of driving three liters of water per day. And I tell myself this every day, despite spending my first waking minutes standing over a toilet and urinating a liquid whose color is best described as Mike's Hot Honey. [Why hot honey?]
Clearly I’m telling myself a lie.
So I set out to measure my water intake and prove, as I'd long assumed, that I was indeed drinking 3 liters of water per day. I created a water tracker. You can easily do this in a notebook or a piece of paper but, because I'm a dork, I wanted to do it on my phone. And because I'm also an idiot, I wanted to make this as complex as possible. So I bought NFC tags, stuck one to my orange Stanley, and created a Shortcut on my phone that logs 1 liter of water every time that NFC code is scanned.
And, after 3 weeks of tracking I can say—drumroll, please!—I am well off the mark. In 3 weeks of tracking, I've managed to hit my goal 6 a mere 6 times. My average is 2.25 liters per day, and that includes days when I have cocktails and days when I work out. Both of which should include increased water intake.
So, while I've solved the mystery of why I see gold in the toilet, I've also uncovered a new mystery: how I ever thought I drank 3 liters of water per day.
