On Just Doing It

I've been doing what I do, professionally, for sixteen years.

I've not been all that great at keeping score throughout those years.

Over and over again, regardless of the company or the management or the pep talk- there is always something to be said about keeping score.  Sports teams do it.  Education systems do it.  The entertainment industry does it.  The best in my industry do it, faithfully.

There's always someone keeping score- and furthermore- keeping statistics.  How many yards? How many words? How many people watch and listen and buy?

When you think about it, all of the things we love the most are carefully weighed and measured.

But for whatever reason, some people in some industries, namely sales- some people have a hard time keeping score.  I have a hard time keeping score, and this translated into my new Macro IIFYM way of eating.

It's natural, when the score is good, to want to write it down and show it to someone.  It's also natural, when the score is bad, to rationalize all the reasons it's dumb and pointless to keep score and hide from the people who might be looking, especially when you're in a position that makes you doubt that anyone is really looking.

If the last four weeks have taught me anything, it taught me that I wished much, much earlier in my life, I valued keeping score even when the score was hateful.  That if anything, I'd learned earlier the motivation that comes from really, truly caring about the score.

This macro thing- this part of the journey- I won't say I'm obsessive about it but I will say that meaningfully keeping score for four weeks, good, bad or ugly, has created an unintended habit of awareness.

I am now fully aware that there's more protein in cow's milk than almond milk and that you can get high quality lactose-free, fat-free milk that tastes great.  I'm aware that if I get close to 50 grams of protein first thing in the morning, I'm not hungry all day long- but I'm aware I need to stoke the fire so I focus on getting another 30 grams within two or three hours after my first meal.  If I do this, then naturally I find that my last two full meals of the day provide the balance I need of macros almost naturally.  I find that paying attention more makes me crave things that aren't beneficial less. Keeping score has made it so I don't ransack my kitchen at 9:30 PM looking for 65 grams of fat-free protein, which literally amounts to eating a tub of fat-free cottage cheese and downing a protein shake.  Not really the best move for a good night's sleep.

I've always known that keeping score is vital to progress and success, and anytime I have focused on keeping score, I've improved my results.  I also know that I stop keeping score when failure is looming.  When, for whatever reason, the score isn't going to favor me.  Maybe it's a fear of facing the things I'm not doing, or a die-hard willingness to be lazy instead of productive, or an all-out serious denial of the truth.

Because the truth is that we can always do more.

I used to make fun of press conferences that are held after major sporting events.  Like, why do you think you lost this game?  Clearly, the answer is always that you didn't do something as well as the other team did.

Now, I think I understand the question a little bit more.  It's not just that the losing team lost, it's about what went wrong.  And if we don't pay attention to what what wrong, we can't make it right.  And we have no chance of even knowing what's going wrong if we don't keep score, or if the score is a fabrication made up to appease someone who may or may not be paying attention, rather than for our own assessment.

I wish I had understood this earlier, and that I had become a raging fan of self-statistic-keeping earlier.   In all things- I understand now, more than ever, that every little thing counts- not just the score.  The practice that came before the game.  The hours of good sleep logged, the steps taken, the time spent just trying to be better.  The moments spent in silence, reading or in prayer or just being. Every rep, every mile, every drop of sweat. The moments of joy, the moments spent ugly-crying... they all matter, and they all become part of the score.