Beyond Numbers: Measuring a Fulfilling Day | Simon Sinek EP 467

0:00I am so grateful for you. I'm so grateful that you're here today, that you show up every single week to listen to one of our episodes on the School of Greatness. And did you know that this is our 10-year anniversary? That's right, 10 years of greatness. And this holiday season, I don't want to sell you anything. Instead, I just want to show appreciation and I want to do a big giveaway. That's right. Greatness is giving away$500 a day for 10 straight days to multiple members of our community. All you have to do is go to lewishouse.com slash giveaway. And that's where you'll get all the details about how you can be a winner.

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1:07What should we judge ourselves worth on? The value we have in the lives of others. Do other people think of you as a good friend, a good sibling, a good son or daughter, you know, a good father, a good mother, good colleague, a good teammate? I'd rather judge myself on that. And again, we're dopamine, tangible, driven animals. And it's much easier to judge myself based on number in a bank account because I can see it and I can count it. And if there's a lot in there, it must be valuable. And if there's little in there, that must be unvaluable, which is nonsense because I can tell you I know a lot of rich people and have no value in the world.

1:41And I think we have all of these metrics screwed up and they're all based on what I can count and what I can see rather than the value I have in the lives of others. And by the way, you don't even get to judge that because the only way you know you have value in the lives of others is if others say you have value in their lives. Right. You mentioned about, you know, we shouldn't be focusing on a good day being on how productive we are. Yeah. We should have a different metric of what a good day is. How do we measure what a good day is then if it's not a productive day? So this is the problem with things that are hard to measure.

2:14It doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means they're hard to measure. You're in love with your girlfriend. Show me the metric. Show me the number that proves to me that she is the love of your life. Well, you can't. You can show me a bunch of behaviors and I can ask her if she feels secure, if she feels safe, if she feels seen and heard, if she feels she can be her best self because of the space you provide her. But I got no number. So just because you can't measure something or just because something's difficult to measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's an important lesson. I learned that in my career, too.

2:43I had this meeting at the Pentagon. I was sitting in the foyer waiting for the general to come when he was ready to see me. And we've all had this experience where you're waiting in a foyer, waiting in a waiting area, and somebody will come and get you. And they take you to the conference room or the office. And because being quiet is uncomfortable, we feel the dead air. How's your day? Exactly. What's going on? Exactly. Exactly. How was your flight? So hot out here. So hot out. Exactly. And the minute you walk in the office, it just stops. Nobody actually cared. Well, that's what happened to me.

3:13The general came to get me. We start walking to his office and the hallway talk begins. And he says, you know, Simon, I had everybody in my office read your book. And I said, my publisher thanks you. And he said, tell them not to bother. I had them read my copy. Total book sales, one. Total impact, huge. Compared to I go to an event and they give away 500 free copies of the book, total book sales 500, but they use them as doorstops and coasters to impact zero. Maybe three or four people read it, right? Right. So it was that experience that I realized that I can't measure impact simply based on book sales or dollars or income or anything like that.

3:50Now, over the long term, I think you can. You know, the book is sustainable, but in the short term, it's really a useless metric. So I had to get comfortable with the fact that I was doing things that I couldn't measure the impact, but I knew had an impact. And you've heard me talk about these things before. You know, I talk about exercise where you go to the gym and you come home and you don't see anything. and you go to the gym the next day and you come home and you don't see anything. And so you're like, it's not working. And you're in pain. And you want to eat a cheeseburger, pizza, and ice cream.

4:18And you keep doing it and you still don't really see anything until you maybe look down and read a scale. And sometimes that weight isn't even a thing. You're replacing fat with muscle. Your weight might go up until people start saying to you, you look really good. You look young. But you never saw it happen. It's like you never see yourself get older until you look at a picture of you from when you were younger, right? you know we know from the science and we know from experience that if i exercise it's a process and it's good for me even though i can't measure it in the short term and if i eat well and i keep doing that i know it'll keep me healthy for the long term of eat more leafy greens and less sugar i know i just have to stick to this process that a hundred percent a hundred percent of the time it works how long does it take to get into shape you start exercising nobody knows right neither it as any doctor.

5:07Sometimes a little less time for some people and sometimes a little more time for others. We don't know. We just know 100 % that it works. And so I had to get used to the idea professionally that I'm going to do things that I know work, but I won't be able to measure them. And I just have to be okay with the fact that it works, like exercise, like eating right. And so that's where, you know, learning an infant mindset and letting go of annual goals. What's your annual goal? I don't have any because I can't predict what I'm going to achieve based on arbitrary timelines. I have guidelines, you know, like I run a marathon.

5:42I'd like to know the speed I'm going at. Like I do look at numbers. They matter to me. They help me measure speed and distance, but I don't get happy or sad if I hit or miss a number. How does someone manage their own life's motivation while making sure they're being somewhat productive to have a career that pays them an income and can cultivate growth within a career or their own business while also creating the metric of a good day? How can we balance those three of staying motivated, not being lazy? What's wrong with being lazy? What does it mean to be lazy? I think my definition of what I'm being thinking about right now is more of like not caring about anything.

6:28Caring, okay. I think it's clear that we use that. Yes. Because lazy to some people might be sitting on a couch watching TV all day. Now, if I've been working with a crazy person. That's relaxing. That sounds good to me. That sounds good to me. Or maybe I'm watching documentaries and I'm generating ideas. So let's be clear that it's not lazy. How do you live a life where you care? Yes. People don't care. So I think older generations, and I count myself amongst them, our generation is pretty judgy because we believe you go to work, you get the promotion, you move you up the ladder, and we kind of understand people who don't have ambition.

7:02What do you mean you're not interested in, like, moving up the ladder and getting more responsibility and one day achieving a leadership position? Or they feel entitled to just be a leader at 24 without putting to work. Right. And I think we have to recognize that raw ambition is fine for some. And some people want to just come to work, get a paycheck, and have that paycheck pay for their lifestyle. And they're not interested in moving up the ladder. They're interested in fair compensation. It's not that they don't care. They do care. They still do good work. They're just not career-minded. They're lifestyle-minded.

7:37And so we can't judge them as unproductive and lazy just because they don't have any aspirations to move up through the ladder. And I know a lot of people who are very happy. They make a decent living, spend their money and they go on vacations and they save enough and it's all balanced. I think they live fantastic lives. They care. They care about the work and they care about the quality of their work. They care about their lives and the quality of their lives and they want the two to coexist. But remember, we said cost. There's a cost for everything. So if you want to be highly, highly ambitious and make all that money and get all that charm, that comes at a cost.

8:11If all you want is go on vacations, well, that came as a cost sometimes to your income or your professional stability. The goal is to find the balance that you're comfortable with. You know, some may tilt a little more towards ambition and some may tilt a little more towards lifestyle. And it's not for us to judge, it's for us to understand. If I can understand that's how somebody on my team wants to live a life, then I'm okay with that as long as they care. I'm not going to overload them with stuff that they can prove to me that they can do but I want them to do good work within those boundaries.

8:39Yes. And I'm cool with it. This whole idea of setting boundaries, you know, it gets a little bit misunderstood. Ah. Like everybody thinks you have to set boundaries, which means keep people away. I refuse to do that. That's beyond my boundary. I'm not doing that. No, no, no. That's not what boundaries mean. What boundaries means are, let me tell you what I imagine and what my limitations are. We have boundaries in relationships. You sit down with your partner, you co-create the relationship that you want to have. And if you're a good relationship, you discuss what the boundaries are that you both agree to obey.

9:12And it's not for us to judge the boundaries of other relationships based on the boundaries of our relationships and vice versa. We create the boundaries that make us comfortable and we agree to stay within those boundaries. We can do whatever we want inside those boundaries but we cannot step outside those boundaries. Whatever relationship style you want to have, you've got to have boundaries. And that is a discussion. And I think that is the right thing to do in a professional circumstance as well. It was always assumed that there's only one kind of boundary. If you go to work till 10 o 'clock at night and work on a Saturday, you do it.

9:42Make it happen, yeah. But that's not the reality of a young generation anymore, but we're not having the discussion. What we've confused is boundaries as a conversation versus boundaries as a unilateral wall that says, I'm not doing that and you kind of asked me to do that. Right. It should be a conversation. Somebody says, look, I'm not interested in moving up the ranks. I want to be treated fairly. I want to be paid fairly. I'm going to do good work. But I don't want to work late at night. And I don't want to work on weekends because I want to live lifestyle. And I'll say, okay, like an early relationship, let's have a negotiation.

10:17Right? Which is, I'm cool with that. Every now and then, where there's a lot of stress and things have gone haywire, or we have a huge deadline, I may need you to stay late a couple nights or the occasional Saturday, but I'll give you Monday off. I'm not going to take away from you without giving you back. And I won't do it a lot. I won't abuse it. But every now and then, are you okay with that boundary? The flexible boundary, yes. Right? So I hear what the boundaries are you want. You understand the things that I need. And we come to an agreement and say, yes, those are the boundaries. We're all cool with that.

10:49We're in alignment, yes. We're in alignment. And that becomes more productive. But that's not what's happening. Usually the discussion of boundaries is me telling you. And by the way, try that in your relationship. Not going to go well. Me telling you what my boundaries are in my relationship as opposed to a discussion where I can understand where the boundaries are coming from and maybe your past experiences or maybe you've had bosses that took advantage of you or maybe you were underpaid and somebody abused the fact that you were, you know, salary or whatever it is. It's just a conversation because we don't know what somebody's previous experience is that makes them create the boundary that they have now.

11:22Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

12:17Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

12:28Thank you.