Order of Man - That Which is Measured Improves

00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart

00:00:04.920 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:10.260 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who

00:00:16.940 you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:00:22.420 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler.

00:00:27.020 I'm your host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here today

00:00:31.080 and welcome back if you've been with us for some time. I've got a very short Friday field

00:00:35.960 notes for you today. I just want to make sure that I reiterate the importance of measuring

00:00:40.260 your progress, knowing exactly what you want to accomplish, and then having an active strategy

00:00:45.600 and plan for making sure that you're accomplishing the thing. Before I get into it, just want

00:00:50.120 to mention that we now have our battle planners back in the store. I've got mine right here.

00:00:55.880 I'm going to be talking a little bit about this. I don't care if you use this, if this

00:01:00.260 is a tool that will help you plan out your day, map out your day, measure your progress,

00:01:04.440 measure your growth towards your goals. Awesome. You can go to orderofman.com slash TWBP as

00:01:13.100 in 12 week battle planner. So that's orderofman.com slash TWBP. You can get your leather bound battle

00:01:18.820 planner or if you just need an insert for your planner that you already have, you can get that

00:01:23.300 there as well. So with that said, I'm going to open this up and I'm not sure if this is going to

00:01:28.820 turn around for you guys on, if you're watching YouTube or not, but you can see the quote right

00:01:34.360 there on the top. And it says that which is measured improves. That's by Carl Pearson.

00:01:39.940 That which is measured improves. Now, look guys, I talk with men every single day who want to improve

00:01:46.340 elements and aspects of their lives. They want to get in shape. They want to rebuild their marriage.

00:01:51.960 They want to have a marriage. They want to build their bank account. They want to go on trips and

00:01:57.240 vacations. So many goals, lofty goals, noble goals and ambitions and desires. All of those things are

00:02:03.720 good. But the amount of men who have a plan, who are actually measuring growth and progress towards

00:02:11.780 that goal is a sliver. It's a fraction of a percent relative to the men who actually have ideas and

00:02:17.300 dreams and goals. So as I said, this one's going to be a short one. Hopefully you'll take this advice

00:02:23.200 and you'll implement it in your life. I know that anytime I document what's going on in my life,

00:02:29.460 I naturally and inevitably get better at it. There's a challenge because some of us are really

00:02:34.760 good at certain elements of our lives. And we think because we're good at it, that we don't need to

00:02:39.440 track it, that we don't need to evaluate, that we don't need to measure our progress. The problem with

00:02:44.740 that is that you might actually achieve some level of success. You might wonder, well, why is that a

00:02:49.540 problem? I'm achieving what I want to achieve. Why is that a problem? It's a problem because you can't

00:02:54.360 replicate it. So you might've struck gold that one time because of the current circumstances,

00:03:00.900 things, factors outside of your control. Maybe it's certain things that you're good at that don't

00:03:05.820 necessarily translate to other facets of life. And we lull ourselves into believing that just because

00:03:12.580 we did it here by happenstance, it just worked out that it will naturally translate over to this

00:03:20.060 other facet of life. And the odds are it won't. I want a replicatable result. I want a process and

00:03:27.480 a system that I can follow to the letter, to the T to ensure that when I need to be a success in

00:03:33.560 certain aspects of my life, I can just follow that system. And I can also look at when I'm not a success

00:03:39.460 in life or certain elements of my life fall apart or disintegrate where exactly I went wrong. This is

00:03:45.180 the value of measuring it and having a system, a tool like the battle planner or whatever you might

00:03:50.280 be using to evaluate that. So again, that which is measured improves. Now there is a challenge in

00:03:58.900 some of these things because there are some goals and visions and dreams and objectives that men have

00:04:03.540 that are hard to quantify. For example, one I hear a lot is I want to be a better father or I want to

00:04:10.180 be a better husband. Worthy goal, something noble to strive towards. But what exactly does that mean?

00:04:17.260 How do you measure being a quote unquote better father or a better husband? Very intangible,

00:04:23.300 non-tangible. The best way to do that is to come up with a metric for it, is to begin to quantify it.

00:04:29.640 Now it might seem subjective and that's okay. As long as you know that system works for you.

00:04:36.760 So what can we measure, for example, as it relates to fatherhood? Well, one metric we can use is the

00:04:43.120 amount of quality time. That's certainly a way to measure it. You could also measure the amount of

00:04:51.100 time spent in activities engaged in what your kids are interested in. That's another metric.

00:04:57.680 You could measure it in the amount of time that you've put in or hours that you've put in coaching

00:05:03.740 your children's baseball teams or the conversations that you've had. Or maybe there's a project that

00:05:10.040 you want to work on together. So for example, you say you want to be a better father. Well,

00:05:14.240 is there an opportunity, maybe you're a woodworker to build a piece of furniture together? Maybe you can

00:05:18.840 build a bookcase together. Would that, that's measurable, right? You know when it's done. You know how

00:05:25.120 many hours you're going to put into it. You know, the time that it's going to require and take

00:05:28.460 and is building that bookshelf with one or more of your children going to make you a quote unquote

00:05:34.360 better father. I think all of us would agree. Yes. Unless you let it get to you too much. Cause

00:05:41.320 sometimes the help that we get when we build is not so helpful, but if you're doing it with the

00:05:47.960 purpose of connecting with your children, then certainly you're going to have that on your mind and

00:05:51.400 create hopefully a positive memorable experience. Uh, if you want to get in shape, what exactly does

00:05:59.200 that mean? Is it a certain body fat percentage? Uh, is this a certain amount of weight that you

00:06:05.040 want to lift? Is a certain amount of time that you want to run, uh, with your, with your mile?

00:06:10.620 You know, do you want to hit a sub seven minute or six minute mile? Okay. That's quantifiable

00:06:15.740 with your nutrition. You can, you can count macros and you can count calories and you can

00:06:21.320 break it all down and into the macro micronutrients. And that's certainly something you can do. I know

00:06:27.140 that I use, and I don't use it religiously, but I know when I do use it, I'm better. Uh, it's called

00:06:32.200 my fitness pal. So I use my fitness pal and I'll go in here and I'll scan a food that I have or enter

00:06:38.980 the food, the weight, that, that sort of thing, uh, into the app. Now I don't do this religiously,

00:06:43.180 but I know that when I do that almost miraculously, I can get on the scale every morning and see

00:06:49.320 myself shedding half a pound, a pound every single day because I just, I track it. There's nothing

00:06:56.140 else special that I do. Now, when I track it, I eat less because I'm aware of what I'm actually

00:07:00.240 putting into my gullet. And that's the point of tracking. You become aware. What's really

00:07:05.940 interesting about men is that we're delusional. We always think that we're better than we are. We

00:07:11.200 always think that we're going to perform under pressure. One of the Navy SEAL mantras is we don't

00:07:17.280 rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training. James Clear with

00:07:22.780 atomic habit says we don't rise to the level of our goals or objectives. We fall to the level of

00:07:27.980 our systems. I'm paraphrasing that one. It's something like that. But the point is, is that

00:07:32.560 you're not going to exceed just because you think you are because you're delusional as am I,

00:07:39.140 you are not as good as you think you are. You are not doing as much as you think you are. You are

00:07:43.160 not working as long as you could. You are not working as hard or efficiently or as smart as you

00:07:47.880 otherwise could. And don't you want to know that? The sooner we can get clear with that, the better

00:07:53.060 off we're going to be. As a previous financial advisor, it was always interesting to talk with

00:07:58.480 people about their finances anecdotally. So I would say to them, on average, what would you say

00:08:05.140 at the end of the month, how much money would you have left over? And let's say, hypothetically,

00:08:09.940 a potential client would say, well, you know, looking at our budget and income, we'd probably

00:08:13.620 have about a thousand dollars a month left over. Okay. A thousand dollars a month. And how long have

00:08:18.420 you been doing that? We've been doing that for about a year. Okay. So if you're making a thousand

00:08:22.600 dollars a month more and you're not spending that, and you've been doing it for a year, 12 months times

00:08:27.760 a thousand, you should have $12,000 in that account. Can you show me that? Well, no, I mean,

00:08:33.340 I don't, we don't have, cause we spent it on this and we spent it on that. Okay. You're lying to

00:08:37.080 yourself. You're not lying to me. I could care less. I'm not vested in your financial decisions,

00:08:41.360 but you're lying to yourself. The only way to know if you're telling the truth is to actually look at

00:08:46.760 the data and say, okay, here's the data. You know, I wouldn't have my blood work done. And Johnny

00:08:50.880 Loretty, he's my trainer and my fitness coach and my nutritionist and all these things.

00:08:54.380 And he went through line by line with having this blood work done. And he said, here's where

00:08:59.600 you're deficient. Here's where you're good. Here's what we need to improve on. Here's what

00:09:03.100 vitamins or nutrients that we need to improve upon in your diet. Well, how does he have that

00:09:07.560 information? Because it's in the data. It's not just, oh, I think it would be better. I don't know

00:09:14.480 if it'll be better. It's quantifiable. It's measurable. So guys, my challenge for you this weekend

00:09:20.680 is to take even just one aspect of your life, money, fitness, maybe it's your faith. How do you

00:09:27.960 quantify faith? I want to have a deeper connection with God. How do you quantify that? You can make a

00:09:32.660 scale that would work. Uh, you can, you can track how often you're reading scripture, for example,

00:09:39.940 or praying, uh, or attending church services or, uh, listening to devotionals. Like you could

00:09:46.540 track those things. So I want you to take one element of your life, faith, your family, your

00:09:51.620 friends, your money, your body, your bank account, your business, just one aspect of your life that

00:09:56.820 you think you're underperforming, that you would like to see improve. And then what I'd like you

00:10:01.120 to do is I'd like you to write down your goal, get out a blank piece of paper, write down your goal.

00:10:05.840 And if your goal can't be measured, you need to keep revisiting your goal. I want to be a better

00:10:10.660 father. What does that mean? Okay. Now you have a means I'm, I'm good to my kids and I spend time with

00:10:15.440 them. Okay, good. You spend time with them. How much time with them? Exactly. Well, I spend one

00:10:19.720 hour, uh, with my children every single day on something they're engaged with. Okay, got it.

00:10:25.880 Now, you know, whether you're going to hit that metric or not. And trust me, you're going to,

00:10:29.380 because we're achievers. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you weren't an achiever or had a

00:10:34.540 desire to be one. And because you have something in front of you that you can quantify and you can

00:10:39.180 measure, you're going to work towards that. Absolutely. You are. Do not fly by the seat of your

00:10:44.680 pants. If it works and you're flying by the seat of your pants, congratulations. You got lucky.

00:10:50.140 Nothing more, nothing less. You might've tapped into a skillset, but you don't even know which one

00:10:54.700 because you're not measuring it. I want you to be successful with prediction. I want you to be able

00:11:01.140 to predict your success. And it is predictable. We know there's been enough people on this planet

00:11:06.920 over enough time with enough social experiments that we know which behaviors create positive results.

00:11:13.220 We know that. And we need to be precise with it. So go out there, figure out where you want to get

00:11:18.740 better, break it down into actionable strategies or measurable tactics, and then start tracking it.

00:11:24.480 You can use our battle planner. I talked about it earlier. I don't even care. I've got notepads

00:11:28.680 everywhere. If you want to use a notepad, maybe there's an app on your phone. I'm sure there is.

00:11:32.060 I don't have one because I use the planner, but there's probably free apps on your phone that you

00:11:35.820 can get. You could, you know, write it on the wall for our alley care, like a prisoner who's carving out

00:11:40.880 number of days that, uh, he he's in prison for. I don't, I don't care. I just want you to measure

00:11:46.840 it. Measure as Carl Pearson says that which is measured improves. I hope that serves you guys.

00:11:54.320 Let me know what you're measuring. I would actually like to hear from you guys specifically on issues

00:11:58.180 that, uh, are hard to quantify, like being a better, uh, husband. I want to, I want to have more

00:12:03.780 intimacy with my wife. What does that mean? I want to be deeper connected with my kids. What does that

00:12:08.920 mean? I want to be in better shape. What does that mean? I want to be wealthy. What does that mean?

00:12:12.420 So I would love to hear from you guys on these non-tangibles and how you funneled and whittled

00:12:18.400 them down into tangible, predictable steps and results. Okay. All right, guys, big interview for

00:12:24.180 you next week. Make sure you subscribe. Check out the battle planner at order of man.com slash T WBP.

00:12:30.180 And we'll be back tomorrow until then go out there, take action, become a man you are meant to be.

00:12:34.420 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

00:12:39.060 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - May 19, 2023

That Which is Measured Improves ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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