Measuring Progress

How to measure progress in life? It’s a question that has left me probing for answers because let’s face it, we have all perfected the art of measuring progress by comparing our net worth and accomplishments to others. But is that a savvy way to measure progress? Well, why don’t we find out by delving into our topic for today — Measuring Progress!

The Prime Ministerial elections in Canada got over recently which kinda makes me wanna talk about it, just kidding. Actually I wasn’t, I’m gonna talk about elections but not about Canada. It’ll be our southern neighbour, the United States of America and in particular, their 2016 presidential elections. The Republican party candidate, Donald Trump had won the election and became the 45th president of the U.S. beating his rival and democrat party candidate, Hillary Clinton. Ironically, Mrs. Clinton had won the popular vote1. How did she lose the election then? That’s because U.S. does not use the popular vote system like most democracies across the world, instead it uses the electoral college system.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if U.S. had used the popular vote system in their 2016 elections. Of course, Hillary Clinton would have become the president and not Trump. America would have witnessed it’s first lady take charge of the White House and have a first man for a change. Okay, I’ll stop with that. Let’s get back on track.

If the method or parameters we use to measure something change, results will also change accordingly. If just a hypothetical change in the way votes are counted in the U.S. has the power to flip a president from male Republican to female Democrat, shouldn’t we all be paying more attention to how we measure something and in our case, measuring progress? Before we proceed any further, just a disclaimer — the purpose of this article is not to undermine the electoral college system, or to say the popular vote system is “better”. That’s for the Americans to decide.

What does progress in life really mean?

• Is it the absence of obstacles?
• Is it moving from place A to place B on a pleasure cruise?
• Is it getting your dream job?
• Is it buying your first home?
• Is it finding love?
• Or, is it — “I just want to earn more.”

Let’s stick with the last one for the time being — I just want to earn more, since most things we desire are serendipitously tied to money. To measure progress with money is the equivalent of reducing our self-worth to a mere number which only depreciates with time. What seems enough today may not be in the future and what feels like a lot today may appear less, relative to the people making more than you. I don’t mean to say abandon money and spend the rest of your life as an ascetic. We all need money to survive, grow and protect the ones we care about. But then to use it as our sole measure of progress is what we should steer clear of.

Money is the outcome of an activity performed over a certain time either by you or other entities. Instead of asking the question, “how can I earn more?”, what we should really be asking is, “how can I learn more?” Money is the outcome but learning is the process to get there. If we focus our efforts on the process and do it diligently, the outcome we seek will happen eventually. Learning unlike earning is not always quantifiable, and its unquantifiable quality holds immense potential. In North America, we often encounter a lot of immigrants from Eurasia. Will we ever be able to put a price tag on what these folks learnt in their country of birth? Or what they bring to their country of choice?

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant arrives in New York City with less than a dollar in his pocket. His pioneering work on alternating current or A.C. in short is the basis for much of the electricity we use today. Could you have for a moment put a price on what this gentleman learnt and what he would later bring to the States? It is this unquantifiable nature of learning that could turn the tables for us and our beloved countries. That’s why we must measure progress by how much we learn, not just by how much we earn. Learning, in the due course of time, will lead to earning.

How can we learn more? It all starts with winning back the time we spend on things deemed unfit for learning. Like for instance, frittering away our precious time on phones. Is ditching the smartphone for a dumbphone the way forward? With the integration of essential services like banking into the smartphone, I don’t think going offline forever is sustainable, so let’s not even get into that. We just need to figure out how to deal with this pocket machine which keeps chewing away our time only to leave us reeling with poor attention span and learning deficit. Learning deficit later translates into earning deficit, and we finally wind up throwing a pity party to commemorate our lack of progress. Therefore, let’s fix this phone problem once and for all. I’ll explain how.

Before work-from-home became the rage, I used to travel to my place of work. I’d drive to the office and park my car at the giant parking lot right opposite to the office building. I would often take a sneak peak at my car through the transparent windows just to make sure it’s still there. Car thefts are pretty common in the GTA or Greater Toronto Area, and the last thing you’d want is to see it happen to your car. After I’m done with work, I’d go back to my car and drive home. Come next day, this simply repeats itself.

Okay, I got a question for you. Have you noticed anything strange during the dull narration of my 9 to 5 routine besides the unusual glances at the car? If you haven’t, let me help you. Right from 9 to 5, my car is just sitting there at the parking lot doing nothing except waiting for me to pick it up after work. The car’s role is to get me to my place of work and back home. That’s all it does during the weekdays period. How is this related to curbing phone usage? Well, think of your phone as the car that sits in a much smaller space, your pocket, doing nothing from 9 to 5 and waiting for you to pick it up after you’re done. In that time between 9 to 5, you have no business with the phone just as I had no business with my car. How about emergencies and frantic calls from family? Emergencies don’t happen every day and that’s why they are called emergencies. Most weekdays are pretty mundane with little to nothing happening except school or work. For parents with little kids, learn along with them. When my sister and I were small, my late dad used to sit beside us. He’d be doing his reading whilst keeping an eye on us. With hybrid work policies in effect post-pandemic you can fiddle with different time schedules other than 9 to 5, and settle down with one that works for you. The point I’m trying to hit home is free up time for learning by treating your phone like how you’d treat your car. Just use it when it’s necessary, rest of the time forget that it even exists.

One of my female friends once said to me, “My partner is worse than my phone, he takes away all my time and leaves me high and dry.” Then it’s time to find a parking lot for the partner as well, just kidding. If there’s a why to do something, you’ll most likely find a how.

Ask yourself this simple question every single day of your life — Have I learnt anything new today? If the answer is yes, you’re doing just fine. But if the answer is no, then it’s time to analyze where your interests lie and learn in that direction. If there’s one quality that will set you apart is your ability to learn as much as you can. One of the greatest investors of our time, Warren Buffet spends a major portion of his time reading. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft is a reading machine. Every week his bag gets replenished with new books and has his own private library at home. You can read just about anything, the important part is to keep doing it consistently until it feels like second nature. Whether you choose to read inside a classroom or washroom, the place seldom matters. Wherever you go, just carry a book, flip a few pages and keep learning. Think of learning like breathing, it has to happen all the time no matter what.

That to me is progress, my friends!