The Wrong Scoreboard

How to Redefine Success Without Letting Yourself Off the Hook

Photo by Ray Shrewsberry on Unsplash

Crash and Burn

When I started writing on Substack this month, I set a goal: I wanted to get to 100 subscribers by the end of the month. I started out with an imported list of 56 subscribers from my weekly email newsletter, which I’ve been working on for the last few months.

My strategy was to post an actionable insight from my personal growth story every day, to each of my social media outlets. From growing a small but dedicated community over the last few years and from coaching many other content creators in the process, I have seen firsthand the importance and value of consistency. I believe very strongly that if you keep showing up and keep improving that you can accomplish great things.

So you can imagine how humbling it has been for me to have plateaued at 65 subscribers for (checks whiteboard to his right) about a week. Even though I’ve been working hard, even though I’ve been doing exactly what I’ve done in the past, exactly what I’ve helped others do, I’m not seeing the results I wanted.

Have you ever had this feeling? Have you ever known you were doing exactly the right thing and still weren’t seeing the rewards? Have you ever followed all the steps in just the right order and gotten nowhere? This is why a lot of us end up falling prey to the Myth of the Real World. It’s maybe the worst feeling in the world.

But over the last week, I have started to learn something new about measuring progress.

The Real Problem

I know better. I know better than to set an arbitrary goal and use it as my scoreboard. I know from James Clear that “We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” But that didn’t stop me from falling right into the same old trap.

When we set goals, we usually focus on the numbers that we want to hit. 100 subscribers. 1000 followers. The six figure income. These things become the way that we measure whether we’re winning or losing the growth game.

But what if we’re using the wrong scoreboard altogether?

And what if that is both the problem and the opportunity?

It is possible to be moving in the right direction and look like you’re standing completely still. If you’re measuring the wrong thing, your perspective may cause you to miss the progress that’s actually being made. Think about it like driving a car. You could be going 100 miles per hour, but if you’re headed east and your destination is north, none of that speed matters—in fact, it might be taking you further away from where you need to go. It would be far better to be crawling directly north at five miles per hour. How often do we (I) focus on acceleration when we should be paying attention to direction?

The danger here isn’t just that using the wrong measurements keep us stuck, but that it keeps us from seeing the actual progress that we are making toward what really matters.

Here’s why this matters so much. In my book, Be Great, I open with this line: “You have a moment of greatness that is waiting for you. But it is not coming for you. You have to pursue your moment.” While you’re focused on the wrong measurements, pushing for all that speed in the wrong direction, it’s that breakthrough moment that’s getting farther and farther away in the rear view mirror.

Let me share three shifts that have helped me start to recalibrate my own measurements. Not to lower my standards, but to make sure I’m tracking what really matters.

1. Success is About Becoming, Not Doing.

Let’s go back to my Substack goals here for a second. Do you see how I got so focused on a number (the easy measurable) that I neglected to connect my activity to why I want more people to read this? What if, instead of asking myself, “Did I get more subscribers today,” I asked, “Am I consistently showing up with value that could change someone’s life?” Instead of “Why aren’t the numbers growing faster,” what if the question was “Am I becoming the kind of writer who loves and serves his readers every time he sits down at the keyboard?”

The difference is that one set of measurements kept me focused on arbitrary numbers. Numbers that I don’t actually have any real control over. But the other set of questions brings me back to why I write in the first place: to become someone who helps others move toward their best selves.

The numbers game keeps us trapped. The subscriber/follower/views/likes count. The number when I step on the scale every morning. It’s so easy to get caught up in reading the scoreboard that we forget why we stepped onto the field in the first place. For me, that means losing sight of the very real, very important work: convincing others to see their potential the same way that I had to learn to see my own.

Take this newsletter. When I start writing for an algorithm instead of real people, I get real concerned about things like crafting just the right headline so I can get a click, instead of honing my communication frequency in a way that creates meaningful connection. I run the risk of measuring my success by how many people see me, instead of how many people feel seen by me.

What if your success is really about quality, not quantity? Not in a tired, cliché way, but really. What if what really matters is the depth to which your soul goes into the work you do, not the breadth to which your personality is applied to it?

This next part is important: this is not about letting yourself off the hook. I work a lot with live streamers in the Twitch space, and one of the things I hear them say to each other when they feel like they’re not growing is “as long as you’re having fun, you’re succeeding.” Let me be very clear that I do not agree with this. That’s just escaping one arbitrary measurement (numbers) for one so ambiguous as to be completely immeasurable (fun).

This shift is not about “going easy on yourself.” Far from it. It is about holding yourself to a higher standard. A standard of genuine impact, rather than vanity metrics. It actually means asking harder questions. Not “How many subs did I gain,” but “Did I bring actual value?”

But what does bringing actual value look like? As with almost everything important, it boils down to identity and intention. It is about deciding who you want to become and focusing every move, every piece of content, every interaction through that lens with the understanding that every touch is an opportunity to shift someone’s perspective.

In my work coaching creators, I have seen one mindset transform everything. The creator who starts asking “How can I serve” instead of “How can I grow” is usually the one that actually sees growth. The leader who stops trying to find ways to get people to do what they want and starts pouring all of their attention into helping people grow gets more loyalty, better productivity and better results. The more you create value for others, the more they will want. The more they want, the more opportunities you will have to create value.

Contrary to what it may sound like, this isn’t a mystical approach. It’s actually quite strategic. It’s about understanding that impact compounds much more powerfully than raw results. One person whose life is truly transformed because of something you’ve brought to the table is worth more than a thousand passive scrollers, or a thousand workers who are “getting the job done,” or a thousand people who are “doing the right thing” but don’t really have a connection to why, beyond “because it’s the right thing.” Connection outweighs attention.

Bringing it back home to this Substack, I have to redefine my markers. It has to be about stories of change, not just subscribers. Interactions, not just views. Conversations, not just likes.

This is accountability reimagined. Not as a stick to beat myself with, but as a compass that shows me where I am going. By demanding that I create a larger impact, I ensure that the numbers-focus doesn’t keep me small.

What’s one metric in your life right now that you’re focused on that’s keeping you small?

2. Stop Comparing Chapters

We are all reading different books. Let me say that again: we are all reading different books.

It’s easy to look at someone else’s page and think you’re behind. To see another creator’s follower count, another entrepreneur’s revenue, another artist’s breakthrough moment and immediately start measuring your journey against theirs. But you’re not comparing apples to apples. You’re comparing entire libraries.

Especially early in my coaching career, I remember watching people launch these massive online courses, go viral on social, etc., all while I was grinding away, building (very) slowly, wondering if I was doing something wrong. There’s no quicker way to creative paralysis than comparison. It’s like trying to force a chapter from the Lord of the Rings into your detective novel. It’s not going to fit, and you’re going to exhaust a lot of effort trying to make it fit.

This is not to say we can’t learn from others. We can, and we should. But we have to understand that learning is not the same as copying the path. The real value is in studying and understanding the principles behind the success. What made that approach work? What was the mindset that drove that breakthrough? These are the real lessons, not the surface-level metrics of their growth stories that we tend to obsess over.

But your timeline is not just different, it’s sacred.

As my father likes to say, the word “holy” isn’t just a fancy term that means “religious,” or “perfect.” It means, literally, “set apart.” This is how you have to approach your personal, professional, spiritual or creative growth. You must understand that it is not only unique to you, it is you. You must never sacrifice what is great about you in the attempt to gain what others have.

Think about it this way: the most meaningful transformation in your life, what was it? Did it happen on a schedule? Did it arrive exactly when you expected, packaged precisely as you planned? Of course not. Growth is messy. Nonlinear. Full of unexpected turns and amazing detours. Exquisitely human.

The danger here isn’t in admiring the success of others. It’s in letting admiration darken into a narrative of your own inadequacy. When you start believing that because you haven’t hit someone else’s milestone that you’re failing, you have lost the plot of your own story.

So here is a challenge: The next time you start comparing your Chapter 3 to someone else’s Chapter 20, stop. Ask yourself: What is the next, right step for me? Not for them. Not based on some arbitrary timeline. For you, right now, in this moment.

What is the actual next milestone that’s going to bring you closer to who you’re becoming?

Write it down. Not their milestone. Yours.

3. Measure What Matters, Not What’s Easy

On the wall of my living room hangs a souvenir map of Disneyland, from its 50th anniversary, back in 2005. It’s a beautiful piece of art, but no matter how detailed, it can’t capture the immersive experience of walking through the terrain of the park itself. With the exception of very large directional choices like “Fantasyland” or “Tomorrowland,” I would never take this map off the wall and try to use it to navigate Walt’s Magic Kingdom.

How many likes did you get? How many followers? How many dollars in the bank this month? These are the glossy, simplified maps of your growth story. They’re neat, they’re clean. They operate in tidy rows and columns. They’re comforting. And they’re almost entirely useless.

In my coaching work I’ve watched a lot of people get stuck reading their maps instead of navigating the three-dimensional landscape of their work. I have seen spreadsheets full of numbers, charts tracking every micro-movement, and I can see right away that they’re measuring everything except the real territory.

Easy metrics create an illusion of progress, which creates an illusion of control. But you can have a map that looks perfect and still be completely lost. You can have thousands of followers and still have zero impact. Your revenue can be off the charts, but if you’re disconnected from the reason you started the work in the first place, in my experience, you’re going to feel just as unhappy, unfulfilled and stuck as the person who’s barely scraping by.

If you want your measurement to be meaningful, you have to start by understanding the actual terrain. You have to figure out how to track the things that are hardest to quantify, but matter the most. How many lives are you changing? How many perspectives have been shifted thanks to you? How much closer are you to the person that you are committed to becoming?

So let’s talk about how to do this. Start by getting a crystal clear picture of who you’re becoming. Not who you are right now, not who you have been, but who you are in the process of becoming. In our first session, I always ask my coaching clients the same question: “A year from now, assuming you get all of the coaching and all of the resources you need, what will your life look like? Who will you be?” Remember, it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the direction.

I talked before about how I’m changing the way I’m going to measure my success with this platform. This morning, I started a simple Google Doc. Nothing fancy, nothing formatted. And every time someone shares a genuine breakthrough with me, I’m going to write it down. Date. Context. Impact. It will take no time at all, but I believe that it will keep me oriented toward what really matters.

I don’t need another vanity metric. I need that compass to keep me pointed north, to remind me that what I do here isn’t about numbers, but the transformation I believe so deeply is available to anyone who is dedicated enough to pursue it.

What is the one thing, if you tracked it, that would remind you of why you do what you do?

Not what looks good on a resume. Not what impresses others. What matters to you.

The Challenge

Let me be clear, once again: this is not about giving yourself a pass. This is not about lowering the bar. In fact, if anything, it’s about raising the bar so that you are required to elevate.

A lot of people might read this and hear an invitation to slack off. To take their foot off the gas. To use these ideas as an excuse for settling for “good enough.” That’s not just wrong, it’s the exact opposite of what I’m suggesting.

Redefining success is about demanding more from yourself, not less. It’s about creating and maintaining a standard of excellence that can’t be captured by a scorecard, a number on the scale or a follower count. It is about holding yourself accountable to your highest potential in ways that are deeper, more nuanced and, ultimately, more transformative.

In short: You do not get to live on default.

People who change things do not live on default. They do not look at the same things everyone else is looking at. They create entirely new ways of seeing the world, and it is through these fresh lenses that they build new ways of understanding progress.

Most people will keep using the old scoreboard. They will continue to measure their worth by external validations, behaviors that are not anchored in a true identity or the way that others feel about them. They’ll chase likes, followers, dollars, even religion or activism, but they will always feel like they’re coming up short or falling behind, because they’re measuring the wrong things.

Not you. Not if you’re willing to do the hard work of looking deeper.

It is an act of courage to measure yourself by what really matters. To be willing to be uncomfortable. To be willing to look like you’re not growing when you are in fact expanding in ways that are invisible and eternal.

It’s not about being different for the sake of being different. It’s about being intentional. About being committed to actual growth, not just the appearance of it.

So here is my question to you (it is also my question to me): Are you willing to throw away the old map? Are you willing to stop using someone else’s compass? Are you willing to navigate your own terrain, even though there are few clear markers?

You have a moment of greatness waiting for you. But it is not coming for you. Go and find it.

What’s Next?

I started this post talking about this publication. About the tension between consistent effort and desired results. About feeling stuck at 65 subscribers when I wanted 100.

But this was never really about a number at all.

It’s about you. It’s always been. It’s about how you’re measuring your life. It’s about the stories you’re telling yourself about your progress, your growth and your potential.

So here is what I’m asking: what is the one measurement you need to define?

Not theoretically. Not someday. Right now.

What’s the metric that has been keeping you small? What number do you keep looking at that’s more about comfort than actual growth? What’s letting you feel like you’re doing something while preventing you from doing the real work?

Write it down.

Then, write down how you’re going to measure it differently. Not perfectly, just differently. If you need some help, reach out to me! Let’s work our way through this journey together.

Because here’s what I wholeheartedly believe about you: Your next breakthrough is waiting. Not in some distant future or under some ideal conditions. It’s waiting right now. In this next breath. In the choice that you are about to make.

The choice to see yourself differently.

The choice to measure differently.

The choice to really, truly grow.

Now, go be great.