♾️ The 6 things an Entrepreneur should measure

Read time: 5 mins…

Grand Risings Entrepreneur.

This week’s newsletter is going to cover:

• 📏 The Final Limitless Foundation - Measure

• 📊 The 6 Things I measure (& why you might want to)

Let’s dive in…👇

Today we’re talking about Foundation #4: Measure 📏

You’ve probably heard of this quote from Business OG Peter Drucker…

My core business is a data-driven growth agency.

We grow businesses by running ads, building landing pages and follow up automations.

We measure as much as we can.

Why? 🧐

So we can see what’s working, and what’s not.

Our process goes like this…

• We test a bunch of stuff.

• We measure what works.

• We do more of that, and less of the other stuff.

The net result = a continual cycle of consistent growth.

Many years ago, I began to apply this methodology to myself…👇

To get better in any realm of human endeavour, you need to understand what moves the needle & what doesn’t.

This applies to our health, energy, and productivity.

So I use various tools to measure these aspect of my life.

After all…

In fact, I quickly learnt you will nearly always improve in any of these areas JUST by the act of measuring it and doing nothing else.

Want to lose weight? Stand on a scale every day.

Want to be productive? Track your time for a week.

Want to get stronger? Start tracking your workouts.

Being an Entrepreneur, it’s important we are efficient & allocating our precious resources (time & energy).

So we ONLY want to measure:

a) the smallest number things possible

b) the things that are actually useful

c) in a way that does not require any additional effort or ‘work’

So here’s what I measure, why it’s important, and how I do it… 👇

The Six Things I Measure

1. My Energy Expenditure

2. My Body Composition

3. My Sleep Quality

4. My Recovery

5. My Blood

6. My Time

My Energy Expenditure

What:

• Total Daily Steps

• Total Calories Burnt

• Total Workouts per Week

• Total Kilograms Lifted per Workout

Why:

• This captures both my daily movement and lifting - the two key elements to moving.

• Tracking kg’s lifted ensures I hit progressive overload and trigger my body to grow.

How:

• Oura Ring - for steps & calories

• PUSH App - for workouts & weight tracking

My Body Composition

What:

• Bodyweight

• Body Fat %

• Skeletal Muscle Mass

Why:

• This gives me a daily view of how my body is changing.

• Weight alone is a fairly useless measure… especially if you’re lifting weights & gaining muscle.

• This gives you a real insight as to how your body reacts to your diet and movement - as well as during stressful times.

How:

• Electric Scales from Amazon

  
  There’s loads that measure all of this & they are pretty cheap.
  
  They will link to an app that lets you track your stats.

(Note: they are not 100% accurate… BUT it doesn’t matter as they provide a consistent reference point and that’s what’s important)

My Sleep Quality

What:

• Sleep Efficiency (Time Asleep / Time in Bed)

• Total Time Slept

• Sleep Quality (Time spent in Deep & REM sleep)

Why:

• Just being in bed for 8-hours doesn’t equate to great sleep.

• Understanding of that time in bed, how much were you actually asleep?

• And of that time, how much were you in Deep & REM sleep? As this is where the magic happens.

• Tracking this allows you to make adjustments to your bedroom & also see how things like late nights, alcohol, too much caffeine etc. impact you.

How:

• Oura Ring - for sleep efficiency.

• Eight Sleep Mattress - for everything else

My Recovery

What:

• Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

• Resting Heart Rate

Why:

• You can’t perform at a high level in business or in the gym without recovering.

• HRV measures the variance in your heartbeat… it’s a bit random but a big indicator of recovery.

• High HRV = good. Low HRV = bad.

• I can tell when I am overdoing things when my HRV dips and my resting heart rate increases…

How:

• Oura Ring - tracks throughout the day.

• Eight Sleep Mattress - tracks during the night.

My Blood

What:

• Testosterone

Why:

• Every two months I get my blood tested to see what’s going on under the hood.

• I am primarily interested in my Testosterone levels - as this is critical for male health, drive & energy (and T levels are collapsing amongst most men in the population).

• Helpfully, the test also checks about 100 other biomarkers… so you get to check that everything is OK as well.

How:

• Medichecks - a nurse comes to my flat & takes two vials of blood. 3 days later I get my results.

My Time

This one is slightly different… but I track it in two ways.

1. My Calendar

   

2. My Productive Work hours

I’ve recently started using a tool called Rize.

It’s an app that tracks exactly how you spend your time on your computer - completely automatically in the background.

It surprise me every week…

These six things give me a full view of the critical areas of my life & performance.

Importantly, they require extremely little effort to implement.

The purpose here is NOT to obsess over these metrics every single day…

…but instead to build an accurate & useful data set that can:

a) Identify the areas in your life that need improving

b) Show how new things you introduce to your life actually impact you

Until next time.

You owe it to yourself to move,

Elliott ✌🏼

P.S. I share a lot of stuff on Instagram… if you want you can connect with me here.

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