Benchmarks and Your Personal Best

In the beautiful poem Desiderata there is a poignant line “If you compare yourself with others you may become vain or bitter for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself”.

Yet in this world that we all live in today there are benchmarks and measurements for everything and every performance. I can easily go to a site that can tell me how many people are coming to my site on the Internet, how many pages they look at. I can go to Technorati and see if my blog is popular, see if people like my blog according to some wonderful statistics that they put together based on traffic, page views and so forth.
I can input plug-ins right here on this page that will measure how popular this post is compared to that post. I can also see how many people are going to Joe Popper and Daisy Dancers blog and how many people are shopping for toys on this pogo stick site and that hopscotch site. (Actually I don’t know of a Joe Popper or a Daisy Dancer. I just made them up for the sake of the story and I have yet to look up sites on pogo sticks and hopscotch but I know that they are out there somewhere! And I’m sure I can find the statistics to prove it!)

When I go to the gym I can measure my steps, calories burned, heart rate, and mets (whatever that is!) every single time if I use the same machine. I can compare the daily results to my personal best and I can continuously strive to improve my best performance. I can now buy athletic shoes that will measure my activity, allow me to wirelessly transfer it to my Ipod and download all of the information to my computer, which will allow me to compare myself with other players. I can then compete with people throughout the world. If I run far enough and long enough I can see my name on the leader board of the entire world.

I can go to Amazon.com and I can instantly see which books are the top sellers for the day. I did that just yesterday. To tell the truth, I do that regularly.

But do all of these benchmarks and measurements really serve us? For many things I’m sure that they do. For example, cars that are put through extensive measures of their safety do improve their manufacturing by taking the measurements into account.

But is my workout really improved when I compare myself against an unknown entity in another part of the world? Is my workout a competition to be “better than”? Or is my workout for my own progress and my own joy? Is the writing on my blog improving and really becoming better if I judge the readership only by the numbers and compare it to another person’s blog? Can someone create something unique and cutting edge if they are constantly comparing themselves to others?

If I only judge my success by the numbers and traffic, have I forgotten about the people who write and say thank you for a certain email or post that they enjoyed or that inspired them? The joy and elation I receive in even just one Thank you far exceeds any joy I have ever found in a web traffic analysis. Thank you joy translates into more creativity, ideas and delightful pleasure whereas a web traffic analysis, is sometimes interesting, sometimes pleasing, oftentimes confusing and as far as fun, joy and elation goes it is always not so much.

When we measure ourselves against the entire Universe does it really help us to achieve our personal best or is it just too arbitrary and erratic to get any useful data for our own performance? There is no way we can possibly know the motives, practices or schemes of someone we have not met nor know. Does it dilute our energies to consider all of the volumes upon volumes of possible information that we can measure our performances and ourselves by?

Perhaps we should evaluate the multitudes of possible benchmarks and determine which are of value and which make us feel happy and inspired and disregard the rest. The information will always be out there. We just don’t have to look at it anymore.

As we free up that energy from the useless facts and endless data of arbitrary benchmarks our creative forces can come into prominence. We can use our energy and time to become our best selves and to give our creativity and joy back to the world. We can use the fullness of all of our energy to become our own personal best.
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I am pleased to say that this article was included in the Personal Development Carnival February 25, 2007 edition hosted this week at MosesEdwardMilesIII.com