GC:OPINION Is your life on big KPI Listening to the self help gurus to keep myself on the up and up in the lockdown, only felt like having a more negative effect on me by adding it to my list of things to do each day. They said I should exercise and set a time for daily contemplation. These things just seemed to add to my daily list or KPI that this life had become. To assist me with the daily exercise KPI, I purchased a generic branded step and sleep counter to monitor my progress. I would have brought a Fit Bit but I am just too cheap. I want my data to be harvested at a very competitive price. If a piece of technology is going to harass me to move every hour, then let’s keep it to under thirty Euros.
I don’t know about you, but the last six months I have kind of felt like my existence on this planet has become one big KPI. With my daily life adjusting to the new world of pandemic life, it feels like one continuous to do list with little demarcation between work and as self help gurus call ‘me time’. The best way to describe myself is the world’s most productive lazy person. I am addicted to making daily lists of things and objectives to complete, where I offer myself some arbitrary celebratory metaphorical carrot at the completion of said list. I then treat myself by writing out tomorrow’s list.. The best way to describe me is similar to Sisyphus, where my rock is a continuous list!
As I am one of those weird people who get addicted to gamified solutions, so instead of getting my child to go to the kitchen to fetch me some food (dont judge me, it is no different to the young bringing back foraged food to the village elders), i was more than happy to get them extra 30 steps in. However, by further digitising my life with my sleep even now becoming a KPI I would try and set new personal bests for quality of sleep, waking up the next day wondering how to improve it. Where many criticise and objectify social media influencers for just being very good looking empty shells, are we also falling prey to this from self help gurus who do not follow their own advice. Who realistically has the time to read one book a week, as we are advised by some excitable mental maven.
I have always been a sucker for writing lists to get stuff done, I think I get it from my mother, where one of the childhood memories I have is her writing down a list the size of an an ancient scroll, which she would then recite back to me. I knew even then that it was going to be a long day with small sore feet. When we were all forced to work from home we were told a great way to keep things regimented was to have lists and some type of order to your day. This in theory should prevent you falling through the cracks mentally, in what seemed to be an unsure time for us all. I will be honest with you, this did secretly make me happy, as now people could see the joy that making a list can bring to your life. There may have been a global pandemic, but we all had our to do lists and lists can save the world!
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