You can’t measure what you don’t track.
And, when you measure, two things happen:
- You see progress, and are encouraged to keep chiseling away
- You see lack of progress and are spurred to make changes so that progress can be achieved
I see this every day, all day long, at work. We are fielding monstrously huge solutions to the military. Complex projects that I don’t even begin to understand. And, the only way these things get done is by tracking the work–which largely falls to me. I am the keeper of all of the Action Items. I maintain them in huge spreadsheets and record each activity. That information then gets fed into an integrated master schedule.
And stuff gets done.
And so, in light of that….
My FitBit owns me.
It’s become quite comical, how attached I am to this little device. Ridiculous, even.
I started off barely getting 2000 to 3000 steps in a day. And, I’m ashamed to say that there were plenty of days, in the beginning, when my steps for the day were under 1,000. That’s pathetic.
But, now, my goal is to knock out 10,000 steps each morning, before work gets going. That’s generally 5 miles. I get it over with in the morning so that any steps that happen the rest of the day I can consider bonus steps.
Gold Star for Shelly.
It’s created some pretty comical situations, though, when it’s been an insanely busy day and I’m close to my step goal, but haven’t quite reached it. I’ve been known to stomp in circles around my living room at 11:45 pm, to get my steps before the clock turns over at midnight. I’ve been known to almost miss flights because I’ve been determined to walk to my gate instead of riding the Plane Train. I’ve refused rides home from church at night after Wednesday night choir rehearsals, because I needed the steps.
My FitBit owns me.
If for some reason I forget to wear it, I feel so cheated……What? You mean I walked and DIDN’T GET CREDIT FOR IT?? GRRRRRRR.
I even pick it up and carry it with me to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Cause those 20 steps are getting counted, by golly.
For example, last night was a rough night with only about an hour or so of sleep, and restless sleep at that. And a result of that was pacing both around my bedroom, and ultimately around the neighborhood. And as I was swatting mosquitos outside, I remembered that I hadn’t grabbed my FitBit. Dang it. No credit.
You can’t measure what you don’t track.
This applies to so many areas of life. I track everything, nerdily so. I track a to-do list each and every day of chores. I track calories consumed. I track books read. I track letters written, words written, goals set and accomplished. I even check-list the scripture I study and pray each morning.
The one area I have not applied this to, though, is scripture memory.
I’m not sure why. It may be because I think I am bad at memorizing anything. Or, it may be because, while I checklist the scripture I study and pray each morning, that is more so I don’t lose my place in my daily sections of my morning worship/study time.
But really I think it is this: The memorizing of scripture has seemed strange to me, since becoming a Christ-follower. Scripture is important to me, and to relegate it to another routine in my already chock-full-of-routine life, has always seemed to be not the route I wanted to go. Because I know my incredibly legalistic self. I can so easily become much more wrapped up in the accomplishment of the act of racking up memorized verses, that I fear it would become useless.
But, as occasionlly happens, in the middle of the night last night, as I dishearted-ly and despairingly opened my Evernote Files to my daily scripture work. I had no desire to do the work, though. None. I pretty much just stared at each file.
But, in the staring, I realized something that I’ve never realized before. Not really, anyway.
The columns of scripture references that I have ingested over the past 5ish years? I know them. I didn’t have to look them up. They were there, in my mind. And in my soul:
- Psalm 36:5-10
- Col. 1:13-22
- Hebrews 5:5-10
- Isaiah 40:9-31
- Luke 1:68-79
- Habakkuk 3:1-6
- Psalm 146:5-10
And so many more.
And, I needed them there, in my soul. And in my mind. Last night, this morning. Scripture is truth.
I’m thinking a bit differently about scripture memory this morning. It is good and right. Yes, I need to be careful to not let it devolve into the legalism that I gravitate to so easily. But I’m thinking that maybe going the FitBit route and doing deliberate scripture memory but be an OK thing to do.