I don’t know how much football or basketball you watch on TV. Maybe it’s a lot. Maybe not much. But all you have to do is watch once or twice and you’ll notice a particular thing that sportscasters do that you don’t see in many other parts of life.
They give the audience context in the form of statistics.
Watch any NFL game tonight (Monday Night Football) and you’ll likely see that Brady just completed another season with 40 touchdown passes. Or that he passed the career 700 touchdown passes in his career.
Just a couple weeks ago, everyone was watching Steph Curry as he was trying to break the 2,973 record of three point shots made by Ray Allen. He broke it. And added records for the longest streak of games with at least one three point shot. And did all of this with less games than anyone else.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Because most of life doesn’t have a commentator running a narrative right next to you. Most of life doesn’t articulate the numbers, the scores, and the stats of how you’re doing.
But it would be nice if they did.
Not so you could compete with anyone else. But so you could compete with yourself.
The best athletes in the world are worried less about what other people are doing, and they’re taking care of themselves so they can outperform what they’ve already accomplished.
The only person you’re competing with is yourself.
But to do that, you need to start tracking some stats so you can compare your past with your present. That’s the way you shape your future.