I love tracking stuff. I’m not obsessed with the numbers, but I definitely do more tracking than your usual person. I liked Steam in the beginning because it provided a central location to track my playtime. RescueTime, a productivity tracking tool, was the first software installed on my computers for more than 7 years.
A few recent things lead me down this rabbit hole of thinking how we humans and our society are uniquely centered around numbers.
A person’s worth is essentially measured by the money they have. We measure children by their grades. Organizations, our large social structures, are measured by their net worth, or number of employees, or number of users.
But humans are also lazy. So we end up tracking the easiest number. All the examples I quoted are easy measures, not the best ones.
Dope On The Table
I’ve been doing a rewatch of The Wire, one of my favorite shows. And there are many instances where the cops go for things that were easy to measure, overlooking the bigger picture.
Season 1 Spoilers for The Wire ahead
In Season 1, Kima, a cop, gets shot as part of an ongoing drug investigation. The investigation team is close to nailing the main antagonists and their drug suppliers. After the shooting, the department needs to show that they are acting. So instead of waiting for the investigation, they decided to make arrests and put “dope on the table”.
That ends up derailing most of the investigation.
Season 4 Spoilers for The Wire Ahead
Season 4 of The Wire is focused on the education system. There are a few instances where the system emphasizes the wrong metrics.
The school’s funding is tied to how many children attend the school. A child coming to school once a month is considered to have attended for the entire month. So that’s what the school does! The Vice Principal hires a couple of people to bring in kids once a month to keep the funding.
In another instance, the school asks teachers to “teach the test” instead of making sure the kids understand the concepts.
Spoilers Over
Improving My Mileage
A couple of months back, Youtube algorithm surfaced this interesting MythBusters video “Which Is Faster: Weaving in Traffic or Staying in One Lane?”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZefgUVg3qx0
The conclusion at the end is that lane weaver gets there faster, but barely. I noticed it only recently that the video is again talking about time, the easiest thing to measure.
Unrelated, I encountered this quote in a comment on Ars Technica’s 2025 Genesis GV70 review:
But drive carefully, and I reckon you could stretch that to about 260 miles (418 km) using eco mode, which decouples the front motor to improve energy efficiency and some light hypermiling.
Hypermiling was a new term. To learn about it, I went to the Wikipedia article on the topic. I decided to give it a try on my commute to the office.
The three times I have tried so far, my mileage was consistently more than when weaving in and out of the traffic. Usually, I get 30 miles per gallon (12.75 kilometers per liter). With sticking to the right lane and not accelerating too much, I got 36 mpg (15.30 kpl). That’s a 20% increase.
And the funny thing is, I’ve found myself being less angry at erratic drivers. No matter how fast I’m going in the left lane, there’s always someone who wants to go faster and starts tailgating behind me. No such issues in the slow lane.
20% mileage increase and more calm mind, just because I found a better number to measure. Instead of measuring speed or time, which are obvious choices, moving my focus to mileage is better for me, other drivers on the road and the environment.
Tying back to the theme of society, I see this entire thing as a societal problem as well! As a society, there is focus on safe driving, but there’s no education on improving mileage. Even in price sensitive markets like India, better mileage is a selling point, not something we teach people.
Finding Better Metrics
I don’t have any advice on how to find better metrics. These examples were some recent things that I had noticed.
A good place to start would be to go below the surface. Most of the people will not dive deep into intricacies of systems. After all, that’s something we aren’t taught. But if you take time to do that, you’ll find better ways to measure things.