Data > Feelings

A few years ago, my (then) co-founder and I were reflecting on the previous year of work, specifically discussing how that year had felt in terms of time and energy usage. At one point, we were discussing the amount she had traveled over the course of the year. For Anna, there was some guilt for not traveling as often as she had committed to.

We tried to keep an eye on how much Anna traveled because she had kiddos at home and wanted to make sure she stuck to her intention to be at home as much as possible.

But she also felt like she should be on the road frequently because that’s primarily what our work consisted of back then.

But then Anna did something smart. She went back and looked at the data. She checked her previous year's calendar, month by month, and as it turned out, she had traveled almost exactly as much as she had committed to. If memory serves, she actually took one more work trip than she thought.

This took Anna and I from feeling like there was inequity in our workload to feeling like she nailed her goal for the year and showed up both at home and at work precisely as she’d hoped to.

When we’re reflecting on the past, it’s easy to misremember how things actually went because we conflate memory with emotion.

Check the data. Go through your calendar, month by month, and see exactly how you showed up. Take the emotion out for now, and just review what you actually did.