Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. Living a fulfilling life starts with tracking what truly matters.
In this talk, personal metrics expert Chris Musser shares how he turned a single question, am I living a good life, into a daily practice, tracking progress across nine dimensions, from faith and relationships to to work and well-being. By measuring his life each day, Chris tells us how he learned to spot the patterns and balance the trade-offs that can help any of us focus on what truly matters.
Can I get a show of hands if you use a wearable? Fitbit, Oura, Apple Watch, Track Your Health, come on. Okay, okay. It's like 50% of you. I love this. So my question for us today, for you, but also the non-wearables, is what if we expanded from not just measuring our health, but to measuring all the important parts of our lives?
So this really started for me right after I turned 25, and I started to wake up in the middle of the night pretty consistently with these panics, A lot of folks wake up with to-do lists bouncing through their minds. A lot of you, maybe, some of you. I had to-do lists, but I also had this major to-be list. Really just, will I be a good man? Will I live a good life?
And I'm a pretty insecure guy generally, but I have this thing. I have one of those extremely encouraging moms, which maybe some of you have.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Chris Musser to track his life daily?
Mine is very likely more encouraging. And so with her voice in my mind, I would basically answer the question, yeah, I am going to live a good life. In fact, maybe she's right. I will change millions of lives. Maybe I'll be president. So I had this narrative from 25 to about 33. And then I hit 33. And I haven't changed that many lives.
And I find out one day that Bill Clinton was already a governor by 33. which to most of you is no big deal. But ask my wife, Ashley, that broke me. I think what happened is it kind of shattered this sort of mom-induced megalomania I had, and it made me take an actual look at my life. And so I looked at my professional life, but then what about my friendships?
What about my contributions to society? What about my character? And honestly, I looked and I was fine, but I wasn't thriving. I wasn't flourishing. And so then it struck me, you know, Chris, a lot of people don't live good lives. Why do you think you would automatically be any different? What if I wake up in 50 years and I discover I have not become the man I wanted to be?
I'm guessing some of you have similar thoughts because Gallup tells us that only 33% of us are thriving in life. So if you're in the other 66%, Like me, how do we get into the 33%? Now, I am a management consultant, and so there's one thing that we love and believe deeply. Say it with me if you know it. What gets measured gets managed. Come on, guys, you know this.
You know, what is it, 50% of us use wearables to measure our health, to presumably manage it, but I couldn't find anything like that to measure all the dimensions that mattered in life. So I created this super simple, kind of clunky Excel tracker that I use. So the first step was to identify the dimensions of a good life.
So I started with my faith, but then I brought in insights from the thinkers who've studied this stuff.
So from Aristotle to the thing called the Harvard Happiness Study, to Martin Seligman's Positive Psychology, to Clayton Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life, to my professor Arthur Brooks' research on happiness, to this global flourishing study, and this cool article by my colleagues at BCG called Strategize Your Life. And so I landed on these nine dimensions of the good life for me.
From the ancients to the moderns, these ingredients have been remarkably consistent. They're knowable. So step two, measure. I had the privilege of working for Gallup for a few years, if you know them. And so I have this nerdy thing where I love building surveys. So I turned these nine dimensions into kind of a 20-ish question survey that I answer pretty much every day.
I have a few others I answer weekly, like contribution to society. That's sort of a weekly thing for me. My mom thinks it's daily. It's not. But these to me basically are the picture of the good life to me. And so for the past 18 months, I've essentially answered these questions every day. I do it at 9 p.m. on my couch on my phone, and it literally takes me 90 seconds.
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