I learned of the concept of lag and lead measures several years ago and it has stuck with me since. It is useful way of thinking through accomplishing a given task or goal.
Let's split out the two and give examples of both:
Lag Measures:
Lag measures are your goal or your desired end state. For example:
I want to deadlift 500 pounds
I want to lose 80 pounds
I want to earn $100k per year
I want to learn to play guitar
We are extremely familiar with lag measures because they are synonymous with goals which are generally the most popular (though not necessarily the most effective way) to pursue progress.
Lead Measures
Lead measures are the highest leverage atomic actions that can lead (hence the name) to the eventual accomplishment of a goal.
Lead measures are also another way of thinking through the "Systems" concept as popularized by Scott Adams in "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life" (Excellent book - Highly recommend).
Lead measures are essentially your "System" for making progress in the domains that are important to you.
Here are the Lag Measures from above, paired with a lead measure that could lead to the eventual achievement of the Lag Measure:
LAG MEASURE: I want to deadlift 500 pounds
LEAD MEASURE: I will follow a weekly linear progression training model
LEAD MEASURE: I will consume sufficient daily protein and calories
LEAD MEASURE: I will get 8 hours of sleep per night
LAG MEASURE: I want to lose 80 pounds
LEAD MEASURE: I will walk 10k steps per day
LEAD MEASURE: I will fast everyday until noon
LAG MEASURE: I want to earn $100k per year
LEAD MEASURE: I will apply for 5 jobs per week with 10% higher salary than current job
LEAD MEASURE: I will spend 2 hours per day working on a side hustle
LAG MEASURE: I want to learn to play guitar
LEAD MEASURE: I will spend 20 minutes everyday practicing the guitar
LEAD MEASURE: I will do weekly guitar lessons with a teacher
These are just examples. I'm not saying the only way to lose 80 pounds is to walk 10k steps and do intermittent fasting.
There are a few interesting things to note about the lag/lead measure pairing above. First, the time horizon is different for some of them. Some have daily time horizons, others have a week. In my opinion, lead measures are more effective as the time horizon shortens.
This means that if you can, choose daily lead measures as opposed to weekly lead measures.
There are a few reasons for this. First, daily actions are more likely to become habitual and will require less willpower. Second, you have more data to measure the effectiveness of the lead measure.
With that said, sometimes the most effective lead measures cannot be daily. Want to deadlift 500 pounds? You will not have effective results if you deadlift everyday so you will have to break it into a weekly training plan (such as linear progression) where you deadlift 2 times per week.
What's important to note is that lead measures are not a guarantee that the lag measure will be achieved.
You must:
a) Research and choose leveraged lead measures that are likely to impact the lag measure.
b) Measure the effectiveness of the lead measures and adjust as necessary.
Why use lead measures
Lead measures are effective because they give you small victories. If your definition of success is "Daily Walking 10K steps" as opposed to "Lose 80 pounds", you have the ability to succeed daily.
If you only maintain a vague goal of "Lose 80 pounds", you are essentially failing every day that you do not reach that goal.
Build your life around lead measures and not only will you have daily achievement but you stand a higher chance of actually achieving your goal.
How am I using Lead Measures for Zero to 1K
Earlier this week I tweeted out my weekly goals:
In that tweet I mentioned that two of my weekly goals (Short term lag measures) were 30 twitter followers and 6 newsletter subscriptions.
I defined daily lead measures for those lag measures as:
Twitter Growth Lead Measures:
Subscription Growth Lead Measures:
With this setup, I have high level goals that I might achieve but then I define atomic daily lead measures. The benefit is that I have full control over achieving the daily lead measures. I do not have control over the goal of achieving 30 followers and 6 subscriptions. The intent is that the lead measures will directly lead to progress in those lag measures.
But what’s important to me is defining lead measures that allow me small daily victories.
The reason why I applied it specifically to Twitter this week is I wanted to define a small number of daily actions that should still lead to progress.
Once I achieve those actions I don’t have to think anymore about posting or using Twitter. Which frees up maximal time for working on the higher leverage side hustle activities.
Confused?
Still confused on the difference between lag and lead measures? Throw some of your goals into the comments and I will try to give examples of lead measures that could be delineated out for the specific goal (Lag Measure).
Closing:
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