Tom Evslin has a super post up today titled Daily Key to Success. In it, he talks about his obsession with all sorts of daily business metrics as one of his keys to success as an entrepreneur. I completely agree and share his obsession with daily metrics of all kinds, going back to my very first company where we had a program called FT-BIL that I used to see how much we billed out clients each day – by consultant.
Tom also highlights one metric that he recommends you not obsess over – your stock price (if you are a public company.) Having spent entirely too much time clicking refresh throughout the day on MyYahoo during 1999 – 2002, I second his recommendation. Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness also has some great insights into this particularly self-destructive phenomenon.