Measuring the unquantifiable!

Measuring almost anything has become an intrinsic part of our lives. If you spare a thought on what all do you do in your daily routine, chances are that an overwhelming amount of your routine and other activities are performed using some form of ‘measure’. Some examples are what ‘time’ does your wake-up alarm buzz, your ‘cup’ of tea/coffee, the ‘distance’ you travel to your workplace, etc.

 Here is something interesting that you can try and do. Take a piece of paper and list down all the activities you do on any given day, in a column – at least twenty activities. Aside each of these activities, write down the ‘measure’ of that activity. A generic example table is provided here for your easy understanding. You can write down any ‘measure’ you can think of.

A generic example table

Activity	Measure
Getting Up in the Morning	Alarm at 0500 hrs
Tea	A cup of tea with a spoon of sugar
Morning Walk/Exercise	30 minutes/2 miles
Bathing	A bucket of water (20 litres!)
Breakfast	Omelette (2 eggs), with 2 slices of bread
Drive to work	90 minutes, listening to radio channel 98.3FM
Meetings lined up for the day	Seven

Only a few curious souls amongst you would have cared to take this activity sportingly and are ready with your table list. A majority of the souls however, would be in the ‘know it all, nothing more to learn’ category OR simply lazy and laid back enough, not to attempt this. Well the good thing, is that there is a learning for all, irrespective; and hence you may wish to spare a thought on your ‘table’ before you proceed further.

Each individual will have his or own such tables that he/she is the executive chairman of, every single day in life. Some of you have just written it down, some of you haven’t; but are certainly now relating all your daily activities to their measures, in your mind.

Here’s the learning!

You will notice is that your brilliant, well educated and mature mind would have come up with a list of activities with their corresponding measure of value parameters. [Time, Distance, Weight, Volume, Frequency, Quantity]. If anyone amongst you has genuinely come up with something different, beware – you might just be amongst the privileged minority!

Well, this learning is for those in the majority as well as in the minority. Often in life, one gets too busy and immersed in it, that we often drown in its frenzy and fail to pause and think. Think differently!  Think laterally! Here is another interesting activity.

Keeping the same list of activities column, can you now come up with a different measure to attribute to each of the activity in your list? Confused? Great! You are well on course, in your learning! Here is an example:

Activity	Measure
Getting Up in the Morning	With a stretched body and smiling face
Tea	Enjoy the moment with my family (not the news paper)
Morning Walk/Exercise	Practise deep breathing the fresh air as I walk, feel the energy flow through the body
Bathing	Play with water, sing my favourite songs
Breakfast	Smell the rich taste of the serving.
Drive to work	Make sure that I do not honk even once today
Meetings lined up for the day	Seven Goals for the day

Aha! Does this seem interesting and different (perhaps enjoyable as well) enough for you to maybe re-consider the way you go about living your daily routine? Be honest! If you are feeling embarrassed about not having done this before, you can keep this little secret with you and start practising it.  However, if you have learned and are not shy about ‘having learned at this age’, please do share your experience and give something back, for once!

Wondering what this exciting measure is all about. Well, it is the measure of Values! It opens up a whole new world of refreshing possibilities. Heard your cry, “But this does not seem to be a quantifiable measure!” Well, who says all things that can be measured should mandatorily be quantifiable? They need not be. Life isn’t, maybe it is if you decide to just count the life in your years, but perhaps it isn’t if you decide to create the years in your life!

Without much ado, I have enlisted below, a simple table as an example. An example of how one can replace the measure of value table, with the measure of values.

#	Measure of Value	Measure of Values	J
1	Money	Character	J
2	Majority Prevails	Truth Prevails	JJ
3	Rule of Law	Rule of Love	JJJ
4	Fare Well	Welfare	JJJJ
5	Income	Outcome	JJJJJ
6	Forecast	Foresight	JJJJJJ
7	Education	Learning	JJJJJJJ
8	Sight	Vision	JJJJJJJJ
9	Teach	Inspire	JJJJJJJJJ
10	Counting the years in your life	Creating the life in your years	JJJJJJJJJJ
11	Wealthy	Worthy	JJJJJJJJJJJ
12	Mile	Smile	JJJJJJJJJJJJ

And, now you will agree that the curious souls who did take the effort, and are already with their tables, have a head start! Get set, Go. And if you insist on wanting things to be quantifiable, well let me surprise you by emphatically stating that values are indeed quantifiable. And following the measure of values almost automatically makes the measure of value follow you.

If you find this blog article interesting, do share it with people who you want to prepare their 'measure of values' table, besides you! Do not forget to share your comments, suggestions, and thoughts on this blog article. For priority attention do write to me at suniltatkar@gmail.com (personal) or suniltatkar@valurevolution.com (professional)