On numbers

I reworked my LinkedIn profile recently, and my resume, and I kept coming across the same advice: quantify your accomplishments. This makes them more concrete! More impressive!

And I take issue with the idea that my accomplishments aren't concrete or real if they don't involve a number, so it was time for a post. (I've yet to figure out how to make this about gardening.)

I've been running a podcast network for five years, and I've overseen writing, production, fundraising, and marketing for several fiction series in that time. So when I talk about my achievements in that job, those shows are my proudest--actual high-production-value audio stories, out in the world because of me.

I don't remember download numbers, or how much money we raised, any more than I remember my law school GPA. Because while those are numbers, and they may very well have been great numbers, that's not where the true impact is.

What I remember? The Super Suits fan who told us our comedy podcast about a law firm in a superhero universe inspired them to stand up for themselves and take their landlord to court (they won). Or another fan who let us know they gained the confidence from our queer-positive shows to start using they/them pronouns.

We're out here changing minds, changing lives. That's what matters.

Data is important. I'm as logic- and data-driven as anyone else with a science and tech background, and it's vital for checking our assumptions and ensuring our impact is real, not imagined. But the map is not the territory. It's easy to get bogged down in the numbers, to start thinking changing the numbers is the same as changing the world.

It's not the same.

Even if the numbers aren't cherry-picked or manipulated (and they are, pretty much always, at least a little), they're still an imperfect representation of the thing you're trying to measure.

Anyone who's done original research knows that hundreds of compromises are made to fit a squishy world into clean-cut categories. You lose as much nuance and meaning in that process as you gain.

So yes, report the numbers. Learn from them. But don't fall into the trap of thinking they're what's important. They're a way to communicate and interpret reality, they are not themselves reality.

And beware of anyone who reports everything in numerical form, because there's a good chance they've lost track of the reality they're supposedly tracking. Or worse, they're trying to obscure it.