Value Over Vanity: The Key To Discernment

prepmanagementinc • January 3, 2022

In a world that seems like all anyone cares about is how we look & what we have, life can start to feel transactional at times. It is easy to confuse one for the other, but understanding which one to place emphasis on is the key to discernment.

You might find yourself feeling like you have to engage in the game of comparison like people around us. Digital communities like Instagram provide a perfect platform for people watching and arbitrary comparison. Unfortunately the things we see and track on those platforms are only leading indicators that don’t help us tell much of a story in the grand scheme.

The only way to understand a situation in whole is by asking the right questions (something I believe we should all hold ourselves more accountable in doing) and tracking indicators that show signs of growth, not arbitrary metrics that don’t tell a story.

I’m a marketing strategist. In my work, there are two kinds of metrics to track the progress of any campaign or initiative we launch: metrics and key performance indicators. Metrics are quantifiable measures used to track progress from a live source, like social media or a websites. They are useful for understanding progress in raw totals, but, individually, hold no real value.

This thought process can be applied to vanity on many levels. When we look at things like money, appearance or even social media presence, we can look at them and get a general understanding of what a person has accumulated over time, but that is all we can assume. We cannot contextualize those understandings looking at them as individual components of success because they don’t tell a full story.

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator and is the other type of metric we use to track progress. KPIs are like “ vital signs for your business ”. They are milestones that “ most closely align with your critical business objectives .

These are the things that move the business forward and give us a tangible understanding of how well the business is doing. like conversion rates, leads and downloads. They give you an understanding of performance in relation to inputs and give context to the metrics. They help tell a story.

When we discuss value we look at it in context and relative to the situation a person finds her/himself in. We contextualize the data and information at our disposal which usually includes metrics, but we ask questions that give us a greater understanding of a situation in whole instead of its individual parts. Seeing value is the ability to interpret the metrics that matter to assess the right path forward

Ultimately everyone has a different perspective when thinking about the world. For me, value and vanity are two factors I can look at in any situation to better understand the context of a story, which ultimately helps me make better decisions. It’s a value system I’ve developed that helps me discern between things that matter and things that don’t. We need filters in a world of full of noise & propaganda.

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