We wanted to visit a topic that we haven't really covered here on our blog before, so this week, we're focusing on how to use data in your life. In this episode of the Stay Grounded Podcast, we'll cover how to use data to improve your health, love, and overall wellness.Check out the full podcast episode below as well as our insights.[embed]https://youtu.be/fzyGvjoE9nI[/embed]
How did the data-driven journey start for Meaghan and AJ?
Meaghan likes to joke that she was born with a spreadsheet in her hand. Her parents were computer nerds, so she grew up in a very analytical household. She used spreadsheets to map out her homework and assignments in school, and in college she created a weighted spreadsheet to decide what kind of TV she should buy for herself.AJ on the other hand, focused on intuition and feelings. He tended to go more with his gut instincts, and then use data to examine the outcomes of those decisions. AJ's grandfather taught him at an early age to always learn something new and develop himself, so he read voraciously and learned from other's wisdom. AJ's father was an engineer, so he learned how to be detail oriented from his dad, and then We wanted to visit a topic that we haven’t really covered here on our blog before, so this week, we’re focusing on how to use data in your life. In this episode of the Stay Grounded Podcast, we’ll cover how to use data to improve your health, love, and overall wellness.
Check out the full podcast episode below as well as our insights.
How did the data-driven journey start for Meaghan and AJ?
Meaghan likes to joke that she was born with a spreadsheet in her hand. Her parents were computer nerds, so she grew up in a very analytical household. She used spreadsheets to map out her homework and assignments in school, and in college she created a weighted spreadsheet to decide what kind of TV she should buy for herself.
AJ on the other hand, focused on intuition and feelings. He tended to go more with his gut instincts, and then use data to examine the outcomes of those decisions. AJ’s grandfather taught him at an early age to always learn something new and develop himself, so he read voraciously and learned from other’s wisdom. AJ’s father was an engineer, so he learned how to be detail oriented from his dad, and then his mother was more of the social butterfly. AJ found a way to merge all of the best attributes from each of those influences in order to maximize his capabilities.
AJ’s dad helped him to see the importance of data early on, as they used data to track KPIs from across the farm. Meaghan wanted to teach calculus from an early age, so data came pretty naturally to her.
Their perspective on data
Despite what many people think, data is not something to be feared. Data is just another term for information. The more information that you have at your disposal, the more knowledge you have. The more knowledge you accumulate, the more likely that you can turn that knowledge into wisdom. Data doesn’t belong in some dark corner. Data affects and impacts every portion of our lives. By leveraging data, you can better understand your health and spirituality; it can help you plan out travels. Data helps you to spot patterns and trends. Once you see the patterns and trends, you can start to drill down into the why. Once you understand the principles that explain why and how things happen, you can begin to harness that to create the outcomes that you want.
The trick to becoming data driven is learning how to ask questions. Once you learn how to ask the right questions and find data to answer those questions, you can find new questions to deepen your understanding even further. Anyone can become data-driven, regardless of their background. People who failed math class can find truth in data. The secret to data is simply asking questions, seeking out the answers, and then taking action from it.
How do AJ and Meaghan balance data with intuition?
This is technically a trick question, because intuition is entirely based off data. While many view intuition as a gut feeling or a hunch, intuition actually relies on data, but your brain has processed the data in a manner that you didn’t notice, so you don’t recognize all of the data that went into that feeling. Intuition developed within us since the age of the cavemen. If you think about it practically, the cavemen who recognized danger the fastest survived, while those who took too long to process that information probably got eaten. Those who survived passed this trait on to their offspring, and we carry that with us today.
How do you deal with outdated information that can feed your intuition?
The key to removing outdated information is exposing yourself to more information. The more information that you can get, the more likely that you can replace outdated or incomplete information with better, updated information. You can do this through travel, exposure to different ideas, cultures, norms, etc. The more data that you can gather, the more likely you are to have accurate data.
How do Meaghan and AJ find the data points that actually move the needle?
For businesses-
For businesses, we have a process that we go through called Metrics Mapping. This helps businesses find the metrics that will actually move the needle for them.
As shown in the image above, the process of Metrics Mapping starts with your business goals and objectives. In this example, the business wants to double their year-over-year revenue.
Once you know what you want to accomplish, you need to ask what questions you have about how you’ll reach that goal. In our example, they need to know what sources get them the best conversion rates on the site.
From there, you need to think through what metrics can help answer the questions that you came up with. In this case, the business needs to know their conversion rates for different funnels, their total traffic and where it came from, the results of their various split tests, and their ROI for each advertising medium.
Once you know what metrics you need, it’s time to find the source of truth for each of those metrics. The source of truth is the place where you can get the most accurate information on that metric. In the case of our example, traffic and traffic sources would come from Google Analytics (GA), Shopify could help us understand the funnel conversion rates and the ROI, etc.
The rest of the metrics mapping process can then be carried out from there to help you better visualize and interpret the data.
For individuals-
As an individual, you need to start this process by understanding your values. From there, it’s important to understand your personal data. You need to find the data points that matter for you as an individual.
If health is important to you, then you need to get as much information on that as you can. Get your blood and genetics tested for markers to see what things can drive the most impact for your body. Everyone has a different makeup, so it’s important to understand what does and doesn’t work for us personally, rather than following a trend or influencer.
The key to moving the needle is to create a feasibility quadrant. This graph (pictured below) allows you to map out the different options available to you in terms of difficulty and likely value. By creating this graph, you can prioritize your actions on things that provide the most benefit at the lowest cost to you. After that, we recommend focusing on the other things that were considered highly valuable, but difficult to achieve. As you have completed the low hanging fruit, hopefully, the other high-value prospects have shifted to become more feasible. From there, you can move on to the things that provide less results, but are still simple to do.
How do you find the right questions to ask?
The easiest place to get started is to ask yourself where you are now. Start to analyze where you stand currently, and figure out the areas of your life where you want to do better, and where you want more. The main resources that we have in our lives are time, energy, and money. If you can find where you currently use those items, you can assess if those match your life priorities. If they don’t, then you have your questions lined up for you. “What do I want to change?” “How can I change it?” “Where to I want to get to?”. From there, you map out your steps on the feasibility quadrant and start working on it.
The trick to this whole process is attaching everything to a higher purpose of what you want in life. If you can tie your goals to a larger purpose, that will help you during the tough times. Once you have found the things that you want to accomplish, rate how happy you are with your current state. From there, you can find the things that you want to improve upon and then follow the paths laid out above.
Why is it so difficult to be honest with ourselves?
Meaghan and AJ’s theory on why it’s difficult to be honest with ourselves is because it’s painful. No one wants to admit to themselves that they have areas that they need to improve. That wounds the ego. Everyone has a version of themselves built up in their own head. Other people have other versions or variations of you built in their heads. Receiving feedback contrary to the image of yourself that you have built up in your head is difficult. Especially if that feedback is coming from yourself. But the only way to grow properly is to find the areas that you need to improve and then work towards a goal.
Meaghan has found that the best way for her to find the true version of herself is to look at her calendar and her bank account. Where she spends her time and her money tell her what she actually prioritizes.
Too often we create a vision of ourselves in our lives and in our business, and then only pay attention to things that fit that vision of ourselves or our business.
What areas of life to AJ and Meaghan recommend optimizing?
Love-
Many people don’t view love as something that you can quantify. Meaghan and AJ live to disprove that theory. They track multiple facets of their relationship in order to make sure that they each get the most out of it as possible.
The primary things that they decided to focus on were: growing apart, money problems, and sex.
In order to prevent growing apart, they studied each other’s love languages. This allows them to express affection and love in a way that the other will best receive it. Across their relationship, they correlations across the times when they fought. This correlation helped them realize that the reason that they were fighting was because AJ wasn’t getting enough of his love languages. Meaghan rectified this by adding in reminders on her phone to go and give AJ love according to his love languages every day.
Health-
Obviously, there are millions of metrics that you can use to measure your health. AJ and Meaghan track most of them. While we can’t go into too much detail on these things here, we do go into great detail on some of the most impactful tests that they have done here.
Business-
How you do one thing, is how you do everything. Life is messy, things run together. So the habits that you establish in your relationship and with your health can translate into the way that you run your business. The same issues that we talked about earlier with honesty can impact you in business. However, this isn’t always the case. People can be extremely successful in certain aspects of business where they fail in their normal lives.
How can you stay grounded in life?
AJ-
AJ uses his mornings to ground himself. He starts by writing in a gratitude journal, then meditates, and then drinks some water. If he dives right into the business side of things without taking this time in the morning, the day gets away from him.
Meaghan-
Meaghan uses travel to keep herself grounded. She and AJ plan out times during their year when they will be on the road. They’re not vacationing, just traveling and working remotely. That helps Meaghan to feel connected and new.
his mother was more of the social butterfly. AJ found a way to merge all of the best attributes from each of those influences in order to maximize his capabilities.AJ's dad helped him to see the importance of data early on, as they used data to track KPIs from across the farm. Meaghan wanted to teach calculus from an early age, so data came pretty naturally to her.
Their perspective on data
Despite what many people think, data is not something to be feared. Data is just another term for information. The more information that you have at your disposal, the more knowledge you have. The more knowledge you accumulate, the more likely that you can turn that knowledge into wisdom. Data doesn't belong in some dark corner. Data affects and impacts every portion of our lives. By leveraging data, you can better understand your health and spirituality; it can help you plan out travels. Data helps you to spot patterns and trends. Once you see the patterns and trends, you can start to drill down into the why. Once you understand the principles that explain why and how things happen, you can begin to harness that to create the outcomes that you want.The trick to becoming data driven is learning how to ask questions. Once you learn how to ask the right questions and find data to answer those questions, you can find new questions to deepen your understanding even further. Anyone can become data-driven, regardless of their background. People who failed math class can find truth in data. The secret to data is simply asking questions, seeking out the answers, and then taking action from it.
How do AJ and Meaghan balance data with intuition?
This is technically a trick question, because intuition is entirely based off data. While many view intuition as a gut feeling or a hunch, intuition actually relies on data, but your brain has processed the data in a manner that you didn't notice, so you don't recognize all of the data that went into that feeling. Intuition developed within us since the age of the cavemen. If you think about it practically, the cavemen who recognized danger the fastest survived, while those who took too long to process that information probably got eaten. Those who survived passed this trait on to their offspring, and we carry that with us today.
How do you deal with outdated information that can feed your intuition?
The key to removing outdated information is exposing yourself to more information. The more information that you can get, the more likely that you can replace outdated or incomplete information with better, updated information. You can do this through travel, exposure to different ideas, cultures, norms, etc. The more data that you can gather, the more likely you are to have accurate data.
How do Meaghan and AJ find the data points that actually move the needle?
For businesses-
For businesses, we have a process that we go through called Metrics Mapping. This helps businesses find the metrics that will actually move the needle for them.
As shown in the image above, the process of Metrics Mapping starts with your business goals and objectives. In this example, the business wants to double their year-over-year revenue.Once you know what you want to accomplish, you need to ask what questions you have about how you'll reach that goal. In our example, they need to know what sources get them the best conversion rates on the site.From there, you need to think through what metrics can help answer the questions that you came up with. In this case, the business needs to know their conversion rates for different funnels, their total traffic and where it came from, the results of their various split tests, and their ROI for each advertising medium.Once you know what metrics you need, it's time to find the source of truth for each of those metrics. The source of truth is the place where you can get the most accurate information on that metric. In the case of our example, traffic and traffic sources would come from Google Analytics (GA), Shopify could help us understand the funnel conversion rates and the ROI, etc.The rest of the metrics mapping process can then be carried out from there to help you better visualize and interpret the data.
For individuals-
As an individual, you need to start this process by understanding your values. From there, it's important to understand your personal data. You need to find the data points that matter for you as an individual.If health is important to you, then you need to get as much information on that as you can. Get your blood and genetics tested for markers to see what things can drive the most impact for your body. Everyone has a different makeup, so it's important to understand what does and doesn't work for us personally, rather than following a trend or influencer.The key to moving the needle is to create a feasibility quadrant. This graph (pictured below) allows you to map out the different options available to you in terms of difficulty and likely value. By creating this graph, you can prioritize your actions on things that provide the most benefit at the lowest cost to you. After that, we recommend focusing on the other things that were considered highly valuable, but difficult to achieve. As you have completed the low hanging fruit, hopefully, the other high-value prospects have shifted to become more feasible. From there, you can move on to the things that provide less results, but are still simple to do.
How do you find the right questions to ask?
The easiest place to get started is to ask yourself where you are now. Start to analyze where you stand currently, and figure out the areas of your life where you want to do better, and where you want more. The main resources that we have in our lives are time, energy, and money. If you can find where you currently use those items, you can assess if those match your life priorities. If they don't, then you have your questions lined up for you. "What do I want to change?" "How can I change it?" "Where to I want to get to?". From there, you map out your steps on the feasibility quadrant and start working on it.The trick to this whole process is attaching everything to a higher purpose of what you want in life. If you can tie your goals to a larger purpose, that will help you during the tough times. Once you have found the things that you want to accomplish, rate how happy you are with your current state. From there, you can find the things that you want to improve upon and then follow the paths laid out above.
Why is it so difficult to be honest with ourselves?
Meaghan and AJ's theory on why it's difficult to be honest with ourselves is because it's painful. No one wants to admit to themselves that they have areas that they need to improve. That wounds the ego. Everyone has a version of themselves built up in their own head. Other people have other versions or variations of you built in their heads. Receiving feedback contrary to the image of yourself that you have built up in your head is difficult. Especially if that feedback is coming from yourself. But the only way to grow properly is to find the areas that you need to improve and then work towards a goal.Meaghan has found that the best way for her to find the true version of herself is to look at her calendar and her bank account. Where she spends her time and her money tell her what she actually prioritizes.Too often we create a vision of ourselves in our lives and in our business, and then only pay attention to things that fit that vision of ourselves or our business.
What areas of life to AJ and Meaghan recommend optimizing?
Love-
Many people don't view love as something that you can quantify. Meaghan and AJ live to disprove that theory. They track multiple facets of their relationship in order to make sure that they each get the most out of it as possible.The primary things that they decided to focus on were: growing apart, money problems, and sex.In order to prevent growing apart, they studied each other's love languages. This allows them to express affection and love in a way that the other will best receive it. Across their relationship, they correlations across the times when they fought. This correlation helped them realize that the reason that they were fighting was because AJ wasn't getting enough of his love languages. Meaghan rectified this by adding in reminders on her phone to go and give AJ love according to his love languages every day.
Health-
Obviously, there are millions of metrics that you can use to measure your health. AJ and Meaghan track most of them. While we can't go into too much detail on these things here, we do go into great detail on some of the most impactful tests that they have done here.
Business-
How you do one thing, is how you do everything. Life is messy, things run together. So the habits that you establish in your relationship and with your health can translate into the way that you run your business. The same issues that we talked about earlier with honesty can impact you in business. However, this isn't always the case. People can be extremely successful in certain aspects of business where they fail in their normal lives.
How can you stay grounded in life?
AJ-
AJ uses his mornings to ground himself. He starts by writing in a gratitude journal, then meditates, and then drinks some water. If he dives right into the business side of things without taking this time in the morning, the day gets away from him.
Meaghan-
Meaghan uses travel to keep herself grounded. She and AJ plan out times during their year when they will be on the road. They're not vacationing, just traveling and working remotely. That helps Meaghan to feel connected and new.
