(Roughly) Daily

… And how you wish for it. Eric Athas, with an all-too-timely reminder…

Whenever I’m thinking about ideas to send to you all, I’m reminded of a principle called Goodhart’s Law, which says: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

In other words, when you tell people they’re being evaluated by a target they must hit, you risk pushing them to produce the wrong results in the name of reaching the target. The incentives can drive them to fixate on achieving the target, not achieving the overall goal.

The concept is named after the economist Charles Goodhart, who introduced it in a 1975 paper about monetary management. But the theory has been connected to a range of situations.

One of the most famous examples is a story about colonial India, when the British government sought to subdue an overpopulation of cobras in Delhi by placing a bounty on the snakes. Turn in a snakeskin, get some money.

But the plan backfired. People started farming cobras to cash in on the bounties, only exacerbating the population problem. This tale, which you can hear more about in a 2012 Freakonomics episode, spawned a shorthand for this phenomenon—the cobra effect…

… Goodhart’s Law, or the cobra effect, isn’t limited to economic policy or invasive species. You can apply it to everyday situations:

• A fitness tracker rewards you for clocking 10,000 steps a day, so you spend your evenings pacing around your living room. [see here]
• A calorie-counting app pushes you to form an unhealthy diet to stay under the limit.
• You set a resolution to read book a week but soon begin selecting books purely based on length—not interest or relevance—to hit the target.
• A construction firm is given unrealistic milestones and must cut corners to fulfill a contract.
• A school becomes hyper-focused on its test scores and offers incentives for grades instead of providing a well-rounded educational experience.

That last one happened in a years-long cheating scandal in Atlanta that unraveled in the 2010s.

Workplace quotas can have this effect, too. When you’re evaluated based on a quota, you may do anything to meet that quota, even if the quality of the work diminishes.

On the flip side, a quota policy may demotivate workers. Here’s what Adam Cobb, a professor of management at Wharton, said in a Wharton write-up about quotas: “People might start withholding effort … If you can easily meet your monthly quota, why should you try as hard once the goal is reached? Doing so may encourage the company to raise the quota, making your life harder.”

You can find the cobra effect in academic research, too, with the push for publication fueling an increase in fake papers.

Today, we’re surrounded by measurements that can be tempting to use as targets in our behavior. What is inbox zero but a target that may distract us from completing more fulfilling work?

I think a lot about the cobra effect with social media, where your success is tied to your ability to accrue views, likes, comments, and shares. Those targets can create an expectation that you must always be creating something new. Social media managers, influencers, and YouTubers have talked about the pressure to churn out new content to please algorithms and feed their audiences…

… Which brings me back to the point I started with a few hundred words ago, and the title of this post. I send this newsletter every Sunday. The routine is helpful because it provides me with a structure to work within. Absent that framework, I could end up spending too little or too much time on it.

But I must remind myself that the weekly tempo isn’t the target. If it were, I’d be critiquing myself based on arbitrary timing, not on the quality of the information I’m sharing with you. I’d be more prone to “spin up” content, as opposed to finding interesting ideas to share with you. I try to keep Goodhart’s Law in mind each week.

As you go about your day, consider your own goals, personally and professionally. When you take an action, like posting a photo on social media or completing a work task, are you doing it to please a measurement? To hit a target?…

The cobra effect and the dangers of turning measures into targets: “I’m not writing this to hit a weekly target,” from @ericathas.

Apposite: “When workplace bonuses backfire” (Economist gift link)

(Image above: source)

* Aesop’s Fables

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As we interrogate our intentions, we might recall that it was on this date in 1793 that the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was beheaded. The French Revolution had begun in 1789…

… The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, among them the abolition of feudalism, state control over the Catholic Church in France, and a declaration of rights.

The next three years were dominated by the struggle for political control, exacerbated by economic depression. Military defeats following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792 resulted in the insurrection of 10 August 1792. The monarchy was replaced by the French First Republic in September, while Louis XVI was executed in January 1793.

After another revolt in June 1793, the constitution was suspended, and adequate political power passed from the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety [which decreed Marie Antoinette’s fate]. About 16,000 people were executed in a Reign of Terror, which ended in July 1794. Weakened by external threats and internal opposition, the Republic was replaced in 1795 by the Directory. Four years later, in 1799, the Consulate seized power in a military coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte. This is generally seen as marking the end of the Revolutionary period…

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