Your Progress Depends On What You Document

How records help you spot patterns, trends, and opportunities.

Photo by Sage Friedman on Unsplash

When I worked for NOLS, one of the things we talked through at our annual summit was the rate of yearly incidents and injuries that had occurred in the field. Traveling in places where rescue is hundreds of miles away (sometimes days), the data on common injuries requiring medical evacuation was fascinating.

More jaw-dropping was the injury at the top of the list.

NOLS is an outdoor education organization specializing in leadership development. They operate globally in some of the world’s most desolate environments.

Using wilderness expedition-style trips as their classroom of choice, participants range from Naval Academy cadets to corporate executives and from professional guides to individuals.

What you measure makes you better.

When undertaking a new challenge, our tendency is to anticipate. The unknown creates a want to be prepared. We look forward, ruminating in the “what ifs”.

It becomes easy to slip into a habit of brushing off the present to prepare for what’s next. To skip over the acknowledgement of what’s happening around us would be a mistake.

Whether good or bad, not writing down or accounting for what happened is a missed opportunity — a really massive one.

The process of documenting is what helps us create understanding. By focusing on the facts of what happened, we can then spot patterns, trends, and opportunities.

That’s what NOLS does to mitigate risk on their expeditions.

Actually, it’s what they’ve been exceptional at doing since 1965.