Peter Drucker, who was as famous a management consultant as a management consultant could be, was (possibly mis)quoted as saying “what gets measured gets managed.” Meaning, if you can set a metric to some factor or element, then you can monitor and therefore manage its progress, development, success, etc.
As a teacher on a teacher’s schedule facing a wide-open summer full of possibility and potential, wide-eyed and hopeful that this could be the summer when I accomplish the myriad goals that have developed like mold in my musky office at the high school, that I could finally finish the Big Project on which I have been working for more than a decade now (the end is in sight, by the way!) and also start and finish several new ones, and also spend plenty of time with the family, and exercise a lot, and eat well, and travel some, and garden and pickle and make kombucha and all that, I faced the first few days of summer in a somewhat predictable haze, unable to start really anything at all, paralyzed, unable to commit to any one act because I wanted to do all of it, everything, now.
Then I remembered my Drucker, or Pseudo-Drucker, and decided to set very particular measurable goals (and here, let me offer a late appreciation to my former supervisor - you know who you are - who really did everything in her power to get me to set measurable goals, and to no avail. Better late than never?) that I could track throughout the dog days of summer. So I set to work, coming up with a list of endeavors with which I want to spend my time, and then to set what seemed like reasonable goals for those endeavors. For example, every summer I’d like to “hike” but never really have. Too big and vague. So how about “hike fifty miles this summer”? That way I could do 2 miles 25 times, or 10 miles 5 times, or whatever. I can keep track on an app on my phone. Push-ups - how many? 1000. Sure.
I made a short list and then looked at it - it struck me as somewhat dull and also almost entirely focused on a very limited kind of goal - physical health, project, prepare for fall. This didn’t sit well with me, and I decided to generate different kinds of goals, as long as they were measurable ones. How many times this summer could I shake myself out of a bad mood? How many good points will I find in myself and others? (200) How many times could I put my phone down or close my computer when I was simply wasting time? (100 each). I’m measuring these things. I’m keeping track. It’s helping. I feel like I’m getting somewhere.
My favorite measurable goal for this summer, though, is to make people happy. I am committed to making fifty distinct people happy this summer. Making people happy is not simple - it is often time-consuming, you’ve got to be all-in, you’ve got to care. My number is 50 for the summer.
I’ve tracked four so far. It has been quite satisfying. On those occasions, I very consciously set aside my other concerns and focused entirely on those people and their joy. I did things that weren’t about me and my joy.
And that, I believe, is the hook. Facing what seems like a long summer with lots of projects and dreams in hand, one could get grabby and try to optimize their time for those projects and dreams. It could make you selfish. I’m naturally selfish. I have to set tasks like this in order to break my natural selfishness.
My anti-role-model on this matter is Korach. Korach, the “star” of this week’s parsha, ends up causing quite a stir with his big claims that, really, he should be in charge of things and not Moshe. He’s got some big theological claims, but it’s pretty clear that they are thinly-veiled justifications for his desire to climb the incorporate ladder. Though the book of Bamidbar has no lack of dramatic and painful stories, Korach adds a very dramatic and very painful story to the mix. In the end he is both swallowed up by the Earth and consumed by a heavenly fire. I guess that’s what you get.
What was it about Korach? We could identify a series of perceived slights (sure, he’s the biggest Levi, but why isn’t he a kohen? and, sure, the initiation ritual for his clan required full-body shaving plus being waved around like a lulav) and also bad influences (his own wife) and also perceived multigenerational slights (why was Moshe’s father’s clan given the best jobs and not his father’s clan?) but really, it can all be traced back to the most basic core element of who Korach was. We meet the entirety of Korach in his first move, his first action: “And Korach took.”
“Took” is a word that requires an object. There must be something that is taken. Granted, if I say, “She put out sushi, and I took” then you know what I took without me saying “I took sushi.” But if a paragraph - or a parsha, or a biography - begins with “And Korach took” without naming an object, then you’re not learning about an action. You’re learning about a person.
Korach is a taker. He takes. It’s what he does and who he is. The rest of the story just provides more and more things for him to take, but they are all just feeding the gaping maw of an insatiable taker. Finally, the earth and the fire take him.
I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want my summer to be that way. I’ve got goals, and I’m measuring them, and what gets measured gets managed. It’s the summer of love.