Measurement done right can transform your organization. It can not only show you where you are now, but can get you to wherever you want to go. Measurement is important to high performance, improvement, and, ultimately, success in business, or in any other area of human effort. Measuring what matters is more important than most things we do. Here are 5 ideas for how to become more conscious of what you can stop doing, in order to make the time for performance measurement.

1. Stop reporting measures that no one uses. Be daring—stop reporting what you know isn’t being used, and if anyone notices, use it as an opportunity to start a conversation about how to decide what is worth measuring and reporting.

2. Reduce your time in meetings and the number of meetings you attend. Meetings always take longer than they need to. The big time wasters are tangents, people arriving late and violent agreements that mistakenly sound like useful debates. Start on time, finish early and diplomatically manage the discussion. Reduce and Agree only to meetings that have a clear purpose that is aligned to your role and responsibilities. Don’t go to meetings out of obligation or interest alone.

3. Rank your main concerns and drop the bottom 10. List your tasks, both what you are doing and what you should be doing, and rank them in order of importance. Simply stop doing the bottom 10—they are likely to have consequences far less than failing to measure what matters. Design your weekly schedule to make time for measurement. Set a regular time in your diary that you block out for measurement related activities, and then put the remainder of your tasks around that. Put the big rocks (the important stuff) in first and you’ll fit more of the smaller rocks in anyway.

4.Bring up measurement in conversations and existing meetings. Don’t wait for measurement time. Use natural conversations that have even minor importance to performance and results as an opportunity to talk about measures that matter. Set yourself progress goals for choosing, creating and using measures, and reward yourself when you achieve them. You can get others to hold you accountable. Agree progress goals with your manager or colleagues or customers for choosing, creating and using measures. Set regular check in time with them to pat you on the back or face the music.

5.Save time by stopping when it’s good enough. Stop over processing whatever you do, and get clear about the point at which you’ve done what will work, and don’t waste time.

As the coronavirus spreads, remote work arrangements preserve continuity and allow people to stay busy doing something familiar during a time of crisis. At first glance, telecommuting (远程办公) might not seem so bad.

While it works well for some, it doesn’t for everyone. Working remotely has widespread negative consequences, including people spending time working that they might otherwise have spent with family or friends – because they can easily cross their work-life boundaries, they end up working longer hours.

People who telecommute may also have trouble freeing themselves from work and from the technology that enables it, which contributes to the harmful consequences of reducing face-to-face time and personal interactions. When humans rely on technology, we may forget how essential these interactions are to human happiness.

As a university professor, my days consist of social interactions with students and colleagues. I generally find those conversations and the resulting relationships inspiring and rewarding. The coronavirus situation means that countless teachers like me face the possibility of standing in front of a camera instead of a classroom. I’d prefer doing that to canceling class, but I can’t help wondering whether my job, along with so many others, is about to experience a great and potentially permanent change.

I wonder how many faculty members might be laid off if the university decides teaching remotely is good enough, or how many people will be let go when their bosses realize they don’t need to show up every day, or even at all. Finally, here’s the most important question: whether people believe their firsthand, lived experiences can be replaced – and not just during a pandemic (大流行病).

The coronavirus will accelerate our rush into the arms of technology. Ironically, our faith in   technology may end up speeding up our own obsolescence (过时).

Chef Bruno Abate owns one of the best pizzerias in Chicago. His restaurant makes thin pizzas, heated in an oven with a wood-burning fire. They come with fillings like mushrooms, onions, olives, tomatoes and Italian meats. Each pizza sells for between $12 and $18 at Abate’s restaurant, Tocco. But do you know you can get a similar pizza for half the price at the Cook County Jail (监狱) in Chicago?

Abate leads a cooking school at the jail. He shows prisoners how to make pizza, pasta, and Italian ice cream, called gelato. The cooking school is called “Recipe for Change.” There, behind the jail’s barbed wires and security barriers, a number of students, including Shaquille Slater, are making pizzas. “I like everything I do,” he says.

Slater makes pizza dough (面团), and then adds fillings to the dough. He makes sure the pizza and its fillings look just right before they come out of the oven. He says working with food makes him forget about being in jail. “It brings up memories of days when you were free and when you were having a good time,” he says.

Workers at the cooking school make about 200 pizzas every week. The pizzas are sold to other prisoners in the jail for about $7 each.

Abate says he is teaching cooking skills to the prisoners, and how to use good, fresh in-gredients (佐料). When they finish the class, the Students have skills they can use to find jobs when they are released from prison.

Abate says his program teaches more than how to make food. He helps the students learn that they need to have a plan for their future so they do not return to prison once they leave the prison. “Through food, I try to teach, you know, how to change in life,” Abate says.