Was golfing with a retired executive who worked for a company that had a product set that required precision. His golf game was no different. He counted every stroke with diligence and absolute integrity. He was very passionate about it. Golf was not the important thing, but his ability to count every stroke was. I would kick my ball over into the fairway, drop a ball from my pocked after losing one, take a mulligan or two or three. A few do over puts. You know, basic duffer golf. He looked at me mockingly, and I raised my eyebrows at him and said, “what is wrong, I count birdies.”
I count birdies with exactness and precision equal to his fervor. I got precisely 0 birdies, and my tracking of that metric is just as exact and just as truthful as his final score of 95, par when adjusted for his 23.3 handicap. He got 2 birdies. So in my rulebook, he was the winner. In fact by both systems, he was the winner either way. However, the point is that there is an interesting lesson here.
What you count, what exact thing you track, has a lot to do with how you perceive things.
Guy
