If you burn 500 calories more than you consume each day, you will lose a pound a week. This fact surfaced while I was out running today. Curious, I visited a website upon return where I could plug in the time and distance to see how many calories I’d burned.

The website essentially screamed back, “That’s Not Running!”

I consoled myself with thoughts of the three giant uphills, oodles of orange spotted lizards flushed out by three inches of rain, and my habitual gander into the woods where moose have crossed my path in the past.

Humiliation aside, the reality is, it’s NOT running! If I am “running” to take a break, get the blood flowing, get outside, or get 30 minutes of exercise, and I note my accomplishment accordingly, it doesn’t matter that I am not exactly “running.”

However, if I am recording miles and telling myself or others I am a runner, I am just fooling myself.

We fool ourselves far too often, at work and at home, by measuring activity, calling it by the wrong name, and confusing it with results.

The To Do list is notorious for promoting a false sense of accomplishment. It often includes many activities of little real value. There are urgent items of low importance. There are items deposited there by others. Not only are those items often of little importance, the person doing the depositing is often of little importance, someone who hits reply-all too readily, someone who wants every little thing perfect. We check things off and call it progress. Sometimes we add completed items to increase that sense of progress. And we applaud ourselves when we finish everything. But did we accomplish anything that made a real difference?

Companies get caught in the same trap in even bigger ways. They often measure reports written, processes mapped, employees evaluated, inspections passed, projects completed, customers contacted, and on and on. There is no guarantee that any of these translate to revenue, profits, and customer satisfaction.

Take a good look at how you are measuring success. Are you making real progress on things that will make a real difference? If not, THAT’S NOT RUNNING!