(2015-05-22) Benson Intentionally Unoptimized

Buster Benson: Intentionally Unoptimized. I love the Quantified Self movement, am a product manager for Twitter Analytics, love OKRs, and tend to frame everything in terms of metrics and data. At the same time, I’m a huge skeptic of data-driven culture, fitness trackers, A/B testing, and the statistics you hear about on tech blogs and in the mainstream news.

It’s sort of subtle, but also crucially important, to prioritize leaving your most important metrics intentionally unoptimized

When building product, leave MAU intentionally unoptimized and instead optimize for blindingly obvious and unique value to the user.

When going through school, leave grades intentionally unoptimized and instead optimize for mastery of a topic of interest.

Don’t let data drive you. Use it as a fallible indicator of progress towards the ineffable quality of a meaningful impact.