If you followed me back in the day while I was working on my failed Lean Designs startup, it probably would have been hard to tell that things were headed in the wrong direction. Even for me, it took a long time to realize how many problems there were with the idea and execution.

I’ve thought about that a lot since then. It’s really hard to observe something and evaluate how things are going based on activity alone. Activity is necessary and important, but only if it’s applied effectively.

How can you tell whether activity is effective? Looking ahead, it’s difficult unless you have a deep understanding of the problem and the possible solutions. For example, it might have seemed like setting up an LLC and having a logo designed for Lean Designs were important tasks, but really they weren’t. If you’ve built an online business before you might realize that, but if not it would be tempting to look at the completion of those tasks and think I was making meaningful progress.

Looking backwards is a bit easier. Compare your current results for some goal with where you were a month ago, six months ago, a year ago. Have you made progress in whatever metric that matters? If your goal is to build and grow a SaaS startup, have you launched? What do your growth and retention rates look like? If you’re trying to lose weight, are you? If you’re trying to write more often, have you been?

It’s tempting to want to explain why when the results aren’t there. In the short run, there can be a lot of valid reasons why things aren’t going well. Bad luck, illness, etc etc. But the further back in time you go, the harder it becomes to attribute the lack of results to these types of factors.

If you look at where you are today with a goal and your results haven’t changed from six months ago despite lots of activity, it’s worth taking a step back and trying to identify the root cause. Ask why a bunch of times. Maybe there is a valid reason, but in my experience it’s often something more fundamental. Maybe I’m not as motivated by the goal as I thought which is causing me not to put the effort into it that is really required. Like with Lean Designs, maybe my entire approach is wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have been working on Lean Designs in the first place.

And to be clear I’m not saying the ends justify the means. Just that results are important when goal-setting and the longer you go without meaningful results, the greater the odds are that something is fundamentally wrong with the goals or the execution.

Put another way, if I’ve been working on something for a while and the results aren’t there, I’m probably doing something wrong and need to re-evaluate my approach.

This might be obvious, but it took me a long time to really internalize it so I wanted to share in case it helps anyone.

Would love to hear your thoughts.