The Internal Scorecard
You’ve probably received many scores during the course of your life, whether they be grades from teachers in school or college, performance reviews at your job or peer reviews. It’s easy to get sucked into being defined by “scores” given to you by other people and spend your life trying to increase them. We’re social creatures after all and being in the ‘good books’ of others in your tribe was once an evolutionary advantage. The downside is that many people go on to define their self-worth and self-esteem by external metrics, like what others think of them, their grades or their status.
I’ve found that a critical component to living a happy and successful life is developing an internal scorecard: where you decide what’s important to you and you evaluate your life and performance according to that criteria.
I stumbled upon the concept of an internal scorecard while at University, where I realized that the grades I received in my classes at the end of the semester didn’t tell the whole story about how I actually performed in the class. Many times they didn’t reflect things like my effort, the increase in my knowledge and mastery of the subject between the start and end of the course, as well as things like my engagement with the material during the course. So rather than judging my performance solely on the A, B or C I got at the end of the semester, I focused more on my learning process and whether I achieved my own goals, like getting a basic introduction to a field or developing a skill or learning a new way of thinking through the experience of taking the class. I write more about this in my essay Don’t compare your level 1 with someone else’s level 10
What is success for you?
At every stage of your life, you want to define what success looks like for you. You’ll come across people with very different definitions of success from your own. That’s okay, don’t judge them. It makes your internal scorecard no less valid. Keep focused on your own journey. Living your truth according to your internal scorecard is a deeply personal endeavour. I learned this as a high school student at United World College Costa Rica, I lived and studied with 150 other students from 70+ countries all over the world. We all had different definitions of what a “successful” time in high school looked like. To myself and my friends from third world countries, it meant doing well academically and getting into good US universities, because that’s what we thought would give us the best shot at living a financially stable life. To others it was getting a full scholarship to afford going to college at all. To a third group, it was learning new things and taking their experience of living with people from diverse backgrounds and applying it back in their home country.
The important thing is that you define success for yourself and measure yourself against the standards you set for yourself, not standards other people set for you. If you do not define success for yourself, you will get sucked into chasing what society deems as valuable. And what’s worse than playing a game with a prize you don’t want to win? The answer: Winning that prize -- because even if you win, you’ll still be unhappy, because you didn’t really want it in the first place.
Live according to your values
To develop your own internal scorecard, focus on reflecting on your motives and finding a set of values according to which you want to live your life. Then focus on living in alignment with those values:
“I would define values... as a set of things that you will not compromise on. Foundational values to me are things that I’ve looked at very, very carefully about myself and I’ve deliberately chosen and said, “You know what, this is a habit. This is a way of life. I’m not going to compromise on it. I’m going to stay this way forever. I don’t want to live life any other way.” - Naval Ravikant on The Knowledge Project Podcast
A very basic example of some questions on my own internal scorecard are:
Am I being the healthiest and strongest version of myself?
Am I giving my best effort in everything I do?
Are there things that I continue to do, even though I know I should not?
Am I learning, growing and enjoying my work?
Do I feel connected to life?
Am I happy with my relationships and friendships?
How am I pursuing mastery in life?
These questions reflect my values like health, interconnectedness, vulnerability and mastery.
Also, notice the focus on my actions and what I can control, rather than things outside of my control. This helps me focus on the truth and hopefully fool myself less. Sometimes the opinions of other people delude us about the truth of a situation. Warren Buffet reminds us that how the really behave, the truth, is always the most important thing, in his famous hypothetical about being the world’s best lover:
“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard. I always pose it this way. I say: ‘Lookit. Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover?’ Now, that’s an interesting question. If all the emphasis is on what the world’s going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you’ll wind up with an Outer Scorecard.” - Warren Buffet
The focus on things within my control is ancient wisdom for living a happy life, best encapsulated by stoic philosopher Epictetus:
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .” —Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5
Let’s all live with an internal scorecard. In the end, it’s the scorecard that ever matters.
Resources to learn more and build your Internal Scorecard:
Warren Buffet’s Internal Scorecard [Link to Article]
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (The chapters on your Work view and Life view will help in determining your values) [Book Website] [Amazon Book Link]
Reflected Best Self [Link to Article] [Overview] [Journal Article]
Which part of the article did you find most interesting? What questions would make your internal scorecard? Let me know on Twitter (@avthars) or email me (avthar at avthar dot com) to discuss more!
