# Prisoners of our existing metrics

- **Episode:** [156](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/156.md) (2024-12-24)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** metrics, measurement, performance
- **Time:** 36:51–40:20 (start 2211s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/156?t=2211](https://truthliesandwork.com/156?t=2211)

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[36:51] Leanne Elliott: There's a danger where prisoners of our existing metrics, and that's always a danger with metrics, which is that the metrics you've measured turn out to be less relevant. So I mentioned that fact that, you know, if you're looking at productivity, you also need to look at the number of days taken through illness. Now, since COVID started, the only time I've been ill Since COVID is with COVID Okay, that's the only time I've been unable to work in 2 and a half years. I haven't taken— now, I've had a few days where I've said, I'm terribly sorry, I can't do this physical meeting, I'll have to do it by Zoom because I've got the shits, or whatever it might be. Okay, right. But I haven't actually— I don't think I've actually taken a day off. But actually, I did have flu, but I did cancel my meetings because of flu for a couple of days. But similarly, I now go and see my dad. My dad lives in Wales. What I used to do is have to leave on Friday evening, get stuck in traffic, stay in a very expensive hotel, you know, because it's Saturday night— some— it was, sorry, Friday night, Saturday night— go and visit him, come back. Now what I discovered you can do is you leave on Thursday evening, the traffic's much lighter, the hotel's much easier to book. It's a pub, actually. Okay, but it's generally available. And then I work from home on Friday— I work from hotel on Friday, see my dad in the evening, see my dad in the afternoon, see my dad on Saturday, drive back Saturday evening, absolutely no traffic jam at all. There's a huge gain to efficiency in just effectively offsetting people's activities. One of the gains to flexible work is that not everybody has to commute at exactly the same time. The reason British trains were overcrowded was not really a shortage of trains. It was an excess of simultaneity of transit. Okay. It was a chronological coordination problem much more than it was actually a resources and rolling stock problem. And so, you know, there are most really big problems get solved obliquely. Okay, and most politicians are trying to solve them directly. And I can see about 5 things: the leveling up agenda, the housing crisis, you know, the, you know, to some extent, you know, the social care crisis. A lot of things can be solved when we start to create new forms of employment, by which I mean new forms of value exchange between employer and employee. And the 4-day week forms part of that, by the way. Um, But I don't know what I'd like to know. I know you ask the questions, not me. But my point that the gains from the dual income household went to government in the form of taxes. It went to property owners in the form of price increases, particularly around cities for the reason I gave. It didn't much go to the families themselves
[39:50] Al Elliott: No
[39:52] Leanne Elliott: And there's a lot of discretionary time. Just to be clear, I'm not saying feminists, you really screwed up, right? Because nobody anticipated that. And people are always much better off through being able to make choices, okay, that aren't defined or circumscribed by their gender or by social norms or anything like that. Okay. People are basically better off when they can make more choices. I mean, what's wealth? Ultimately, it's more choices