Looking for happiness in the future - view on the website
I recently read the following quote from a book written a century ago by Thomas Mitchell.
"People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find."
Mitchell was not an intellectual in the formal sense; he was an educated farmer from Scotland. Mitchell made the above observation around the same time Fisher was studying crops and forming some of the defining features of statistics in a different part of the United Kingdom. Fisher is arguably as important as Einstein, but you've never heard of him.
A century later, with minimal effort, I could reformulate Mitchell's thoughts to be about data in organisations and be spot on.
People are always looking for better data at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if you can't find useful data now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more value in working with the data you have around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find.
The language feels a bit old and awkward, but the point stands.
I cringe when people give me their opinions about data—usually, they say, 'We don't have enough', 'We don't have the right data', or 'We have too much data'.
Whatever problem you think you have with data isn't going to improve in the future; it will probably get worse. You could find everything you need to know right now if you knew how to look at what you have and how to run a statistical test. If you can't find something useful from your data now, there is little chance you'll ever find anything useful.
Andrew
Want more? Great.
On LinkedIn, I describe why this concept is hard to implement.
Here's a short data bite if you want to hear me expand on the idea.