Catching up to other professional sports, the National Hockey League has increased its usage of numbers. Specific management jobs are still dedicated to calculating player moves around skill, talent, and output, but now, more than ever financial, salary cap, age, offensive trajectory, and other numbers must be included in the decision equation.
Team numbers have always been used to analyze desired player moves and team trends. The two visuals below compare goals-for and goals-against across a 12 year cycle. If you and I only looked at goals-for we could glean a certain amount of information, but when goals-against is included with goals-for, this creates greater clarity about the successes and trends the team has generated over time.
Numbers can be manipulated, and the complexity of numbers often leaves out the human factor, but numbers tell a story that we need to pay attention to.
Your Numbers; My Numbers
Now, let's personalize the numbers for you and for me.
A fascinating international study examined what the average person does in a lifetime, broken down by days and percentages. Researchers surveyed over 9,000 people in 9 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Mexico, Russia, Korea and Spain. They discovered some striking statistics.
Taking the average life expectancy to be 25, 915 days (71 years), an average human would spend:
6.8% (or 1,769 days) of their life socializing with someone they love. Germans top this category at 10.48% (or 2,724 days).
0.69% (or 180 days) of their life exercising.
29.75% (7,709 days) of their life sitting down, with the Russians sitting most of all, at 32.9%. Maybe its time we got up? A third of our life is just sitting somewhere.
41% of their life staring at some sort of screen, phone, computer, tv, etc. Germans do this the least, around 8,995 days, probably spending the extra time with their loved ones.
0.45% (or 117 days) of their life having sex.
A few more interesting tidbits from the study:
Mexicans are most proud of their bodies (38.6%) and laugh an average of 24 times per day (more than any other nationalities).
Americans challenge themselves to do something physically tough the most (9.84 times per month) and spend the most money on fitness at $16.05 per week. They are also the most adventurous, trying some new thing about 7 times per month.
Russians sleep the most per night (7 hours, 5 minutes ) and also dance the most per month – about 15 times per month.
After sending this study to my friend Garth, he sent me back a verse to look up. Psalm 90:12: "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."
With the numbers in mind, this is such a good point, such an important focus!
As with all information, how can we transition towards creating our own personal transformation? As always, ego plays a central part. Most of us refuse to see ourselves as average, but for now, with this studies context, how will we use these numbers to inspire change?
You will have your own focus. I have three areas that I want to increase and two that I want to decrease. 6.8% (or 1,769 days) of their lives socializing with someone they love, doesn't seem like enough time for me. One of my goals would be to increase this activity and get connecting with friends and family into our calendar. The 0.69% (or 180 days) of their life that people spend exercising feels like a travesty. Only 180 of the average person's 25,915 days spent doing the one activity that gives us increased energy and quality of life. I can build better habits in this area (for goodness sake, I used to be a professional athlete)! Also, I deeply desire to move towards our Mexican friends laughing percentages.
29.75% (7,709 days) sitting down, and 41% staring at some sort of screen, phone, computer, tv, etc. feel like they often go together. Staring and sitting are not the issues right; the percentages of time spent doing these actions is the culprit.
It seems to me that changing these two percentages (and adding more exercise) may have a direct impact on the average life expectancy number (25, 915 days), giving us more time to focus on the important.
Numbers are helpful, but numbers are not human. Lots of people know the numbers but don't do the numbers. The application of information into transformation becomes the super power of our generation.
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