“The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident.” ~Francesco Guicciardini

For some time, I tried keeping “To Do” lists among pages of scribbles and lists of ideas and projects.

I thought that constantly exposing myself to a wide array of ideas, thoughts, plans, projects, and goals repeatedly would help the ideas ferment, push me to put the ideas into action and see to it that all those tasks, goals and projects would be fulfilled.

As I used these lists as a constant reminder of my goals and objectives, they likewise became a measure of each day’s work and a measure for each day’s success.

However, I quickly realized that there is little merit in using lists to measure a day’s success. On the one hand, if you set forth to accomplish a variety of tasks on a given day (or over some period of time), one can find great satisfaction in striking off each task upon completing it.

But is this really a valuable way to measure the success of a day? How, I wondered, does a quiet leader measure a day’s success?

The problem that arises is this:

• If the number of tasks you complete in a day is a measure of a day’s success, then by contrast, the number of tasks one neglects to complete would reflect upon the day as a failure.

One cannot measure a day’s success simply by the number of tasks one has completed. For by this measure, a day’s value is only in getting “things” done. In measuring a day’s success this way, we forget completely the many other simple occurrences, human interactions and pleasantries that make life special and that are so much more important to our soul’s development than “stuff” on a list.

Consider how valuable ordinary occurrences are to our development in life and to the lives of others around us:

• Making an upset or dejected young relative smile,
• Waiting a couple seconds longer than usual to hold the door for someone walking into a store behind you,
• Paying a friend or relative a surprise visit or a sincere compliment,
• Smiling at a stranger.

Quiet leaders go further than measuring a day in goodness. Quiet leaders carry out each day based on a positive return that we fully intend to often never witness.

To be a quiet leader is to trust that the effect that one has on others will take root in due time.

The effects that quiet leaders intend to sow are not always visible, not always apparent, and may never be realized. While being able to witness they good we have intended to sow in others is an incredible and gratifying feeling, when we come to expect it, its absence would lead us to believe that we sowed no good at all.

When we do good only to witness its effects, we mislead ourselves into believing that our good deeds are only successes when we have proof of it.

An accurate measuring one’s productivity would be to keep lists of tasks and goals one intends accomplish. However, when it comes to measuring a day’s success, there are many valuable aspects of everyday life that we’d never think to put on a list — all of which are more important than any task we can strike on paper.

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