By saying measuring things, the first thing that came into my mind is numbers.
In business, people use numbers to show how a market or company is performing. This is the most common case, where numbers play a huge role in the industry. Without it, it would be difficult to estimate the development of the company itself and more difficult to make comparisons between companies.
Numbers are used in many other fields as well. In the book, Doing Good Better, it uses numbers to estimate how much good people can do with the limited money they have. The link to my provious writing about it: Link. In school, to estimate student\’s academic performance. And many others.
Sometimes, those numbers are cruel. They specifically reveal the exact amount of certain things that you can purposely not accept without the exact number. How much money you make compared to your peers, the percentage of how well you are doing compared to your classmates. How much food and water is wasted every day in our country and how many people around the world suffer from food and water shortages. And many more.
Then I realized that it is not the numbers themselves that are so powerful, but the comparisons that come with them. When we bring everything down to numbers, we begin to feel the pressure comes from the disparity of different numbers describing the same thing.
And of course, numbers are not the only way to measure things. Nor should everything be measured. The pressure generated from these measurements is mounting, yet we all have to cope with it.