How chasing false proxies makes us look successful — but keeps us small.
Last week, I caught myself feeling oddly proud. Email open rates were up. A post got shared more than usual. People were “engaging.” And for a fleeting moment, it felt like success. Only, it wasn’t.
That’s when Seth Godin’s idea of false proxies hit me again — those neat, measurable things we cling to because they’re easy to track, even if they have little to do with what actually matters. They’re the social media likes that stand in for influence, follower counts mistaken for trust, and sales mistaken for impact.
We all crave validation. It’s comforting when numbers move up — it gives the illusion of progress. But it’s also the quickest way to get trapped. Once you start optimizing for the proxy instead of the purpose, you start gaming the system you built. You start writing for the platform, not the person. Selling more things, not making better ones.
The real game, as Seth says, is simple: the goal is the goal. Not the metrics that decorate it.
I’ve seen this play out in my own work. A few years ago, I equated busyness with productivity. The longer the to-do list, the more “important” I felt. It looked impressive on the surface — jam-packed calendars, endless calls, constant motion. But it was hollow. Movement isn’t momentum.
False proxies are seductive because they look like evidence of impact. But they only measure activity, not clarity. Today, I try to ask simpler (and more uncomfortable) questions. Am I creating something that truly matters to someone? If all the numbers disappeared, would I still be proud of the work?
Most days, the answer isn’t loud. But it’s honest. And maybe that’s what real progress looks like — quiet, purposeful, and immune to applause. The kind that can’t be captured on an analytics dashboard, but you can feel it in your gut.
So maybe this week, we can all pause and ask — what are we chasing? The goal itself… or just a prettier scoreboard?