Looking for happiness in the future

I recently read the following quote from a book written a century ago by Thomas Mitchell (Essays on Life: 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." - Source

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.

Hoping isn't going to change the future.

Why is this hard to implement?

It's much easier to believe that magically, somehow, things will be easier in the future. There's the slim possibility that this might be true, and that's all we need to hold onto to put off doing something today. Just ask me how I know.

There's always an IT project running that will improve how data is stored in an organisation. I've lost track of the number of people keen for me to do work only to say, 'We just need to finish <insert IT project>’. Six months later, this is still dragging on; they're tired, and they’ve lost the will to care. It's a sad state of affairs.

When you engage someone expensive, there's a sense that 'everything has to be right'. It's a noble and misguided sentiment that holds you back. You've never going to be ready, the only way you will be ready is to make the investment in expertise and have these people help you with what you have and then guide you to what you might benefit from. It's hard to tell you that what you've built up to be this fantastic project is, at best, going to be a chance to see if we can work together. Of course, I'll create millions of dollars of value, but you'll never implement the ideas if we don't work well together.

When you're next discussing the endless IT project on data, it's worth remembering that there is no inherent value in storing your data; it's just zeros and ones. It's not like you have the winning numbers for Powerball. If you do, you shouldn't.

Every day you put off doing something with your data is another day you're not serving your customers. Do that for enough days in a row, and you won't need to worry about putting the work off any longer. You'll be out of business.