KPIs of Fulfillment
You track metrics obsessively at work and zero in your life — build the dashboard for the part that matters.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 80%
Perkins points out the absurdity of the asymmetry: at work you set targets — this much money, this title, this milestone — and you get constant feedback on whether you're hitting them. In your personal life, the thing that actually is the life, you set nothing and measure nothing. His fix is to define KPIs of fulfillment for each period of your life, derived from your values in that period. For a young podcaster with a boyfriend that might be trips taken, times you said 'I love you', family visits, walks and hikes. The specific metrics don't matter; what matters is that measuring creates the same feedback and intentionality you already apply to your job.
Origin
Perkins improvises the idea live on the podcast in response to Hala, inventing candidate KPIs for her twenties on the spot, and frames it as the natural extension of time bucketing — once you know what a period is for, you can measure whether you're doing it.
Core principles
- 01You already run metrics, targets and feedback loops at work — the machinery exists.
- 02Personal life gets no metrics, which is why it drifts.
- 03KPIs are per-time-bucket, derived from that period's values.
- 04The KPIs can be anything you want them to be — they're yours.
- 05Without feedback you cannot know if you're living according to your values.
How to run it
- 1
Identify the period you're in
Name your current time bucket — your twenties, single with a partner, early-career, whatever it actually is.
Pro tip This step chains directly off time bucketing; the bucket defines what the KPIs are for.
- 2
Write your values for this period
State what this period is for: grow the podcast, travel with your partner, see family, whatever the values dictate.
- 3
Convert values into countable KPIs
Turn each value into something you can count: trips taken, times you said 'I love you', family visits, hikes, interesting people interviewed.
Pro tip The KPIs can be whatever you want them to be — there's no canonical list.
- 4
Review on a cadence and act on the feedback
Look at the numbers regularly the way you would at work, and use the gap as the signal to change behavior.
Watch out Not having feedback on whether you're living according to your values is, in Perkins' word, insanity.
In the wild
Asked what the KPIs of fulfillment look like, Perkins builds one live for Hala: grow the podcast, get famous, travel with the boyfriend — measured as trips taken, 'I love yous' said, podcasts recorded with interesting people, visits to his family and hers, walks and hikes taken.
→ Demonstrates that a fulfillment dashboard takes minutes to draft and immediately makes the period's intent countable.
Hala observes that with a career we set explicit targets — this much money, this title, this achievement — but never do the same for personal milestones.
→ Perkins calls the asymmetry insanity, since work is only a tool for the fulfilling life and the life's KPIs matter more than the job's.
Common mistakes
Instrumenting only the career
Running rigorous metrics at work and none at home means the tool gets optimised while the goal drifts unmeasured.
Keeping the same KPIs across every life stage
KPIs derive from the values of a given time bucket; carrying twenties metrics into your forties measures the wrong life.
Is it for you?
Best for
Metric-driven professionals whose work life is instrumented and personal life is not.
Not ideal for
People prone to gamifying relationships into scorecards at the expense of presence.
From the transcript
“what are the kpis of fulfillment for you for each period of your life”
“you can make the kpis whatever you want the kpis to be but doing that gives you the same metrics feed back and intentionality that…”
“not having the feedback on my life about am I living my life right according to my values according to my wishes and wants is…”
From the episode
Bill Perkins: I’m Planning to Die with Zero Dollars in the Bank and You Should Too
Bill Perkins