Sleep, energy, and the things nobody measures

Reviews run on what has been measured. That is not unreasonable — measurement is what a review has to work with — but it produces a strange gap, because the measured things and the noticed things are frequently not the same things.

People describe answering questions about numbers while the change they actually want to discuss is about sleep, or energy through the afternoon, or a mood shift they are not confident is related to anything at all.

Everything on the form had improved. The thing I wanted to talk about was not on the form.

Illustrative composite

The practice people mention is simply saying it out loud early, before the form is worked through — on the basis that an appointment which starts with the form rarely gets back to anything else.