Do Numbers Matter?

I’m challenging you to Do A Thousand Of Something as a tangible way of engaging with our 1000-mile ride in Florida Hope Tour 2013. It’s worth asking whether we really need to keep score. Is there anything special about 1000?

Do numbers really matter?

Yeah, I think they do. But maybe not in the way we think.

One of the things Becky says to me frequently is, “Rich, it’s not about the miles.” She usually says this when I’m playing martyr, grumbling or complaining about how tired I am and how much I have to get done and how I don’t have time for details like sleep and nutrition.

She’s right, of course. It’s not about the miles. Except, it is.

When those students collected a million aluminum tabs (A Million Is A Lot), their feat would have been no less amazing if they’d collected 995,287. The point of the project was the math and the community-building. The number didn’t really matter…except somehow, it did, right?

Our Mississippi River ride was 1500 miles. If, for some reason, we had to stop at 1432 miles, the ride wouldn’t have become a failure. But that doesn’t mean 1500 didn’t matter. Because to me, it did. A lot.

In the new book I wrote a chapter based on this premise:

The numbers we use as ‘measurables” rarely reflect the true purpose of what we’re doing. (from RICH’S RIDE: Hope Changes What’s Possible)

What really matters is the heart behind the numbers, the reason we’re doing whatever we’re doing. Perhaps the numbers are a way of getting what Bob Goff (Love Does) calls “skin in the game.”

It’s pretty easy to pick a side when picking doesn’t cost us anything. We visit the website, swipe the card for an amount we won’t miss, and it’s like buying the team jersey and watching on TV. No investment, no risk, no skin in the game.

During the 1500-mile ride, a friend helped each of his three grandkids collect 1500 pennies. They made a big deal out of it, talked about what it represented and what the money would do. When he told them Convoy Of Hope can feed a child in a third-world country for $50 a year, the kids said they should collect an extra 500 pennies.

This is a guy who can (and probably did) swipe his credit card for several multiples of $50 without noticing it on his monthly bill. But counting those pennies, making sure there were exactly 1500 in each jar, mattered.

When those students reached 995,287 aluminum tabs, they were sick of the whole project. They’d moved on from 7^th grade math to algebra and geometry. They were sick of counting and estimating and other kids making fun of them. They could have quit and said it was a million. Who was going to re-count to check their work?

The number didn’t matter. The perseverance and determination to complete an audacious vision mattered a lot, and that’s what a million represented. To them, a million mattered. It was their way of having very real skin in the game.

So how does all of this translate to riding a bike and hope and feeding hungry kids?

My friend Una rode one hundred miles on the first day of the IJM Freedom Tour. That’s an incredible accomplishment, especially when you know Una had never been on a bicycle until four months before the tour. You can read the details here.

Una’s a doctor. She could have written a big check to International Justice Mission. She didn’t have to face her fear of learning to ride a bike, but Una wanted some skin in the game of fighting human trafficking.

That’s what the miles mean to me. They’re my way of saying, “I want to make a commitment rather than watching from the safety of the bleachers. I want some skin in this game, and that means I can’t quit when it gets hard.”