Keeping score has its place. Basketball games would be pretty confusing if nobody on the court or in the stands knew how many points were on the board. But too many students and their parents inject way too much scorekeeping into college admissions, often about all the wrong things.

They’ll measure and track every exam, graded paper, and standardized test, but forget to measure if the student is actually learning something.

They’ll keep a mental log of every perceived missed opportunity, every AP class they didn’t get or starting position they weren’t given or election they didn’t win, but take no reward in the effort that went into pursuing those things or the learning that followed.

They’ll track the competition, who got what score or what award or what notice of admission to which prestigious college, but forget to take the time to consider their own journey and whether or not their path is a healthy and rewarding one for them.

They’ll rack up items for the resume but forget about the value of time spent doing something the student enjoys.

And most troublingly, they’ll turn a student’s time in high school and preparation for college into an unending stream of performance measurement—grades, scores, accolades, etc.—at the expense of the student’s health and happiness.

Nobody does this because they set out to make themselves or their kids miserable. Scorekeeping like this is pervasive in many communities and schools because of the obsession with prestigious colleges and the belief that satisfying a magic formula can open the doors of admission.

If you’re keeping score, it’s worth considering:

• Is the score something you can control or even influence?
• Can you change the outcome once the score is final?
• Does the score carry long-term consequences that will affect you 2 or 5 or 20 years from now?
• Will the quest to score well make you or others around you smarter, healthier, or happier?
• Are you focusing on the life, opportunities, and people around you no matter how or where you’re scoring?

If you answer no to those questions, it might be time to keep a different score.

Here’s a simple but effective way to improve yourself dramatically.

Change “What’s one thing I could do better?” to “What’s one thing I could do even better?”

A weakness that’s really holding you back from something important may need to be addressed. But strengths always improve more than weaknesses do.

If you’re looking to make big improvements, start where you’re already strong.

I loved Seth Godin’s post yesterday about a community ranking. I can’t think of a better goal for students (and parents, and counselors, and just about everyone else) to strive for. A community rank isn’t dependent on your intelligence, test-taking ability, official leadership position, or any other outside measurement or accolade. It’s entirely about your willingness to care and your initiate to act. And those traits are available to all of us no matter how we rank in the academic class.

For more on this, here’s a past post of mine on how to measure your impact.

A new study out of Virginia Tech brings scientific proof to what many people likely knew instinctively—the expectation of checking work email after hours is harmful to the health not just of the workers, but also their families. What’s particularly noteworthy is that the expectation alone creates those problems, independently of whether the employee engages in the actual work during off hours.

We recently completed an email experiment at Collegewise. Two of our most senior executives charged with running the business were out for ten days on vacation simultaneously. And every one of us—over 50 Collegewisers—agreed to not send either of them a single email.

No questions with the caveat, “Just in case you check email.” No copying either of them on emails just to make sure they were in the loop. No requests, even with the tagline, “This can wait until you get back.” Nothing at all, for ten days.

And here’s what happened—nothing.

No vacation-induced emergencies. No calamitous missteps. No grinding to a halt of the progress we make every day. Work life went on as it always has.

It’s not that they aren’t both vital to our business—they’re indispensable. We just don’t need to communicate with each other 24/7.

To be clear, I’m not living in their inboxes and it’s certainly possible that there were emails that slipped through. But this misguided notion that any of us are so necessary that we must be connected to everyone else at all times is misguided at best and narcissistic at worst. And I’ll lump high school students into that conclusion, too. Your friends don’t need to know what you’re doing or thinking or eating every five minutes, and you don’t need to be immersed in their lives, either.

Yes, I know there are people who live and work with the reality that if they don’t answer the call during off hours, someone might die. Those are the exceptions to the availability rule. But for most of us, the exceptions just don’t apply.

Constant availability is not a badge of honor representing your commitment. It’s a scarlet letter representing either an inflated sense of importance or a lack of trust. So turn off and tune out regularly. Be proudly unreachable. Fill the time with what’s in front of you when the screens are all shut down and put away.

The people and the emails will be waiting with open arms and inboxes when you get back. But until then, we’re happy to wait.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, participated on a panel in front of college students and was asked, “What should my 5-10-year career plan look like?”

She responded that a student shouldn’t have a 5-10-year career plan, and relayed that if she had followed a set career plan, she never would have ended up in tech because Mark Zuckerberg was still in diapers when she graduated from college.

What should college students do instead?

Choose a first job based on how much you can learn, or that allows you to work with people you can learn the most from. That’s your goal—to learn as much as possible. The learning is what will help you discover your path and open up doors for your future.

For high school students, that approach—making the choice based on where you’ll learn the most—might not be a bad way to choose classes, activities, and even colleges.

This entire podcast is worth a listen, but the portion about Sandberg begins at 18:40.

This February 2017 post from the Georgia Tech admissions blog about potential questions for students to ask colleges does two things I haven’t seen done well (or even at all) before:

1. The questions seek information students might actually want to learn about.
2. They recommend students ask the questions more than once to different audiences (students, tour guides, professors, etc.).