Of PER and SER and PER

So who says Fantasy Sports doesn't come in handy? I have finally put to good use my ridiculous amounts of knowledge from the fantasy basketball world. And how did I do it? Well it started with PER and then moved to SER only to end back at PER. Let me explain.

PER is a basketball stat that was created by John Hollinger from ESPN. He created this stat in order to more accurately assess the ability of NBA players. PER stands for Player Efficiency Rating. It takes all of the players stats and includes and combines them into a rather complicated algorithm. This algorithm takes into account the number of minutes played in order to adjust stats into a per minute type of analysis. He also weights the stat categories in order to put more weight on the more important stats. When the analysis is all said and done, it is obvious who the good, better, and best players are. It is truly a brilliant system.

I often use this system to help me evaluate players for my fantasy team. One evening, as I was employing this strategy, I was struck with an equally brilliant idea. Why not create an SER for my sales team, with SER standing for Sales Efficiency Rating. The next day at work, I created eight trackable stats to do with my sales team. I then created my own complex algorithm to correctly analyze these stat categories. When I was finished I had all of my Sales Reps ranked by SER. I presented the Sales Reps with this new tool and they all loved it. SER is our Sales Team's gold standard. Competition, personal improvement, and higher sales will hopefully be the result of this new and improved ranking system.

But why stop there? By not stopping . . . I was able to make it back to where I began . . . PER. I realized that I could keep track of myself with a similar rating system. A Personal (or Priesthood) Efficiency Rating. I came up with 9 categories that I could reasonably track. Each of those categories are put into an algorithm to compute my PER.

The main difference between this rating on the other ratings is that this one is meant to remain personal. I will not be competing in these categories with anyone else, as that would defeat the purpose of what I am trying to accomplish. Rather, I will be competing with myself. I set the benchmarks for each category at a level in which I am currently performing. Since this life is about progression, it is reasonable to think that I should get better as I get older. This system will track that progress. It will also motivate me to maintain a high PER. It will be much tougher to backslide and forget my efforts when a negative PER is the consequence. I hope it works, because too often I set spiritual goals for myself that don't stick. This should help with that problem and it will track my improvement month by month.