June 11, 2024

How tall are you?

When people ask you how tall you are, what do you say?

If someone asked me my height, I would say “six one,” but... that’s not exactly true.

The fact of the matter is, I am not actually sure how tall I am.

There are several variables at play. For example...

The last time my height was measured was at my annual physical, which was about a year ago. As an old fart, I may have gotten shorter since then 😜
The nurse who took the measurement wasn’t overly concerned with accuracy. I remember asking her whether I should take off my shoes, and she said, “It doesn’t matter.” I don’t know if I did or didn’t remove my shoes. She also didn’t check that I was standing up straight or that the part of the height rod that sits on your head was exactly on the top of my noggin.
In the US, it’s extremely common to round one’s height to the nearest inch. So unless I’m precisely 6 feet and 1 inch tall, there was up to half an inch of rounding going on.
She measured my height on a beam scale with a height rod, which means that I was standing on the scale platform during the height measurement. The scale platform moves up and down and is presumably subject to wear and tear. I did not ask when the scale was last serviced, how recently the height rod was checked for accuracy, or what the manufacturer’s tolerances are for the scale.

I could go on, but hopefully, I’ve made the point that I don’t know exactly how tall I am.

I’m not a nozzle in a rocket engine. In almost no case does it make sense to go to the trouble of measuring my height exactly.

Measuring human heights to the nearest inch (or centimeter) is good enough for practical purposes.

It’s the same with determining your prospective client’s perceived value in The Why Conversation.

It doesn’t have to be exact.

It just has to be close enough for practical purposes, which in this case would be to set a few prices.

Yours,

—J