One of the reasons we all need good scorekeeping is that it is a human trait  to misperceive our own strengths and weaknesses.

This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect and was first covered in the paper Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.

What’s interesting is that the effect occurs at both ends of the ability spectrum:

• beginners tend to over estimate their strengths
• experts tend to underestimate them

That’s where a good scorekeeping and success tracking program can help each of us – by providing an accurate reflection of progress against either pre-defined standards, peer comparison or both.