Mean Time Between Success

It the world of manufacturing hardware there is a rating called Mean Time Between Failure or MTBF. This is a big number that is supposed to represent the length of time before a component will fail but it turns out to represent the lengths they will go to use statistics to confuse the average consumer.

For example, the DVD player I bought a few years ago was rated at 400,000 hours between failures. That means it will last 45 years, but the problem is; there were no DVD players 45 years ago, so how can they honestly make that prediction? Now I have a new Blue-Ray player that is rated for 1.5Million hours, which means I have to wait 171 years to find out if they are lying~! Talk about bogus claims that cannot be proven, that takes the cake.

I wonder why do they call it the “Mean” time between failures? If everything is running well it should be the “Nice” time between disasters. The other point of confusion is the “between” part of the formula which implies that there has to be an original failure before you can measure the time in between failures. That is one too many deaths for most parts.

It’s OK to use this method to measure mechanical devices but human beings can’t stand to be measured by their failures alone so we need a better scale that counts how often things go right. After all it seems somewhat negative to only evaluate the frequency of failures when we all want the world to hear about our successes. So let’s invent the new measurement for Mean Time Between Success.

The MTBS is really just another way for people to ask ourselves and each other, “What have you done for me lately”. It all comes down to how we measure success. I say every pay day is fruitful, every Holiday is eventful and every Friday should be fun. So my MTBS is never more than 6 Days.