Activity is easy to count, which is why people confuse it with effectiveness.

Counting is easy for actions and hard for effects. Emails sent, meetings attended, tasks closed, all readily tallied, while whether anything improved requires judgment and time. So measurement drifts toward what can be counted and behaviour drifts toward what is measured.

When you find yourself proud of a number, ask what it is a proxy for and whether that thing improved. If you cannot tell, treat the number as activity rather than achievement.