I am sure many of you have used the bathroom at Red Rocks, Denver International Airport, or Coors Field, and have experienced the person next to you at the sink simply putting their hands under the water for a millisecond, without any soap or scrubbing, and then promptly exiting the bathroom. That person checked the box; they did indeed “wash” their hands, but they certainly did not achieve the goal of why we wash our hands.

I am not trying to lecture on personal hygiene, but I am asking why so many political candidates simply check the box on many aspects of their campaigns? Communications teams that put out press releases, but do not do anything else to get actual press coverage on the issue. Campaigns that use social media, but all their content is random blurbs rather than a coherent message. Candidates who attend important events, but fail to actually engage with the donors, voters and grassroots leaders in attendance. They check the box but fail at accomplishing the goal of the task.

When you lose sight of the overall goal and instead focus on achieving a metric meant as a tool, you are simply wasting resources. Campaigns have an obvious end goal — win the election. Getting earned media, making thousands of voter contacts and asking prospective donors to help fund your campaign are just some of the tools to achieve that end goal: winning.

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Not everything requires the same level of commitment and energy. If you just chopped up a bunch of jalapeños, you are probably going to wash your hands a little bit longer than normal. Furthermore, if you are a surgeon and about to enter the operating room, you are going to wash your hands following a very strict protocol. Depending on the situation, more effort may be required.

This can be said for most, if not all, things in life. But I am not a life coach. I run political campaigns. I have dealt with many candidates who love particular areas of the campaign trail and will put in extra effort in those areas. That is wonderful, except it often comes at the expense of other aspects. As I have said before, campaigns are multifaceted, and candidates need to work hard at all aspects of them. If a candidate needs to be spending their afternoon making fundraising calls, but is instead practicing their stump speech, they are checking a box that does not need to be filled at that time.

Oftentimes we get granular with our goals. When managing social media accounts, I get asked a lot about impressions and other similar statistics. It is important to not lose sight of what you are trying to achieve. With social media, it may seem like achieving the maximum number of impressions would be the goal of every post but yet, if your post is meant to persuade unaffiliated voters, but is viewed exclusively by people who already support you, the number does not matter, and you have failed to achieve your goal. If you had a goal for impressions and hit that number, you checked the box for your granular goal and completely missed the mark on helping your campaign.

We are in the heat of campaign season. When prioritizing what to do, and making commitments and goals, remember the lesson of washing your hands — is what you are doing helping you win or are you just checking the box?

Alec Hanna is a Colorado-based Republican campaign strategist and founder of Dark Horse Campaigns.