>I didn't objectively measure anything about any of them, because my goals were not ones that could be objectively measured. And honestly, even if there were some metric that could be used, I would have avoided using it because then it becomes about maximizing the metric rather than the purpose I started the activity in the first place.

There is a middle ground here. Choose a basket of metrics, impose the natural partial ordering, and intuit your way through pushing up one or the other. If this sounds crazy, keep in mind it's roughly how the Fed (inflation + unemployment) runs the monetary system.