How To Spend Time

Posts Tagged ‘Motivation’

Achieving goals involves setting a clear and specific objective, making a plan of actions to obtain that goal , following the plan and recording our progress (read more at Achieving Personal Goals).This page is about how recording metrics on the activities we want to improve can lead to improvement in our performance and in achieving our goals.

Last year, Veronica Noone started on a regular run with a small sensor attached to her running shoes.  The sensor recorded and stored information about her run, including how far she went and how long the run took.  This information was transferred to her iPod for later review. The technology that enabled this was the focus of a story recently in Wired magazine, but it carries a deeper, more important message about performance, motivation and goals that’s relevant to general knowledge about setting and achieving goals.

Having access to this kind of information about the activity appears to motivate most people and leads them to want to do it again.  According to Veronica, “It just made running so much more entertaining for me.  There’s something about seeing what you’ve done, how your pace changes as you go up and down hills, that made me more motivated”.  The result is that it’s led to changes in her behavior, to the point that she is running regularly each week now and has started entering races.  She believes that the information she receives from her runs has alot to do with her current level of fitness.

The benefits of measuring our progress at whatever we are doing, and specifically when we have set a goal, is that it gives us clear feedback which motivates us, and it shows trends that we might not otherwise detect.  We inherently seem to want those trends to move in the direction of improvement, toward the direction of our goal.  Without the feedback , we are able to proceed with blissful ignorance about our performance and miss the opportunity to feel satisfaction from any improvements.  To spin a familiar phrase, “what you don’t know won’t kill you, but it may diminish the motivational opportunity that knowing your results provides”.

The statistics on this technology has produced another interesting fact.   It appears that something happens once someone uses the system 5 times.  Once users hit five ‘uses’, i.e. 5 times having recorded their data, they’re much more likely to continue running and uploading their data.  After completing five runs, users have gotten hooked on what the data (feedback) tells them about themselves.  It seems likely the same results would apply to weight loss, educational goals or anything else that we might track if we are interested in our performance.  The lesson: Stick to the plan you set to achieve your goal, and record your results at least 5 times, and you will significantly improve your chances for success.

Another interesting effect has been observed.   Users examining the results of their runs invoke what sociologists call the Hawthorne effect.  If we are realize that we are being watched , according to the Hawthorne effect we will tend to revise our behavior.  If you’re thinking this sounds like accountability, you’re right.  You don’t have to actually be watched by another person, but by tracking and viewing the data from your performance you effectively become your own observer, and the principles end up working the same way.  It’s inevitable that when your record your results and review it on a regular basis, you will begin holding yourself accountable for those results which will generally lead to better performance.

In studies of weight loss, it’s been shown repeatedly that people who count calories lose more weight than those who don’t.  Sound familiar?  When you examine your behavior and have a clear picture of what it has been, you become an observer.  Another company, Core Performance, has found that workouts in which metrics are recorded (sets, reps, weight lifted, etc) make you fitter, because you will train more precisely and put in more effort if you know you’re going to be seeing your results.  Once again, you become your observer and unconsciously hold yourself accountable.  Not measuring and recording your results is synonymous with not being observed.  Mason Goldbert, co-owner of a fitness club, says “People love to track things.  It brings out their competitive spirit.”

Most experts agree goals must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevent and Time Sensitive).   Getting accurate, regular feedback is a perfect example of the “measurable” component.

Veronica’s run that day covered 1.67 miles in 18 minutes and 36 seconds.  But it did something far more important.  It provided the results from the day’s run, and more importantly it created a starting point against which she could measure future performance.  Veronica had run 95 more times  since that initial story in Wired magazine,  and has logging nearly 300 miles over roughly 50 hours.  More importantly, her weight went from a high of 225 lbs to 145 lbs.

What we measure tends to improve. 

For more information on this and other topics related to making improvements in your life, go to Achieving Personal Goals.