Time Mastery Now

Achieving personal goals begins with the awareness of the outcome, change or improvement you want, and setting a clear and specific goal to help you attain it.  Once that’s done, you must decide the steps you must take to get there, and finally make sure you do take action to move yourself closer to that goal every day (see Achieving Personal Goals). This page explains how tracking data that shows our activity toward the things we are interested in changing can produce improvements in our performance and increase the motivation to achieve the goal.

In June 2008, Veronica Noone attached a small sensor to her running shoes and left her house to go for a run.  This sensor measured how far she traveled, and the time she spent on the run.  This information was then transferred to and stored in her iPod. The technology that enabled this was the focus of a recent story in Wired magazine, but it carries a deeper, more meaningful message about performance, motivation and goals that’s relevant to general knowledge about setting and reaching goals.

Having the ability to see this kind of information about the activity appears to encourage 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 outcome is that it’s led to changes in her behavior, to the point that she is running regularly weekly 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 recording and tracking results, whether in the pursuit of a specific goal or as a general activity, comes from helping us to identify trends and patterns in our performance as they develop and from the motivation and increased energyit provides.  We naturally seem to want those trends to move in the direction of improvement, in the direction of our goal.  Without feedback, we are able to proceed blissfully unaware of 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 possibilities that knowing our results provides”.

Another interesting piece of information coming from the Wired article is this:  The magic number of times someone must use this particular system is 5.  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 probable the same results would apply to weight loss, financial goals or anything else that we might track if we care about 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 observed, according to the Hawthorne effect we will tend to revise our behavior.  If you’re thinking this sounds like accountability, you’re right.  By reviewing the feedback provided by the system, you essentially become an observer as well as a participant, and the changes identified by the Hawthorne effect still apply.  It’s inevitable that when your record your results and review it consistently, you will begin holding yourself accountable for those results which will generally lead to better performance.

In another example of this principle, it’s been shown over and over that those people who diligently count their calories when trying to shed pounds do better than those who don’t count calories.  The same kind of thing results … you know someone (you) is watching.  Another company, Core Performance, realized that workouts in which metrics are recorded (sets, reps, weight lifted, etc) make you fitter, because you will train more precisely and work harder if it’s clear you’re going to be reviewing your results.  Again, someone (meaning “you”) is paying attention.  It’s about the same as not being observed when you don’t track and record your results.  Mason Goldbert, co-owner of a fitness club, says “People love to track things.  It brings out their competitive spirit.”

Whatever your goal , it must include the elements of the acronym SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Sensitive).  Don’t forget the Measurable piece - it’s one key to motivation and consistency.

The run Veronica took that day was just over 1.5 miles, and took a little more than 18 minutes.  It’s effects, though, go well beyond that run.  It gave her a measurement for how she did that day, and it also gave her something to measure her future performance against.  Since that initial run until the point where the story was published, Veronica had run 95 more times, logging 283 miles in about 48 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.