How Does it Affect Achievement of Goals and Motivation?
It has been demonstrated in numerous studies that consistent self-monitoring helps to achieve weight-loss and fitness goals. It is easy to assume that these techniques can also improve other performance as well.
But can there be too much of a good thing? In my personal experience, I have seen that degree, extent and duration of monitoring and measurement has critical failings. I need to be wary of becoming a slave to measurement, risking burnout, dissatisfaction, and frustration. Always striving for more, better, faster is tiring and can reduce the enjoyment of the activity.
In this post I will describe ways in which I find monitoring and measurement can be helpful in achieving goals and also warnings of ways that these habits can demotivate, lead to burn-out, and even injury.
The Roles of Monitoring and Measurement
I define monitoring in this context as keeping track of activities and a subjective assessment of how well you did them. This may be a log of how often you ran and how you felt physically. It could be tracking what foods you ate in a food diary. Measurement is subtly different, referring to collecting, recording and analyzing data in order to compare performance to historical data or to desired goals.
Making a change in a habit consists of three phases; creating the habit, performing the habit consistently, and developing mastery of the habit. Monitoring is particularly useful in performing the habit consistently. The monitoring activity itself should be part of the habit cycle. For example, going for a run may be noted in your journal, along with how you felt. This monitoring helps to remind you of the times when you intend to run and whether you do it or not. It is a way to keep yourself accountable to keeping your commitment to your habit.
Measurement is subtly different, referring to collecting, recording and analyzing data in order to compare performance to historical data or to desired goals. This is particularly useful in the Mastery phase of the habit formation.
Now that you are consistently performing the activity, in order to achieve the full benefit, you need to improve your performance of the activity. In running, you may want to increase distance, speed, or effort. You would start to measure distance and pace and track this over time.
The act of measurement can affect your performance by changing your attitude and motivation, but this could be a short-term benefit. In order to achieve sustained performance improvements you need to develop a better understanding of the activity, deciding what you need to change in order to improve your performance.
You actually need to change how you perform the task, changing the techniques you use. For example, improvement in running can be made by changing training technique to run high-intensity intervals rather than running at a slower but sustained pace. Or perhaps by studying your running stride you can develop a more energy-efficient gait.
My History of Monitoring and Measuring
I am an Engineer and Project Manager. As such my professional training has been centered around measurement and monitoring. I am a “true believer” of making decisions and managing performance on the basis of data. I also believe that many myths, misconceptions, and fictions can be more easily challenged when you have data to support you.
With this background, it is no surprise that I am also a fervent fan of monitoring and measuring in my own life. In particular I have monitored, measured and analyzed my fitness trends and habits to varying degrees over many years. I became a real believer about 12 years ago when I realized I needed to address my lifelong issues with weight. I needed to manage my weight-loss as a project for me to be successful.
I needed to lose weight. I struggled with chubbiness my whole life. As I got older, I knew I needed to change. I knew as well that I needed to control calories in and calories out. I started very simply. I committed to exercise every other day. No expectations, just make sure I exercise. I did not monitor this, I just did it.
I also knew that if I wanted to control calories in, I needed to be conscious of what I actually ate. So, I knew I needed a way to keep track that was simple and easy to do. Back then smartphones did not have the wealth of apps available to take my log with me and I knew a notebook would not work for me, so I found web app that had a good selection of existing foods and was easy to use.
Over the course of the next six months, I logged everything I ate. Eating at restaurants was challenging, but I just took my best guess and continued. I cheated on my diet, but I tried never to cheat on my recording of what I ate. I needed to be honest with myself so I could continue to make improvements.
Over time I learned to eat better; more vegetables, less refined sugars., etc I learned to read the nutrition labels and ingredients lists. I learned the things I liked that I would eat even though they were expensive calorically. I learned the things I could change and live without that gave me calories to move around. I learned what made me feel good and what elements of my diet were just habit.
Over time, I evolved from simply recording what I ate to measuring the caloric content of my diet, not just the total number of calories I was ingesting but where I was getting the calories. This assisted in making more careful food choices and pushing down the calorie intake.
I also learned a great deal about the physiological reactions of my body when I try to lose weight. I learned to exercise more vigorously to push my metabolism more in order to keep my body from slowing just to preserve fat.
I paired the monitoring with a lot of reading about diet and nutrition. What I monitored and recorded changed with time. The objectives changed, from simply managing calorie input to measure proportions of proteins to fats to carbohydrates.
In order to meet my objectives and experiment with new foods and diet changes, I took control of shopping for the family groceries and cooking most of the family meals. This change gave me the opportunity to move all of us toward healthier choices and to make monitoring and controlling diet simpler.
All the while I weighed myself daily. I learned to focus on the weight trend rather than the absolute value of the weight. My weight went down quickly at first. As I worked harder at my diet my rate of weight-loss slowed. The pounds became more difficult. Then I did a calculation of the percentage of my body fat I was losing. Losing 5 lbs when you have 80 lbs of body fat is much simpler than losing 2lbs when you have 30 lbs of body fat. That perspective helped to manage my expectations.
So plainly my weight-loss journey evolved from mostly monitoring with some measurement, to significantly more measurement as a I became more committed to my weight loss goals and to the process.
If you are embarking on a weight loss program, it is common to become compulsive about, well, weight. People often begin any new program with enthusiasm. They cannot resist the urge to step on the scale every day to see the progress, which is even encouraged by some early positive results. The first few days of a weight loss program can show a few pounds of improvement in weight. This enthusiasm dissipates quickly as other effects begin to dominate.
No human process, not weight loss or improvement in fitness, or any other behavior we try to control, is a straight-line improvement. We are fallible. We do things that work in opposition to our goals. But more importantly we are complex physiological systems, with hormonal checks and balances that do not respond the way we want. As a result, progress is a long-term trend. We do not see success every day.
How to Monitor
Monitoring needs to be simple. Remember you are monitoring during the phase where you are not yet consistently performing the habit. If monitoring is difficult, it can lead to inconsistency in executing the habit as well.
A simple notation in your daily journal may suffice. Some people build a spreadsheet to track all the important habits and just check the check-box every day.
I typically make a note in my journal, and then I feed back to myself how well I am doing on performing the task. Recently, my spouse reminded my how nice it is to have the bed made every day. So, I have been monitoring if I make the bed every morning by making a simple note in my journal. In a couple of weeks the habit will be ingrained and monitoring will become irrelevant.
How to Measure
Measurement can be a time-consuming process. Consider using accounting methods to measure the performance of a small business. Similarly, budget trackers are available to help you manage your personal budgets. These require an investment of time and energy to perform. If you are truly committed to improving performance, you may be willing to make that effort.
What you measure needs to be tailored to your goals. Measuring everything is counterproductive since you are not able to sustain measuring everything, so you end up not measuring the activity you really intended to improve. You need to be clear about your goal and determine what you need to measure that will be most indicative of progress to achieving the goal.
Consider the goal of buying a new car with cash. You may ask, “How should I change my current spending to save the money”? Tracking all your spending every day is time consuming and tedious. Instead it would be valuable to look for low-hanging fruit, by identifying discretionary expenses first. After tracking these expenses for a few weeks, you may discover an item that you can live without, or significantly reduce. This will be less effort and more productive than tracking every penny, including your rent payment.
The Risks
Monitoring and measurement are very effective. But while a little is good, a lot can be much worse.
Monitoring can become ineffective as an accountability tool if you never review your results and take action. If I note whether the bed got made, but do not reflect on whether I am doing what I can to ensure it is made every day, then the monitoring is not effective. I committed to making the bed because I believe it is good thing and it pleases my spouse. Reminding myself to do it is important.
Note that if my wife were monitoring, this would be perceived as nagging and would be extrinsic motivation. This would likely have the impact of not making the bed. I would not be making the bed because it pleased her. Rather I would be making he bed to avoid displeasing her. A very big difference.
Measurement is even more likely to be perceived as extrinsic motivation. Therefore, it is even more likely to decrease your desire to perform the task. As I posted previously here, extrinsic motivation is ultimately demotivating because it reduces your individual feeling of autonomy, your desire to develop mastery, or your feeling of connectedness with others. There are several ways this could happen.
Measurement ceases to help you when the outcome you are measuring becomes the goal, rather than feedback to your objective. The drive to achieve the goal supersedes your control over how you achieve the goal, thus reducing your autonomy. The goal can also focus you on the number, encouraging you to do more of whatever it is you are currently doing, rather than developing mastery by seeking out better ways to accomplish the goal.
How to Avoid the Pit Falls
Be clear about what you want to achieve. Why are you pursuing this goal? What is the real question you want to answer?
Set reasonable short-term goals. Set goals you can achieve and use the goal to encourage an examination of how to do things better.
Be selective about what you measure. Don’t measure everything. Only measure what you want to change. I monitor my runs, keeping track of the days I runs. I only measure how far I run, not how fast I run. That suits my objectives. If I also measure pace I run the risk of over-training and injuring myself. I know this because I have done it!
Absolute numbers do not matter, only the trend is important. Absolute numbers matter if you are measuring an activity in which you compete. But for most activities we do them because we are trying to improve ourselves. Therefore, it is valuable to remember that running a little farther or a little faster is good, regardless of how far or fast that is.
Manage your reaction to the numbers. The purpose in measuring is to feed your desire to get better. Review the numbers and ask yourself what you can change to make the numbers better. Working harder will burn you out. Increasing your mastery of the skill allows you to work smarter.
Gauge your motivation. Review how you feel about the measurement and its impact on your desire to improve. Ongoing reflection on your emotional reaction to the measurement will help guard against quitting because you now hate the activity.
Adjust the goal. Don’t be tied to goals that reduce your motivation. Change the goal to one that is meaningful to you and inspires you learn more about the skill. The measurement is an outcome of the learning process and feedback to tune the process. It is not the reason for the process.
Conclusions
Monitoring and measurement have different roles to play in supporting achieving your objectives.
Monitoring keeps you accountable to executing your habits on a regular basis, while measurement tells you how your performance is changing over time and whether you are achieving your goals.
My recommendation is that when you start any new activity or attempt to develop any new habit you focus only on monitoring. Once you are comfortable with your habit, where you are more likely to perform the activity without second guessing, then you can explore using measurement to track your goals.
Monitoring and Measuring is really a part of the learning process. Developing lifestyle habits that make you healthier, or more financially secure, or more productive is a lifelong integrated process. What we learned and believed ten years ago is not true any longer. As we change and everything around us changes, we need to develop new lifestyle habits that reflect our new realities. Measuring and monitoring is an important part of helping us understand the process and inspire us through the change.