Learning at the Heart

100 Posts in 100 Days

I’ve been thinking about goals a lot lately, in a variety of different contexts.  At this very moment, in fact, I have a goal:  Just get a draft of a post done (because if you don’t do a little bit now, tomorrow evening is going to suck).

My fitness tracker has come up in my 100 Posts in 100 Days challenge a couple time already.  I’ve actually surprised myself with this, but here it is again.  So, I’m going to roll with it.  When it comes to goal setting, my fitness tracker is both a blessing and a curse.  

There are some great things about my fitness tracker.  Among them, 

• I get visuals of my progress throughout the day.  Little circles and statistics that tell me how I’m doing on my daily goals.  The data tells me a story about what I’ve accomplished and what I have left to do.
• I get to set my daily move, exercise minutes, and stand goals.  At the end of each week, I get a status report and a suggestion for updating and increasing my move goal.  I can take the suggestion or not.  And, I don’t have to wait for the weekly report.  I can update my daily goals whenever I would like to.
• I get little words of encouragement about my progress.  “You crushed it yesterday, Shannon.  See if you can do it again today” or “Your progress is way ahead for this time of day.”
• I earn badges for achieving a variety of different goals.  A 7 workout week, a perfect month, my longest move streak, special event challenges, etc. I get a sense of satisfaction when I look back and see the badges and achievements accumulating. 

There are also things I don’t like:

• I don’t like that there is a monthly goal and that it is determined for me.  Who is the little bot or algorithm that is making that decision with absolutely no consultation from me?  For example, the month we took a family vacation and spent multiple days on a boat, the predetermined goal was for distance walking.  Hello.  I’m on a boat.  How about a goal for exercise minutes or calories burned while in the water?  I get that the algorithm is probably using my statistics from prior months with similar goals and my daily averages to set a small stretch goal; one that pushes me just a little farther than before.  But I’d at least like to be able to indicate if I want a distance goal, an exercise minute goal, a calorie goal, or a stand goal.     
• I don’t like that the goal is “revealed” to me on the first day of the month.  There is no opportunity to preview what’s coming next and mentally prepare.  Boom.  It’s the first of the month and it’s time to start working on your goal.  Right now.   In those moments when I achieve a goal on the 27th day of the month, for example, I want to preview what the goal is for next month.  Heck, I want to get a head start and begin working on it.  But, I can’t.  Because I don’t know what the goal is.  Even if I did, any progress toward it wouldn’t count because the calendar isn’t on the right day.  Sigh.

In the end, it seems, my fitness tracker has taught me a lot about goal setting.  Goal setting works best for me when I have ownership in what my goal is, when I have a way to track it, when I get little doses of encouragement, and when my achievements are recognized.  It becomes an annoyance when the goals come from outside and are imposed and when I can’t prepare for what it will be.  Now, I’m not taking the time to look it up (I have 88 more posts to write), but I’m certain that if I looked up the research and psychology of goal setting, there would be no surprises about my own experience in this realm.

And, by the way, I’ve achieved 3 goals in writing this draft.  First, I got it done, rather quickly compared to the other 11 posts.  Tomorrow night will be good.  Second, you may have noticed that I started with the great big watermelon phrase, “I’ve been thinking about goals a lot lately, in a variety of different contexts” and somehow managed to write the small seed of goals on my fitness tracker.  I could probably revise that opening sentence, but given what I wrote in Post 10, Reflections on 10%, I’m feeling pretty good about that. And third, it’s finally a post with some visuals to help illustrate my writing.  (Also a nod to Post 10).   I’m just going to place my badge right here.  🏅