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Frequently Monitoring Progress Toward Goals Increases Chance of Success

89 points by Oatseller 11y ago

Oatseller 11y ago
Link to study abstract and pdf download: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87431/ http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87431/
arafalov 11y ago
Looks like gamification to me. Including the fact that what they measure (and effectively gamify) is what the person focuses on changing.
aswanson 11y ago
So...micromanagement and frequent status meetings work. Ugh.
- CuriouslyC 11y ago
  Not so much. What is important is that you have a concrete metric for success, and that the metric be rapidly responsive to work input. This has two effects: 1.) You can see what is, and is not effective work. Thus you are more likely to engage in time-efficient work behaviours. 2.) You get a sense of accomplishment from progress according to the metric. This makes work performed more rewarding, thus increasing motivation. In my experience, if you just log/report work done without having a trackable progress metric the benefits aren't nearly so significant.
- Loic 11y ago
  Yes, it works but directed by yourself and with yourself. As an independent contractor working on usually large contracts, I can generate for each of my project a "workload", that is, the numbers of hours I need to work in a period and it produces a nice graph[0] with the target and the reality. The real work is pulled directly out of my work logs[1]. Since doing this, it helped me a lot managing long term developments. [0]: http://imgur.com/cXlzsn9 http://imgur.com/cXlzsn9 [1]: https://projecthamster.wordpress.com/screenshots/ https://projecthamster.wordpress.com/screenshots/
- rexpop 11y ago
  Unless counteracted by the effect of interruptions: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  No, frequently monitoring of progress is not micromanagement, and isn't status meetings either. The former is direction on how to make progress, the latter is, at best, sharing information about progress, not monitoring progress (if its used for top-down monitoring by a lead and not sharing among a team for coordination, it means most of the people are idle most of the meeting, and it probably should just be passive updates to the lead or, if meeting is necessary, one-on-ones with each staff to minimize the time people are unproductively idle.) What this article is about is something else; individuals monitoring their own progress. Generalizing to groups, and addressing specific methods of monitoring progress in groups, is outside the scope of this research (though I suppose your comment is a perfect illustration of the way that incompetent managers are likely to misapply this kind of research to support counterproductive practices.)
mmastrac 11y ago
You don't need be meeting daily to succeed -- just keep yourself a "public" log (well, public to the team at least) and write down everything in that log: TODOs, questions, ideas, etc. Monitor your own progress and success and make it available to anyone to read.
pbnjay 11y ago
Sweet, I'm building an app that sorta does this as a side effect. The idea for that app wasn't so scientifically based, but this is some pretty cool supporting information. I think there's still a lot of opportunity left around making personal progress monitoring more effective.
novalis78 11y ago
That was key in Raymond Hulls' classic (and European bestseller) 'How to get what you want'. Repeated hand-written refocusing exercises on your key goals.
bluenose69 11y ago
$p$ values -- it must be true. Oh, wait a second [http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-1.17001 http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-...]

89 points by Oatseller 11y ago

Link to study abstract and pdf download: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87431/ http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87431/

Looks like gamification to me. Including the fact that what they measure (and effectively gamify) is what the person focuses on changing.

aswanson 11y ago

So...micromanagement and frequent status meetings work. Ugh.

CuriouslyC 11y ago
Not so much. What is important is that you have a concrete metric for success, and that the metric be rapidly responsive to work input. This has two effects: 1.) You can see what is, and is not effective work. Thus you are more likely to engage in time-efficient work behaviours. 2.) You get a sense of accomplishment from progress according to the metric. This makes work performed more rewarding, thus increasing motivation. In my experience, if you just log/report work done without having a trackable progress metric the benefits aren't nearly so significant.
Loic 11y ago
Yes, it works but directed by yourself and with yourself. As an independent contractor working on usually large contracts, I can generate for each of my project a "workload", that is, the numbers of hours I need to work in a period and it produces a nice graph[0] with the target and the reality. The real work is pulled directly out of my work logs[1]. Since doing this, it helped me a lot managing long term developments. [0]: http://imgur.com/cXlzsn9 http://imgur.com/cXlzsn9 [1]: https://projecthamster.wordpress.com/screenshots/ https://projecthamster.wordpress.com/screenshots/
rexpop 11y ago
Unless counteracted by the effect of interruptions: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
dragonwriter 11y ago
No, frequently monitoring of progress is not micromanagement, and isn't status meetings either. The former is direction on how to make progress, the latter is, at best, sharing information about progress, not monitoring progress (if its used for top-down monitoring by a lead and not sharing among a team for coordination, it means most of the people are idle most of the meeting, and it probably should just be passive updates to the lead or, if meeting is necessary, one-on-ones with each staff to minimize the time people are unproductively idle.) What this article is about is something else; individuals monitoring their own progress. Generalizing to groups, and addressing specific methods of monitoring progress in groups, is outside the scope of this research (though I suppose your comment is a perfect illustration of the way that incompetent managers are likely to misapply this kind of research to support counterproductive practices.)

mmastrac 11y ago

You don't need be meeting daily to succeed -- just keep yourself a "public" log (well, public to the team at least) and write down everything in that log: TODOs, questions, ideas, etc. Monitor your own progress and success and make it available to anyone to read.

pbnjay 11y ago

Sweet, I'm building an app that sorta does this as a side effect. The idea for that app wasn't so scientifically based, but this is some pretty cool supporting information. I think there's still a lot of opportunity left around making personal progress monitoring more effective.

novalis78 11y ago

That was key in Raymond Hulls' classic (and European bestseller) 'How to get what you want'. Repeated hand-written refocusing exercises on your key goals.

bluenose69 11y ago

$p$ values -- it must be true. Oh, wait a second [http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-1.17001 http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-...]