The PolyBlog

Goal-setting and rituals — Tiers 3-5 (gamification)

September 8 2024

I previously wrote about simple rituals and social engineering rituals, and how they can be used to improve your ability to attain goals. All rituals essentially do the same — they are like “enhancements” to your approach to help keep you on track, motivated, and committed to achieving progress.

Gamification is a different animal. It combines four aspects of gameplay:

It tries to harness a sense of fun, just like playing games;
It adds some form of rules and structure (skipping is fun, but not really a game; if you have some sort of rules that say what is allowed or not, and likely some corresponding structure to the approach, you move from just playing around to some form of game);
It adds some thought as to game mechanics, which ties back to what is allowed and what is not…you do things in a specific way to play the game, types of moves, or behaviour, that help you advance in your goal; and,
It usually adds some sort of measure of success through a point system or achieving a specific state for the game.

Many people want to insist that there has to be a clear goal and a competitive element, but there are just as many cooperative games as goals that have multiple possible positive outcomes, I don’t believe it always has to be competitive and/or linear. Regardless, the intent is for the ritual to lead to both a change in behaviour and an increase in participation towards the goal.

The Seinfeld example from my previous posts is a simple form of gamification. Instead of just trying to do the individual activity and focusing on doing it once (writing some jokes that day), the goal changed to see how long of a daily streak you can create. Because it is so tied to the original activity, though, and doesn’t particularly change it, I left it listed as a Tier 1 tool, even though it included gamification. The next ones are a bit more complicated.

Tier 3: Participation and completion rituals

The performance ritual is familiar to anyone who has ever played just about any video game. It is the “high score” function. Playing Galaxians with wave after wave of invading aliens could be a tad too repetitive, even with the increase in speed and difficulty. So, game designers added a “high score” option so you would know if you did better than your last run. I still remember the time I was playing Pitfall on an Atari over the course of a weekend, and I managed to make it through the full 20-minute run without dying, and squashing the previous high score by a factor of about 15. I was in the zone. And as soon as I finished? I wanted to go again and see if I could get higher.

More sophisticated or elevated versions exist in competitive sports. The most common is the concept of your “personal best”. It’s not about beating others, not about coming in first, not setting a world record, that’s a different tool. Instead, it is just the idea that you are constantly striving to improve, and regardless of any other metric out there in your sport, the “personal best” is a way to add a performance ritual to your attempt. Are you going to beat Michael Phelps in a swimming race? Probably not. Nor any other Olympian. But you can always set a goal and try to beat your previous times. The “evaluation” against your own performance adds impetus to the activity — you’re not just swimming to get exercise, you’re not just swimming to get a good time, you’re swimming to put up your best time ever. Anything else beyond that — winning, beating others — is beyond your control. So you “settle” for celebrating what IS in your control — your personal best as your “goal”.

By contrast, completion rituals are about simply completing the task. Even though something is labelled a participation trophy, for example, it is awarded for completing the task (aka participating in this case), not on how you did. The act of completion is enough. I know, lots of people hate “participation trophies” as they fundamentally misunderstand what they are, partly because some of the people who make them are idiots and do huge trophies instead of reflecting what they really represent — souvenirs of participation. If you are in school, and they hand out ribbons for various sports, you will get a ribbon (say for baseball) because you were on the team and played. It doesn’t matter if the team won, or if you were any good. You were part of the team, so you get a ribbon. If you win trophies too, great, but regardless, everyone who participated used to get a ribbon, all the way back to the 50s. Participation awards are not new.

Marathons give medals to everyone who finishes. Now, you paid for it with your registration fee. Say, $15, which included a few dollars for a cheap metal souvenir that says “Ottawa Race Weekend, 20xx” and the date. EVERYONE who finishes gets one. I walked a 5K, and so I got a little medal. Lots of events use souvenir coins or pins. I didn’t attend the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Annual Conference this past year, but I paid my registration fees to support them running it and thought I might watch a session or two (I didn’t). But because I was “part” of it, they sent me a nice little pin as a participation / souvenir / completion reward.

Apps go crazy for this now. Have you completed a level? Here’s a badge. Have you connected your social media accounts? Here’s another badge! I play a computer solitaire game on my phone, and it has rewards for doing regular games, event games, daily games, and daily challenges. And if you do it regularly, you can get a special badge even if you’re not doing well. All of them are really completion badges in disguise, looking like a performance metric. But the only real metric is that you finished. Yet apps add them and people compete for them, not to brag to others, but to measure their own progress.

There IS a pseudo version that is quite popular around the world, with the various virtual fitness challenges like the Conqueror Challenges, Pacer Challenges, etc. However, they are missing two of the three components of the normal certification ritual.

For example, I did the Giza Pyramid Conqueror Challenge.

It is a 46 mile / 75 km route that was designed by the “external” Conqueror Challenge company, so element 1 is met.
Element 2 — a performance metric — is virtually non-existent. While it looks at first blush that you have to cover 46 miles in daily increments to get it, everyone interprets the process differently. Some people decide that they will ONLY count walking they do specifically for the challenge. So they walk in their neighbourhood, get 2 miles and update the app to say they did 2 miles. When they get to 46, they “earn” the badge. Someone else could decide they are counting ALL the steps they take in a day, even if it was around their house and they never did any actual dedicated extra walking. Doesn’t seem quite the same challenge, does it? So if you were already walking 2 km a day through doing chores, and you continue to do 2 km a day, where was the “challenge”? Equally, others might decide that they are going to use their rowing machine, but since they don’t have a mileage indicator on their rowing machine, they’ll decide that 5 minutes of rowing equals a mile. If you point out that professional standards would put the distance closer to only a bit more than a kilometre in 5 minutes, they don’t care, they’re going to record a mile. Others will use it to count distance tied to how many pages they read in a book — no, I’m not kidding. And there are people online who can’t understand when they run 26 miles over the course of six months and claim that they “ran a marathon”, actual marathoners are kind of offended. There is no real standard, nor even the requirement to do the work to earn it at all…some people have said online that they forgot to log stuff for a while, so they went in and recorded a bunch of distances just so they could get their medal, whether they did them or not…they just put in enough fake distances to trigger the medal.
And when the person has self-reported to the app that they “did the work” to “earn the badge”, the company will ship you the medal you paid for in your registration fees. There is no one to say, “hey, wait a minute…did you REALLY do 180 miles in 3 days?”. There’s no confirmation, it’s just you telling them “Okay, ship it to me now.”

Now, before you think this process is useless, it’s not. It motivates a LOT of people. But while some people want to pretend there’s rigour attached, that you’re meeting some sort of standard, you’re not. It’s just a completion souvenir.

Tier 4: Certification and combination rituals

The next jump in the “progress continuum” is about certification rituals in one of two forms — a validation of completion by an external organization OR a validation of completion through a test. They are both quite similar as they include three components:

A process is established by an external group;
There are specific steps or performance metrics to “earn” the reward; and,
The external group reviews to see if you made the grade.

For certifications based on “validation of completion“, the best-known ones of all time are Boy Scout badges. The Boy Scouts (as the external organization) have set the specific steps that need to be completed in order to earn a specific merit badge. For example, to get the merit badge for space exploration (https://www.scouting.org/merit-badges/space-exploration/), you have to do eight separate things, all with individual details that you have to address:

Explain the purpose of space exploration;
Design a collector’s card of your favourite space pioneer;
Build, launch, and recover a model rocket;
Discuss and demonstrate four specific space and rocket topics;
Do two of three things about robotic and planetary missions;
Describe the purpose, operation, and components of a space vehicle or the International Space Station;
Design an inhabited base;
Discuss two possible careers in space exploration;

Your counsellor or troop leader will evaluate you to see if you did all the steps and confirm it in writing to the Boy Scouts organization so you can get your badge. An external org, a process, and external confirmation of your completion. You can’t just submit it yourself to say you did it; your troop leader or someone in your troop has to confirm you did it.

As an adult, there are still examples of validation of completion, often through adult hobby clubs. For example, I’m a member of several astronomy clubs, and most have some form of an “observing” challenge. For almost all of them, you have to do a combination of several things…for example, you often have to be a member of the organization for it to count; you have to register your intent in advance to say, “I’m going to do this challenge”; you then have to follow the list of steps the organization requires, although they can often be done in any order and with frequent flexibility, such that you’re doing five of seven steps or two of three targets within a step; and when you’re done, you often must “submit” evidence that you did everything that someone in the organization attests or validates. Only then will you get your completion badge / certificate / pin / medal.

By contrast, fitness programs are often good examples of a “validation by test”. In Canada, it was the Canada Fitness Award Program; in the U.S., it was the President’s Challenge. This isn’t to certify you as some professional, nor a licensing requirement for something, it is just a measure of your performance. It is an external performance standard that you can use for your “personal best”, perhaps, although instead of you setting the standard, an external organization has set it. In Canada, you got a bronze, silver or gold for individual athletic tests, but if you ranked high enough in a certain number of them, you could earn an award of excellence.

You may wonder why I’m spending so much time and space on this tier of rituals or why it is so high in the rankings. These types of rituals are somewhat unique. You are not just using your OWN goal-setting nor your OWN judgement as to what constitutes meeting the goal; an outside agency or professional has said, “Here is the standard.” Again, it looks like the previous ones with various targets, steps to follow and complete, and added an accountability ritual on standards. You literally can’t check the box until someone else says you can check it. That is a pretty big step to add to your efforts and raises the level of commitment required.

The last type of ritual, combination, is a bit softer than the previous two. It is often used where there is no standard for what you want to do / accomplish. I include it in this section as a creative tool, one that creates gamification where none presently exists, and adds side quests together. Let’s look, for example, as to what it means to be a “writer”.

The simplest definition of being a writer is to write. If you sit in your seat, and write, you’re a writer. That’s it, that’s all. That meets the definition of a writer.

Now, add in some publishing snobbery, people will quickly say, “Well, yeah, but is it any good? Is it gibberish? Would anyone read it? Would anyone BUY it?”. And so some people will say the standard is that you have to have sold something. Which means all the 1000s of would-be writers who have not broken into the publishing world yet are not writers until some gatekeeper says they are a writer. Hmm…not a lot of people like that standard. So they start creating their own definition of what makes them a writer. Perhaps this includes some of the following:

Writing at least 500 words a day (or some other total);
Attending writers workshops, conferences, author groups;
Finishing a book / short story / article;
Submitting it somewhere;
Getting rejected;
Getting accepted;
Self-publishing through Amazon;
Their first sale;
Their 101st sale (to eliminate just friends, don’t you know);
etc.

Of the nine above, perhaps they really like the idea of combining finishing it, self-publishing, and having their first sale. Even if it was their mom who bought a copy. If they take those three, they may often then say, “Okay, if I do these three things, I can call myself a writer”.

If you want to see how subjective this can be, I’ve written published reports for the Government where I was the primary author. Does that make me a writer? Or perhaps an editor of other people’s input?

I have over 2 million words in blog form, does that make me a writer?

I have written a guide to HR competitions in multiple forms, people use it, read it online, but it isn’t “formally published” or even formatted completely as a book. Am I a writer?

My guide has been downloaded well over 5000 times, which would technically make it a best-seller by Canadian standards. Does that make me a writer?

I intend to format it as a book, may eventually sell it online; will self-publication make me a writer?

I’m not trying to debate my status, I’m pointing out that if MY goal is to be a writer, then it is my goal and my definition that matters to my goal-setting. What do I mean when I say “I want to be a writer”. There’s no official standard out there, so I might combine four or five things, or ten, or only three and say, “That’s my standard”.

That combination of smaller goals into a larger goal is a ritual, whereby the individual goals are “raised” up to be more important, part of a larger task, driving me to take something small like “writing 500 words” and making it part of a much bigger goal. Driving all the combined elements to work together, giving a synergy that individually they might not have.

Tier 5: Reward rituals

The final tier is amongst the easiest to understand and one of the hardest to do well. A reward ritual is based on the recognition that self-satisfaction in achieving a goal may be insufficient motivation to do something. So, instead, we add a reward to the end. For example, if I write 500 words this morning, I will reward myself with a cup of hot cocoa this afternoon. Or if I can lose 25 pounds, I will reward myself with that nice dress I want.

Seems simple enough, right? If I ring the Pavlovian bell the right way, I’ll get my doggie treat. Activity completed, reward earned.

Unfortunately, it is not that easy. There are issues to monitor. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, you don’t want your reward to be a sugar binge. And yet many people do exactly that…they tie their goal of some form of deprivation of something they enjoy to letting themself have it if they deprive themselves of it. If you could eat a sugar cookie any day, then what’s the motivation? Particularly if you were eating them previously. You’re creating a false “deficit” to give yourself a “false reward”.

Equally, you have to ensure that the goal and the reward are relatively proportional. If you write 500 words one day, you shouldn’t reward yourself with a new car. Nor can you give yourself a raisin. It’s not the same scale. You COULD perhaps write every day for a year and reward yourself with a nice rental for a weekend trip. Or a raisin scone on Fridays when normally you settle for a plain one.

And finally, you don’t want the reward to be something that doesn’t actually motivate you. If you don’t care about clothes, a new dress doesn’t motivate you. If you’re not a gearhead, a special car rental or new car might mean nothing. If you don’t really care about raisin scones, then a raisin scone isn’t a motivating factor.

In an ideal world, the reward should be a) new, aka not something you already do; b) significant enough that doing it means something to you, not a quick throwaway item; c) not so significant that it requires too long of effort to earn it; and d) reinforces the actual goal being measured. For example, if you are banging away on a desktop computer, and what you really want is a laptop so you can work outside, well, maybe showing yourself you can meet your goals on your desktop is your way to “earn” the laptop after six months. Or you’re into kayaking, and there is a high-end version you would like because it would be more maneuverable in rapids…maybe if you show yourself that you’re able to go kayaking three times a week, the “reward” of the new kayak is justified by your commitment to and investment in kayaking.

Often though, it is combinatorial in nature too. So, again, going back to the writing, what if instead of writing, your goal was to pursue creative outlets in your life. Writing, painting, knitting, and singing, perhaps. While individually they might be relatively small investments and sub-goals, together they may make for a larger “combined” goal. And you measure THAT goal.

I hesitate to consider this a separate goal for something, as it isn’t really a separate ritual, more a modification to this last one, but you CAN give yourself a point system to measure your progress over time. For example, suppose your four goals are:

Write more;
Attend a painting class;
Complete a specific knitting project as a gift; and,
Join and attend a choir.

That is very hard to measure progress on regularly. On the other hand, you could say, “I want to write more” but you give yourself one point every week you write more than 3x that week of at least 500 words each time. For the painting class and choir, perhaps you get one point for each outing. For the knitting project, maybe it’s a set of three mittens for your nieces, and you are going to give yourself 10 points every time you finish a pair. After 12 weeks, let’s say you have 5 points for writing, 8 points for painting, 2 points for choir, and 1 point for mittens. So 16 points in total. And you are waiting until you earn 30 points before you take a pottery class. If you feel that any of the sub-pieces are dragging you down, you can always focus on other things in the “mix”. And you’ve essentially gamified the whole set. It’s not a tickbox, you’re trying to combine like things together to motivate you to be more creative. If you really are interested in taking a pottery class sometime, this may be a great way to motivate yourself a cross a broad area, and add a series of “granular shading” to your reward system.

When my son was old enough to put his contact lenses in himself, we set him up with a simple reward system. Up until then, Andrea or I had to insert or take out his lenses early on, or Andrea later, or Jacob could remove them on his own for a while. But insertion is a different level of self-care. Most kids needing contacts learn between 5 and 9 years old, and Jacob was in the middle. He got new lenses, a bit different style and easier to handle, and so it was time.

We set up the goal that it was to TRY and put in the lenses. If he tried, he got one point. If he got it in one eye, he got two points. And if he got it in both eyes, he got three points. When he got to 100 points, aka the 30 day approach to creating a habit, he could have a reward. He chose a Vegas Golden Knights t-shirt. It worked perfectly. There were no days that he didn’t try, the points motivated him, he always wanted his point. And only 2/30 tries where he only got one lens in, the rest were both eyes. It wasn’t easy for him, he struggled some days, but the goal was to try and to learn how to do it himself. And he nailed it. Recently, we’ve created something similar with all his appointments and activities that he has to do, even when they’re not fun on their own. We added a tracking ritual combining points for each activity and daily “tier” points depending on how well he does…so he gets 10 points for certain things, 25 for others, etc., and at the end of the day, if he gets 125-150 points, he gets 1 reward point; 150-175 in a day gets him 2 reward points; and 175+ gets him 3 reward points. When he gets to 150 reward points, he can get himself a specific pre-negotiated reward. This is way more work than his lenses, and takes longer, so it wasn’t a small reward either, it was about $200 in the end. His journey continues, and as he earns his rewards, it feels almost like those tickets you can earn at arcades to buy something later.

That’s it, that’s all I have for the various rituals. I’ll do one more “summary” post and then apply the techniques to my most difficult goals.

Goal-setting and rituals – Tier 2 of 5 (social engineering)

September 1 2024

After the simple rituals I mentioned earlier, the second tier of rituals relies on the work of social engineers. All of them tap into your social network of family and friends, maybe even acquaintances, maybe even people you haven’t met yet, and up the ante of “not” doing your goals to increase your personal accountability.

Weight loss programs, for example, often combine a host of social engineering tricks. For those who have struggled with their weight, one of the biggest tricks is a public announcement. You state not only that your goal is to lose weight … dun dun dun … but also what your current weight is (perhaps) AND the size of the loss you want to achieve.

This can be a very complex issue with many people recommending extreme caution if you use “public” pronouncements for your goals. For example, in weight loss programs, it can be great if stating a public goal actually motivates you towards your goal. Except weight loss is not necessarily the true goal — being healthier is the real target. So someone who does an extreme diet might “make their goal”, but it might not be a good thing. Think of all the unhealthy food disorders out there, often tied in with body-shaming. A public announcement can be powerful, even empowering, but if you subsequently fail to achieve your goal, will your motivation and self-esteem go the other way? Or will the commitment itself skew you to the extreme?

Most experts come down on the cautionary side of using public announcements only for goals that have very little gray area around it. For example, rather than setting a weight loss goal, if you wanted to set a goal like a Conqueror Challenge of walking a certain distance in a certain amount of time, there’s nothing inherently dangerous about that on its own. You can announce you walked 3.2km today or you made it to milestone 3 or you’re 15% of the way to the distance goal! A walking goal by itself is more neutral than a weight loss goal.

The next two forms look almost identical but they work slightly differently. One of the biggest things for workouts that experts recommend is to either join a gym / take classes OR work out with a buddy. The group option is a form of a tribal ritual. It’s essentially a simple variant on finding people who like to do the same things you do and then doing things as a group. If you like astronomy, join an astronomy club. If you like reading, join a book club. The whole point is to join a tribe of like-minded people and do things together. In theory, this obviously works way better for extroverts than introverts, but even for introverts, an organized structure often alleviates anxiety. The buddy option can be similar, depending on the form it takes. If it is simply, “Hey, let’s go kayaking together sometime,” that’s a simple tribal variation with a tribe of two people — you and them.

On the other hand, if it is more, “Hey, let’s go kayaking every Tuesday or Wednesday morning”, then you’ve altered the HOW and WHAT again (just as was done in Tier 1), and made a new activity. Not simply are you going to go kayaking, now you have turned it into an informal accountability ritual where you and your friend now rely on each other to reinforce the goal. Ultimately, the real difference is not the number of people involved but what the minimum number of people is required to do the activity. If you are part of a tribal ritual, and you miss a week? No big deal. Nobody really notices but you. Everybody else still does their thing. For a mutual accountability ritual, even informal, there’s an element of you letting the others down. Your partners will “hold you accountable” for your goal, calling you up to say, “Hey, are we on for Tuesday or not?”. Because they need support, too. Programs like alcoholics anonymous try to do this with sponsors; in addition to mentoring, they also try to ensure you make it to the meeting each day/week/etc.

The next one is a strange variation of the accountability ritual. Take the example of someone going to the gym and working out, either by themselves, in a group or with a buddy. Now contrast that with someone who has hired a personal trainer to work with them every Monday afternoon from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. At first glance, someone might think that is simply a question of scheduling. You know, the same as the Tier 1 scheduling. But is it?

First and foremost, you’re going to pay that trainer. That’s a commitment that is VERY different from the rest of the situations. You are taking it seriously enough to pay someone to help you do it better or properly. Second, you’ve got a professional helping you. Not some random dude that has no more knowledge than you. Third, you’ve scheduled a set time. That was only one component of the simple scheduling option. And last, that trainer is going to see how you’re progressing, whether you show up, etc. They’re going to call you, push you, hold you accountable, force you to set goals and then tell you how to reach them. And most GOOD trainers will drop you as a client if you’re wasting their time. They like money, but if they’re good, they won’t bother working with someone who is looking for a social buddy to talk to while they pretend to work out. Ultimately, it changes the mutual accountability ritual into a formal accountability ritual.

As an introvert, I do not usually like any of these types of social engineering rituals, but some people find them very powerful. One of the reasons I am doing this “inventory” of options, though, is to see what I’m missing that might potentially help me going forward. Which might include the social engineering ones. Ewww, people. 🙂

On to tier 3…

The real countdown to retirement begins…

August 27 2024

I’ve posted previously about the # of days, such as 1500 or 1400 or 1300. I forced those milestones, tried to organize my thoughts around 100 day increments. It didn’t really work as a ritual.

However, if I glance at my countdown clock on the page to the right, I see it saying 1094 days and some hours as change, which doesn’t mean much. Well, until you realize that it is three years from today. That will be my last day of work. I’ve mentioned already that I chose my father’s birthday as my target date, the day he would have turned 100. There’s a symbolic element in there that helps crystallize my thoughts.

In the meantime, it now divides my remaining time. Over the next year, there are a series of things I need to prepare, organize, figure out, etc. in order to be in the right spot financially, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically when my last day comes. I want to give myself the maximum chance of transitioning “well” to retirement. However I choose to define that, in the next three years. One obvious thing is my physical health, particularly for my lower back and the ability to be able to do certain movements when I do certain activities like kayaking.

I’m spending a lot of time right now on rituals, as a couple of the goals in the next year are going to challenge me. In the same way that I need to make some new investments over the next three years, I also want to combine some of my traditional approaches to goal-setting and achievement with extra enhancements through ritual and ceremony. Some don’t need it; they’re easy; others would benefit from a full-court press.

Tonight, I treated myself out to simple nachos at a restaurant by myself. I’ll do something similar 35 more times until I get to the last day, taking stock as I go. Wish me luck.

Goal-setting and rituals – Tier 1 of 5 (simple rituals)

August 25 2024

I mentioned in a previous post that as I gear up for my retirement planning, I want to revisit the idea of rituals and ceremonies (R&C). I don’t think I have given enough thought over the years to using R&C to increase my motivation or commitment, or even to improve my delivery and attainment.

There is a ton of research about various “rituals” in terms of cultural, religious and community groups, and they focus heavily on the particular type of goal that goes with it…teaching responsibility, indoctrinating or inducting someone into a group, promoting kindness or compassion, increasing a sense of self, or more often, increasing the sense of belonging to a group in the form of shared rituals. Those are powerful, but they’re not really what I’m talking about…I’m not dressing in robes, for example, or starting a cult.

Instead, I’m talking more about adding a prescribed frequency or form to an otherwise regular activity or goal. An “enhancement”, if you will, to give it added meaning and thus increase the likelihood of doing it. Some of my reticence in delving too deep into them in the past has been that various articles that combine rituals with goal-setting for personal development often inadvertently confuse different aspects of goal-setting for where the “ritual” should come into play. When they do, the advice isn’t that useful.

Understanding the basics of goal-setting vis-a-vis rituals

For example, there are lots of articles and advice out there for goal-setting and rituals that revolve around three main factors:

A ritualized process of making a formal plan
A scheduled event formally set and conducted, with a relatively fixed frequency
A ceremony to note when you have accomplished it

They take the “plan – do – review” mentality of any sound planning system and add a ritual aspect to each and every element. In my view, the ritual portion only really helps achieve something if it is attached to the “DO” portion of the system (#2), not the first or last phases.

Don’t get me wrong. Planning (#1) is a prerequisite, a primal foundation. And if adding a ritual helps you improve or regularize your planning, I’m all for it. It can be quite enjoyable designing new trackers, setting a schedule for when you’re going to “check-in,” setting up checkboxes, buying dot journals, making layouts, etc. The hidden nuance though is that this sort of ritual reinforces the “planning”, not the “doing”. Anyone can make a great plan and update it daily. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will do the items on the list. To me, it is like the idea of someone deciding that they speed too much, so they set a goal of driving more safely. If you’re going to drive safely, you have to have something to drive…so having the car is a prerequisite, but simply having a car or decorating the interior or adding lights to the underside doesn’t mean you’re going to drive safely. Those “enhancements” have nothing to do with your goal. It just enables you to do the activity at all. Like a to-do list…it enables you to plan what to do, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll actually do it.

For those who want to argue semantics, another way of thinking about it is to make your first item on your to-do list as “updating the list”. If you attach a ritual to it, it is ONLY good for that item. It will help you update the list; it won’t necessarily help you make progress on other items.

Continuing that vein, I believe #3 (review) has the same problem. Tracking is great. In fact, there is an entire mantra of “what gets measured is what gets done”. Except without the “DOING” in the middle, tracking means nothing. Many people set and track goals, like weight loss, with no change. The acts of planning and tracking are, in themselves, necessary but insufficient.

Admittedly, there are half-measures for each that CAN contribute to progress, buried in there, sure, but not enough. Like many hobbies, it’s almost like planning, doing, and tracking are three separate activities. And I’m only interested in the “doing” portion right now, I already know how to plan and track.

I’ve done a deep dive into the various options for rituals, and I’m grouped them into five different “tiers”. Today’s post is just about Tier 1, simple rituals.

Tier 1: Simple rituals

Let’s take the simplest ritual: the checkbox ritual. Within the “plan – do – review” process, you put something on the list and check it off when done. Putting it on the list — in the “plan” phase — is a partial ritual. Deciding it is important enough to put it on the list and reminding yourself that you’re committed to it is a (soft) ritual. You don’t put “breathing” on the list, you just breathe. So, if you put walking around the block on your list, that “ritual” of committing to it enough to put it on your list is a half-measure. When you’ve done it, you get another half-measure by checking it off. It’s a start, but not much of a boost from the ritual. It keeps it top-of-mind, which is why you make the list.

For those with a very strong “list” mentality, putting it on the list may, in fact, be sufficient. There is a danger that people start to make “simpler” lists over time so that they can keep checking things off. Like:

Wake up
Get dressed
Go downstairs
Make breakfast
Eat breakfast
Go to the bathroom
Etc.

It’s similar to putting “make / update the list” on the list just so you can check it off and feel momentum. Most people limit themselves to putting things on their lists that are meaningful. “Buy milk” is great for your list of chores for the day, but rarely is it significant enough to consider adding a “ritual” to it so that you do it.

There are exceptions to my mocked list above. For example, if you are newly retired (3y and counting down) or on summer vacation, it can be easy to stay in your PJs. But if you feel you lolly-gag too much, and you want to be more productive, you might easily add “Get dressed” to your list. Or if you always eat pre-processed breakfast or buy your breakfast pre-made at a store or skip breakfast completely (cough), then “make breakfast” could easily make your to-do list as something significant enough that you MIGHT not only put it on the list, you might need help doing that task. Or perhaps if your doctor tells you to drink more milk, adding it to your list might be significant. But, for now, let’s just leave it as “put it on the list, check it off”.

The next three rituals are relatively tied for usefulness, commonality of use, and general methodology — scheduling, duration, or quantity rituals. For writers, they often use a scheduling ritual they nickname “butt in seat” where they say, “Okay, every morning at 9:00 a.m., I am going to sit and write.” They disconnect from the internet, turn off their phones, ignore the doorbell, find a quiet place to write (usually the same place every day) and they put their butt in the seat. And they write. Or people will say, “Every morning at 6:00 a.m., I’m going to go for a run”. Again, rigorous scheduling of the activity. It doesn’t have to be daily, some people will sign up for fitness classes two days a week, like spinning every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:00 p.m. after work. Scheduling is the most common of all rituals. It adds a bit of “planning” to the mix, as it ties into their daily list of activities, blocking off the time to do that activity.

Alternatively, people will go for a duration ritual, although often combined with scheduling. “I’m going to write for a minimum of 2 hours!”. “I’m going to work out for 1 hour!” “I’m going to ride my stationary bike for 35 minutes three times this week!”. Again, fairly obvious, fairly common. As with scheduling, there’s a half-measure from planning that helps, too, as they are tying it into their daily schedule, but not necessarily at a specific time. This is great when something might need to move around (early morning, afternoon, evening) if you have a varied schedule already.

The last one, a quantity ritual, is very similar to the first two. It is basically taking the duration ritual and substituting a quantity element to harness a bit of tracking to the process. “I’m going to do 5 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, 10 burpees, and 2 sets of dead weightlifts.” Or “I’m going to write at least 1000 words”.

The third level of simple rituals is the chain ritual. One of the most “famous” is the so-called Seinfeld chain (although Seinfeld disputes attribution). The idea was that Seinfeld was writing jokes, and he made a “ritual” for himself that every morning, he would sit down and write jokes (for so many minutes or so many jokes). And the goal was to keep the daily chain going as long as he could. If he missed a day? No biggie, he would reset the count, and start again. But the ritual of extending the chain was an extra reinforcement for the goal.

Anyone who has used DuoLingo knows the same schtick. Every day, it asks you to extend your daily training streak. Many games now add various types of chain-ritual-type gamifications to the game, challenging you to extend your “streak” to encourage you to play more often. Puzzle games, in particular, want to see you “learning” (as they claim), which means you’re playing regularly and likely buying power-ups as needed. Many apps regularly add rewards now as you extend your streak, giving you special avatars, badges, or even access to extra areas of the app like a VIP section.

Some so-called goal-setting experts argue that these types of rituals are really not rituals at all. They’re simply quantifying the goals. So they want to argue that a goal of “writing” and a goal of “writing every day at 9:00 a.m.” are really just a nuance of specificity. I disagree most strongly. The goal of writing is the same, but adding a time or quantity or duration changes the goal, or more accurately, changes the “how” of the goal. The ritual changes the delivery. Which is the whole point of adding a ritual.

If you could have done the goal of “writing more” or “writing regularly”, you would have already done it. Quantifying it would make no difference; you would have simply tracked that aspect. Changing the specificity here also changes WHAT and HOW you are going to do it, not just the outcome.

Does this help me?

To be honest, this initial list doesn’t help me much. I already use checkboxes, duration and quantity constantly. I might not use scheduling enough, and although I would LIKE to use chain rituals, my challenge has often been that the easy goals don’t need their help, and the hard ones are difficult to schedule appropriately.

For the scheduling, I’m reminded of the story of the Harvard professor asked to teach his students about time management. He came into the class, bringing along an empty vase and some rocks, gravel, dirt and water. He tells the class that the vase is a metaphor for their schedule. First he puts rocks in, all the way to the top, and asks them if it is full. They all say yes, so then he starts putting gravel in, letting it filter down and settle. Again he asks if it is full, and most say yes, a few are hesitant. He proceeds to add dirt or sand, and it settles all the way down. This time when he asks if it is full, they all say no. So then he adds water, and declares it full. When he asks what this teaches them about time management, one brave soul states that no matter how full your schedule is, there’s always room for more. The professor shook his head and handed his life lesson. “The rocks have to go in first or they won’t go in at all. So, what are your rocks for your schedule? What’s most important?”

The metaphor is strong, and for a long time, I’ve used it for tracking my goals. What are my rocks? The downside though is that my biggest rocks — work and generating income, spending time with Andrea and Jacob — eat up a lot of my day, leaving me little to no time or energy for other rocks, no matter how “big” I think they are or should be. Which is not really true, of course. I just don’t give them sufficient priority to schedule them. I don’t put the other rocks in first.

Meanwhile, I use the simple rituals where it helps, or skip it where it won’t.

However, knowing how it works can also remove the incentive/motivation factor. I can’t often manipulate myself by simply adding a quantity ritual, for example, as I know that 1000 words of bad writing doesn’t really meet any goal. Similarly, for duration. Scheduling rituals can help, if I have control over my schedule and there are no outside forces nudging my schedule out of whack (as I mention above).

But, for now, I have my initial list of five options for tier 1:

Checkboxes
Scheduling
Duration
Quantity
Chain

On to the next tier…

What’s next in my life?

August 9 2024

Before I talk about that, I want to talk for a moment about my process in writing, particularly the unusual steps for this post.

Most of the time, when I’m contemplating something more substantive/personal than a book review, I think about the topic for a while, composing some of it in my head, and then, eventually, I sit down to write it straight through. While I edit as I go, when I’m done, I frequently go back to the beginning and edit some more. Occasionally, I restructure it quite a bit. Sometimes the whole point of writing it was to figure out what I thought in the first place, I didn’t know the ending until I got there, so then I go back and streamline the prose to that objective. That doesn’t mean I’m ever brief, more just that I often “clean up the digressions”. If I’m writing late at night, and I’m tired, sometimes I just wrap it up and press publish. Other times I leave it until the next day. Rarely do I leave it sit for any length of time before finishing it, unless I’m perhaps rewriting something or potentially deciding that it was too long and breaking it into multiple posts.

For this post, I had no idea where I was going. I was trying to describe a certain degree of indecision, the malaise of spirit or inertia of mind and body that I experienced over the last year or so. A lack of motivation. None of the things on my to-do list seemed enticing or more of a priority than the rest. Heck, I couldn’t even decide on what this post should be titled:

PolyWogg 2024?
The new me?
The Id in Mid?
Who I was, who I am, who I want to be?
Self-indulgent claptrap, episode 922?

I frequently write about goals and creating a new energy / initiative. But this was different. A different order of magnitude, perhaps.

I had written the post last weekend, and yet left it sitting unpublished all week. I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to say.

I wrote a bit more later in the week, saved it, went upstairs, saw Andrea and Jacob, and had an epiphany. It was indeed a different order of magnitude. I knew what was constraining me.

More than a phase

Backing up a bit, the feeling of “something” had been going on for about 8-10 months. Looking back, it corresponds to when I started actively planning for my retirement (I only realized that tonight while writing, by the way, as it might have been a good clue!). I simply knew that whatever it was, it was bigger than normal. Something more fundamental, almost primal perhaps.

When stuff like this happens, I often go back to the core “me” and review my foundations. See if anything resonates, like a crumbling cornerstone or something. Something that could be making me uncertain, causing the uncertainty or a mental disconnect between the private “me” and the public “me”. Or with the other “me” versions inside.

To aid my mental review, I like to think of my life up until now in three big sections.

My initial life up to age 29 was as a follower (0-13), mostly of my brother; some autonomy in high school (14-19) as I started to figure out the academic side of my life; intimacy in physical, emotional, intellectual sense of choosing friends and a girlfriend (20-23); individuality (24-25) out West deciding about life in government; and finally identity at Foreign Affairs, making new friends, etc. (26-28).

Then there was the 5 years where I field-stripped my psyche, my tadpole status. Recognizing that a lot of stuff that had been built into that first section of life was in fact built by other people. Stuff I often “absorbed” unconsciously, even though it really wasn’t me and not at all how I wanted to live my life. There were directions I would have taken then that I look at now and think, “WTF? How was that even an IDEA let alone a possible path? I would have hated that life.”. I had been existing, not flourishing previously, and it took me from age 29-34 to really understand myself.

The third section is comprised of the extended elements after that which now comprise most of my current life. I wanted a long career with government, wanted to rise to the level of management, have a decent job and income, get married, have kids, establish and maintain relationships with family and friends on terms I was comfortable with, own a decent house without it being insane. Be able to take interesting trips, if not worldwide excursions. Call it age 35-56 aka now.

As I walked upstairs, thinking of my current life, wondering what was “wrong” with it that was bothering me, I realized as I saw Andrea and Jacob what was “wrong”. In short, nothing.

I pretty much have everything that I wanted when I was 34. I’ve achieved almost all of the success that PolyWogg envisioned when he wasn’t a tadpole anymore. Man plans while the gods laugh, but well, that man I used to be had a plan that happened.

Not necessarily as a result of my plan, of course. Andrea and I have Jacob in tow, we’re all still building a life together, twenty-two years later. In that time, a lot has happened. Some good, some bad, some easy, some really f***ing hard. Life, basically. And it is a pretty good life, if I do say so myself. Jacob and Andrea are my heart and soul.

So, what could be wrong?

Nothing or everything?

I’m 56 years old, and starting into the “final third” of my life. I had a mental model that got me to age 29 or so, and the revamped me got me to 56. I don’t know what’s next. What do you get the man who has everything? How about an existential crisis? 🙂

Last year, I set my goals for 60 things to do before I’m 60. And most of the things on the list are things I want to do. They’re valid. But they’re not inspiring me. They are not things where I declare “I’m a (blah)”. They’re not legacy items, just activities. Maybe I’m looking for what would be on my tombstone. We were joking tonight, a bit glib and sarcastic. How about “Started strong and fizzled at the end”? Or our in-house favourite when we’re playing a game of cards, for example, and out of the three of us, Andrea and Jacob are doing well and I’m basically returning the cards. Like in bowling, I’m the ball return, not the bowler. So we call each other Ball Return, although me mostly. Not in a harmful way, just mocking, but it’s a fun metaphor at times. “In the bowling game of life, would you rather be a scorekeeper, bowler, ball return, pin setter, or the guy handing out shoes with sanitizer in them?”. 🙂

Some people think of me as the HR guru, although I haven’t updated my guide in forever.

Others might say I’m an astronomer, but I haven’t used my scopes in 4 years.

Very few would say I’m a writer, although my blogging surpasses well over 2 million words. Hundreds and hundreds of posts. Thousands even. But would people describe me that way? No.

In just under three weeks, I will be THREE YEARS FROM RETIREMENT. I’m at 1100 days and change right now. And to be honest, I don’t really know what retirement looks like for me. I have some books on “Purposeful Retirement”. And I’ve been looking at what others are doing, most of which doesn’t resonate with me.

And once I decide on what I want retirement to look like, have I made the right financial, physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional investments to live the kind of life I want to enjoy in my “golden years”?

In short, I don’t know.

What’s next?

I’m not field-stripping my psyche again, no existential crisis. I know who I am, I already know what’s important to me. But the exact form or expression of that intent? I need to perhaps figure that out. And just because I achieved my big goals, that hardly means my life is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There are things that I should be doing and are not; celebrating but not; living but not. There’s lots of room for improvement. Without that “idea” of what I want, it’s hard for me to be motivated about specific goals.

As I figure out some of my legacy, I also want to think a little about rituals. I don’t quite know how to describe that part. While lists, goals, habits, etc., are all good on their own, I have probably not spent enough time in the past on using structure in my day or week to reinforce a goal or facilitate doing it.

Perhaps a simple example would be that I want to go walking more, and not always around Ottawa. So after I retire, and Andrea is still working for a while, maybe I’ll drive her to work every Thursday or something, and then drive myself somewhere on the Quebec side to walk. The Gatineau Hills. Some parks. A waterfall trail. The ritual of driving her to work would reinforce that a) I need to get my ass up and out of the house in time to take her to work, not lollygagging around the house, and b) be up and ready to go do something. Often, others set something up for social interaction to stay in touch with people from work by joining one of the numerous breakfast groups who meet every Friday morning.

In short, rituals use the form to reinforce the function. Maybe it’s a games night, maybe it’s a movie afternoon. I don’t know yet. As I said, I haven’t given it enough thought. But I want to figure that out.

The elephant in the room is that my brother Don just died, and he wasn’t exactly in a happy place when he did. That too is part of the impetus. As is the death of a friend, Jeremy, a couple of years ago. Reminders to me to make the most of the life I lead. To not treat the last third of my life as a simple to-do list, but to actively plan for it to have meaning too.

60 things by 60 will still be part of it, sure. But not the real question. Something deeper.

A Purposeful Retirement sounds like what I want to create, particularly now that I need new “big” life goals. The challenge for me, in part, is that some of those new goals will be shared ones, not only to do but to establish, while others are likely to be more individualistic. Andrea is farther away from retirement so not quite ready for the same type of planning. Fortunately, she’s stuck with me and has to at least share her views on my goals as I come up with them.

Weird. So, the reason I was unhappy is that I already had what I wanted. So, universe…what’s next?