How to Use Data to Motivate.

I have found myself not motivated to get up and out walking for a while now and know I need to do something about it. However, even with this realization that I have not done anything about it for the last few weeks. So thought I would try something a bit different to get the motivation up and get myself out walking again. The aim is to start on the track to getting back into shape and maybe show others a different way to get the motivation to get out and do something.

Now into the heart of this blog. We love data here at Optimal so I thought why not use data to look at my walking habits to see what my habits are.

The hope is that having the data in front of me will help to get myself motivated to get out more. Unlike most of the fine folk here at Optimal I come from a design background. So I’m going to use this opportunity to make something design based to show off the data for part of this blog. I’m hopefully that the infographic will be enough of a motivator for me to make a decent change in my walking behavior.

I like many have a smart watch and have it on most if not all the time. I will be using the steps counted on this as data to see what I have managed to do over the last 2 weeks and see how looking at this data effects to my behavior.

2 Weeks Later…

I have done the additional walking while looking at the data that I am generating. I have noticed a difference not as massive as I was hoping, but I have managed to make a difference to my habits. I feel a bit better about myself and I am happy that I have pushed my average steps up.

This was an easy experiment to do and one you can do yourself and I would recommend. All you need is a device that can record your steps with some degree of accuracy, most smart phones can do this. Then all you have to do is out that data somewhere you can see it instdea of letting it hide inside of your device.

Well that’s it for me, this method of motivation worked well for me. Sometimes it is just as easy as getting your data out somewhere you can see to realize what needs to change.

Steven.