A Tale of Two Fitness Trackers & One Valuable Lesson About Goal Setting, Blogs & Entrepreneurship
I’m writing to you straight to share an epiphany.
It happened within months and almost without me even realizing. My fitness journey went from lackadaisical and without goals to inadvertently achieving. And all it took was one small change.
Suddenly, I was keeping up a regular gym schedule, going out of my way to include more walks, taking quick breaks to stretch and improve mobility. I found myself remarking, grateful and pleasantly surprised, that in less than two years after a major knee surgery, fitness had already become so routine. I wondered what might have facilitated such a radical change in behavior.
Then, a notification went off on my wrist: congratulations for achieving all of my daily activity goals. And it hit me. The one change that had launched my success. And it wasn’t a change I hadn’t even made.
In writing, as a former personal trainer and teacher, and now, as a small business owner, I often talk about setting SMART goals: the idea of specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals leading to more and greater achievement. Even since shifting my career, I still apply the training methods as laid out in my NASM certification to my fitness journey. I still find ways to reference SMART goals and still believe in their power. Even so, everyone benefits from a practical reminder.
To avoid any perceived bias, I’ve anonymized the device names, but my story began when, after two years, my old FitWrist stopped working.
The epiphany
I got it in 2022 as a gift. I had never owned a FitWrist before, but by now, most people had. Still, the only digital devices I had ever used for working out were a digital clock and a stopwatch. I hardly knew what to do with the newfound technology.
I paid little attention to most of the device’s features, though I grew to like the daily calorie burn tracker and pre-programmed workouts to measure my activity. I noticed the achievement targets were automatically set at 900 active calories, 90 activity minutes, and 10,000 steps per day, but I rarely achieved them. My workday was mostly behind a desk. Even on the days I worked out, it took a lot of effort beyond my typical routine to reach those targets. When pressed for time, it was easy to convince myself that pulling it off was such a long shot, I shouldn’t even bother. The tracker’s notifications came infrequently, if at all, and as a result, they were easier to ignore.
Then, my FitWrist stopped working, and I decided to try a Wrist Fit 3000 instead. It synced well with my phone, had a bigger screen and more applications, and a fitness tracker similar to the FitWrist. I assumed it would be just as useful.
It wasn’t. It transformed my routine. And all I did was wear it.
What was the difference? The Wrist Fit 3000’s presets. It came set up with goals that more realistically challenged my capabilities and willingness to achieve. At 500 active calories, 90 activity minutes, and 6,000 steps, I was achieving them more often, sometimes, without even trying. A long walk into town or a home workout would trigger a notification. I started paying more attention. I noticed when I was hitting them and when I was falling short. Once the goals were set within a realizable range, I could picture the effort it would take to achieve them, and found myself more motivated to try more often.
Realism focuses on confidence & capabilities
Realistic goals made me feel more capable of achieving, and achieving more built up my confidence in how far I could push myself to achieve. That success came down to science. When SMART goals are moderately challenging, neither too easy nor overly ambitious, we’re more likely to stay engaged and sustain progress. In his 2017 paper, Kenneth Nowack reviewed best practices in goal-setting, including studies showing that:
“Challenging goals led to greater effort, focus, and persistence than moderately difficult or easy goals;
“Lowering the difficulty of goals, rather than enhancing motivation, is the desired strategy for successful behavior change, ...[and];
“Terminating the pursuit of unrealistic or unattainable goals might actually prove to be a better strategy in terms of physical health and psychological well-being.”
In other words, we need the right balance of drive, confidence and capabilities. When we aim beyond what we’re capable of, it’s easier to get discouraged, become less self-assured, and give up or never try. Goals that encourage consistency are those that fit within our willingness to stretch our confidence and capabilities a little further.
I also benefited from more frequent celebrations. Each target I hit came with celebratory notifications, which reminded me of the commitment and its attainability, but also the satisfaction I stood to gain by completing attainable tasks. As clinical psychologist and author, Melanie A. McNally writes for Psychology Today, celebrating small wins fosters a “positive feedback loop of success and satisfaction.” The brain's reward system releases dopamine, and that positive sensation around accomplishment and progress boosts self-efficacy and self-esteem, keeping us motivated to pursue further goals by reinforcing positive behavior. The regular celebration of hitting those goals made it easier to try more and greater challenges more frequently.
Lessons for business and entrepreneurship
In light of my fitness tracker epiphany, I’ve gained a new sense of gratitude for our realistic goal-setting at KNG Services. When Kristin and I started KNG, we were ambitious: build a website, run four social media pages across two different platforms, publish a bi-monthly blog, and deliver client services to the best of our ability. Still, as first-time entrepreneurs, we decided to stay realistic.
We didn’t immediately set out to “grow 1000x in four months” or “rake in seven figures in a week.” Those goals would have overshot our confidence and detracted from the value of more realistic contribution, potentially damaging our physical health and psychological well-being. Instead, we determined how we could realistically balance the challenges and opportunities of learning something new, providing a valuable service, and running a business. We communicated regularly about the workload and expectations. When plans fell through, we plotted alternatives.
That said, you may have noticed we missed a few blog posts recently. We regret not explaining the lapse sooner. Exciting new opportunities came up and, in exploring ways to accommodate, we turned our focus and attention inward to develop new confidence and capabilities. Temporarily pausing our blog production provided the flexibility we needed to sustain balance at a time of exploration and shifting priorities.
Still, we know the importance of showing up as a brand in the ways we’ve been building it. To get the blog back on track, we’re starting with a new schedule: one post on the fourth Monday of every month. With a more realistic goal in sight, we are ready to recommit to the effort. We hope you’ll continue along for the ride.
