Stupid Motivation Tricks

Stupid Motivation Tricks 

Friday, July 29, 2011 

The SparkPeople site is full of motivational tricks. A lot of them are dumb. You get one SparkPoint for 5 fitness minutes. The SparkPoints aren't good for anything real, just bragging rights and virtual SparkGoodies. And one SparkPoint is so small as to be insignificant even on the scale of what SparkPoints are used for. 

So why do I keep walking to turn a 32 minute walk into 35 minutes? Because 35 fitness minutes are worth 7 SparkPoints, and 34 are only worth 6. 

Today I found the mileage tracker. I turned it on, figuring I could always turn it back off if I didn't like it. Turns out I like it. I like measuring distance and time, and letting the site compute speed, much better than measuring time and estimating speed. And the mapping function allows for run/walk or cycling. I could get used to that, really fast. 

 Then there was this goal attached. It said, walk 5 miles a week. That sounded low, so I set it at 10 miles per week. Then I went out and walked at lunch. The map said, 2.62 miles. Well and good. 

Got to thinking . . . I foolishly turned on mileage mapping on a Friday. If I just go along like normal, the tracker won't know I walked over 10 miles this week. It doesn't have what I did from Sunday to Thursday. So at 8:30 PM on a Friday, I decided to take another walk. I didn't know how long it was, so I stretched it a bit. In 30 minutes I covered 2.16 miles. Okay, I was pushing it. 

That put my Friday total at 4.78 miles. I can do my standard 5.20 mile Saturday walk, and I can add a bit to make 10 miles in the week on the tracker. Then I won't have to continually look at a tracker that say I met the goal n-1 out of n weeks. 

 It's a motivational trick. It's dumb. But it works. 

 I guess the stupid motivational tricks aren't as stupid as they look.