Goodhart’s Law has been generalised to state. When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Although the background to Goodhart’s law is within economics. What can it teach us in the field of health and fitness? In this article, I look at how we have come to confuse measures with targets. What impact that has on our outcomes and why we so often fall into the trap.
I know a cyclist whose trackable measure of progress is the number of watts he produces on a bike. It began with an intention. Healthy, happy, and slim enough to fit back into clothes he likes. The narrative that goes with the measure is simple enough. Get on a bike more often, get fitter, lose weight, feel happy.
Only nowhere does it say you need to hit 300 watts to qualify as a happy healthy cyclist. The narrative and the measure do not fit. So we make them fit. We do that by conflating the measure and the target. Mixing our hard, objective measures with our subjective reality.
Fast forward 6 months. What would be the consequence of my cyclist friend throwing out 300 watts on a bike? It seems implausible that health, clothes sizes, and happiness would all be aligned for evermore provided the reading on the power meter says 300 watts.
To work with the story we tell ourselves and align it with the measures that we use to track our progress. We would do well to introduce soft measures that are as easy to track as money, weight, or miles per hour. Soft measures give us a chance to positively reinforce the actions that we would like to take towards our intent. Helping us to shape who we are and how we show up. Our intent, the experience we would like to create for ourselves then becomes as good as the question that we are trying to answer and the measures we use to help us answer it. The alternative is to hope that happiness is at the end of a rainbow.
Clouds and rain come with hope and rainbows. And when progress falters on our hard, objective measures, as it inevitably will. We get to decide what it means and for some, that will be a chance to negatively reinforce undesirable behaviour patterns. The martyrdom narrative, no pain, no gain, is as unhelpful as going easy on ourselves and choosing denial as a strategy. Despite telling yourself that you are useless because you keep quitting, quitting is the smart move, as all are avoidable behvaiour patterns.
It is hard to imagine that you will show up and do your best work if your intent and measure are not aligned. Hard objective measures are easy to fall for as they are simple, accessible, and relatable. But what if they don’t speak to you? The entrepreneur once distracted by profit who no longer recognises the business they built. A runner who started with the intent of feeling good is now wondering why they keep frantically checking their watch for progress on Strava. Feeling unmotivated? I doubt you’re apathetic, you just choose the wrong measure.
When we begin with a hard measure and conflate it with the outcome we seek, we begin in the middle. If we start with the experience we would like to create it gives us a chance to examine the narrative that we are working with and the outcome we seek. Measures can come and go, as we work with the question that we are trying to answer. Our intent, the experience that we seek to create, should drive the creative process until it makes sense to us, not the measure. If we allow a measure to drive how we experience the world we create questions like the one we started with. Will producing 300 watts on a bike make me happy?
Of course, the inflexibility of the measure may just be a tactic to ensure we remain closed off to possibility, a reflection of our thinking. When we are truly committed to change we show up, open and curious. The change we seek overrides the need to look assured. Besides what are we assured about? Our narrative, the data, decisions, and experiences we have created for ourselves? If hard measures are hard to take then soft measures can be hard to create. Begin and work with them, let the experiences that you want to create for yourself drive your iterations.
Here is an example of a soft measure I created.
On a scale of 1-5. Rate your experience of today’s activity as a positive reinforcement of your intent.
0: Not related
1: Couldn’t relate to the session. I can’t see how this will help.
2: Could somewhat relate. I’m not sure how this will help
3: Could relate. This could help.
4: Definitely relate. This does help
5: Loved it. This will definitely help
This particular scale was designed to encourage self-selected sessions that become increasingly affirmational over time. Building on what was working, iterating that which was not.
The world we experience is created, so go create. Make soft measures out of emojis, find out how you make your customers feel or kick off a weekly conversation with your kids by asking them. On a scale of 1-5, how much fun was it to be in our family this week?
I don’t mean to bring this conversation down but a bit of tough love can also be helpful. So, keep your hard measure, your objective reality in the background, and work with it, just don’t beat yourself up with it, or confuse it with the experience that you want to create for yourself.