Crush Your Goals With Daily Metrics

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Crush Your Goal With Daily Metrics

You successfully established a goal that will help you achieve the desired outcome, you set a timeline, and you chose the device to measure the activity towards the goal.

Congratulations! Now its time to analyze the results to see how you crushed your goal.

Hit Your Metrics & Crush Your Goal

As a salesperson, you make countless dials a day to hit your sales goal. If you don’t hit your sales goal at the end of the month, do you see a correlation to the amount of sales calls or meetings you held?

As a customer service agent, you answer the call quickly as a part of making the experience effortless for the customer. When there are long hold times, do you notice the customer may be a little less tolerable than preferred?

As a manager, you monitor these numbers to track the success of your team to ultimately improve and support the best customer experience. When the numbers don’t match your ideal goals, do you see impact to the customer experience metric?

Our personal behaviors are just like our business habits. Our daily data will help keep us in line to our long term objective.

Learning Experience

As a healthy individual, you track your steps, calories, heartbeat, and laps in the pool to achieve your desired outcome.

  • Did you meet the goal consistently?

  • What tactics did you find most effective?

  • What areas can you improve for next time?

  • Does the short term goal line up to final objective?

When I successfully burn over 2200 calories a day, I expect it will help with my ultimate objective to have a healthy balance of muscle quality. When you are able to see daily success, it makes the goal seem more achievable vs. setting goal to improve muscle quality.

I now introduce the SKULPT 

Forget about weight and BMI. Focus on quality of your muscle. We are all different. Let’s embrace the differences and work towards our own personal health goals. I have not tried this device yet, but am really excited. I don’t care about what food I eat. I want to eat whatever. I want to be active and healthy. There is a balance.

What daily goal did you set to help with long term objective? I would love to hear from you.

Yours Truly

ThePukkaPanda

Choose Your Wearable With This Personal Shopping Guide

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Device Personal Shopper: At Your Service

Now that you have set your goal, established a timeline, you are ready to choose the device that will help you effectively hit your goal - balance fitness with fashion and communications.

The wearables market expands to different categories: Apparels & Textiles, Devices (mainly conventional technology), and Allied Subjects (typically carried, not worn). This post will focus specifically on devices that enable you to track your movement through apps and connection to  phone or pc. You may need to use a few devices if the wearable does not have an option for your activity. I suggest choosing one application or wearable to be the source of truth for your data metrics.

My original 6 device comparison expanded to 33… In a previous post, I shared that limiting customer choice increases sales by 600%. The Paradox of Choice. People have a hard time making a choice when there are too many options. The magic number for optimum choice is between 1 and 6.

One of the methods I shared to limit choice is through ‘Personal Service’. I was your Personal Shopper to limit the wearables into categories that makes sense to your lifestyle: Fashion, Fitness, or Both. Hopefully this helps make it easier for you to choose the right device.

My favorites in each category as shown in flowchart:

  • Fashion: Mica Smart Bracelet for Women & Michael Bastian for Ben
  • Swimming w/ Screen Status: Garmin Vivo Active
  • Swimming w/ No Status: Withings Activite
  • Keep it Simple: Mira Bracelet for Women & FitBit Charge for Men
  • Heart Rate: FitBit Surge - *note devices in swimming and communication columns may also monitor heart rate. This column is strictly for devices that do NOT have communication capabilities.
  • iOS and/or Android: Apple iWatch
  • Android Specific: Samsung Gear S

 Which is your favorite? What will you choose to track your goal?

Yours Truly

ThePukkaPanda

Next Step: Beat Personal Goals With A Set Time For Your Wearables

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Set your Timeline

At work, we use a tool called Halogen to track our quarterly goals. There is a process to enter them, review with your team and manager, and rate them… Personal goals are no different than business goals; however, you are your own boss. You pick the timeline that will make your goal achievable. Set yourself up for success.

Since you may not want to be married to your wearables, it will be okay to stop wearing it, or choose to continue once the time is up and you start your next goal. It is a decision to make at the time you choose.

This is step two of four. Catch up to the series: 

Device Dilemma

I admit, I am not likely to wear a Nike Fuel band or this Fit Bit for the rest of my life. Actually, I only wore the Fit Bit for one week to track my sleep patterns. When it told me I only slept 2 hours with 250+ minutes of being restless and 8 hours in bed, I began to wonder why I sleep so poorly…

Is there something wrong with me? I changed different variables of caffeine, wine, and exercise without ever getting more than 3 and half hours of sleep each night out of consistent 7-8 hours in bed.

Level Set

One night I borrowed my boyfriends newer version of the Fit Bit to sleep one night since his kept saying 6 hours… I admired his ability to have quality sleep. Well, his Fit Bit said I slept 6 hours! I wore my Fit Bit for a only a few more days. Since I started to wear it to see how well I slept, my Fit Bit time was up. The problem is that I still don’t know which one was right… nor did I establish a goal and set timeline BEFORE I started wearing the device.

On a positive Pollyanna note, my challenge with the Nike Fuel Band was keeping it charged - the Fit Bit has nice push notifications on my iPhone and emails to inform me the battery is running low. They have orchestrated their customer journey to help them use the product more effectively.

Take Control

I have successfully established my Key Performance Indicator of burning more than 2200 calories per day. It is an achievable daily goal. If I burn over 2200 calories per day combined with a normal diet as suggested on the food labels, there will be positive results. Of course, it needs to be done consistently for a long enough period of time.

I will commit to use the same wearable to track my goal for 1 month. This series of posts is specific to taking control of your wearables. In the end, eating right and consistent exercise need to be a way of life. Set goals that can remain as habits after your time is up.

I would love to hear your feedback and experience with setting time frames for personal goals. 

Stay tuned for the next post reviews on several wearables and my pick. 

Yours Truly,

ThePukkaPanda

My personal goal was to complete the race as it was my first triathlon and second race. My finish time was 7:14:46, ranking 91 out of 125. Next race I will set a new goal.

My personal goal was to complete the race as it was my first triathlon and second race. My finish time was 7:14:46, ranking 91 out of 125. Next race I will set a new goal.

Mixed Up In Wearables? Your First Step To Getting Them Right

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Establish Key Performance Indicators

I am prepared to take control of my wearables instead of wasting money and watching them collect dust. The first of four steps is to ‘Establish Your Key Performance Indicator(s)’. You will notice that each of the steps can apply to your personal wearable devices and business initiatives.

Read the intro to this 4 step guidance, Lost In Your Wearables And Devices.

We all know, ‘What Gets Measured Gets Managed’ unless you measure it without a goal and end up just watching some silly numbers with no meaning.

Maintain Your Focus

Establish your KEY initiatives related to your area of focus. Don’t get stuck in the weeds or try to juggle too many at once. If so, you may lose focus or give up entirely. Look at the details when you want to plan tactics to meet the KPI and analyze how and why you are seeing certain results.

Small Rolls Up to Big

Start small and work towards the greater goal. It is easier to stay motivated on a daily basis while you crush your targets. As you achieve your small goals, you will better understand what to target for long term objectives. 

Based on the short time that I wore my Fit Bit, I typically burn about 1800 calories based on my weight, height, and age. It automatically gives me 1259 calories per day, so 10K steps per day and basic activity adds around 500 calories. On a day that I attended two pilates classes (which are not aerobic…), my Fit Bit said 2200 calories. My KPI needs to stretch my “Standard” activity levels so I can continue eating pizza.

Since this post series is about wearables, my KPI is to ‘Burn over 2200 calories per day’.

Create The Tactics

In order to meet your target KPI, you need to come up with an action plan. What tactics will you use to hit the target?

My tactics to burn over 2200 calories per day:

  • Walk over 10K steps

  • Take the stairs at work (7th floor)

  • Walk one subway station further

  • Physically express my love

  • Exercise

Now that I shared my KPI to improve the effectiveness of my wearables, what is yours? I would love to hear from you.

If you are having a challenge, check out a few sources for goal setting

http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/09/29/10-things-you-should-know-about-goals/

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-Personal-Goals

Stay tuned for the next post with step 2 of 4 to help you take control of your wearables.

Yours Truly,

ThePukkaPanda

Lost In Your Wearables And Devices

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For a work health program, I released all the personal data about my blood, weight, and fat to support lower healthcare costs. Anything for a free Fit Bit, right? Not exactly, I actually just wanted to know my fat percentage.

I got to add my Fit Bit on the shelf with the other wearables. I could not even get rid of my Nike Fuelband at my stoop sale. My iPhone tracks my steps and a million other activities if I choose. I use RunKeeper to track running, biking, and swimming patterns. This Fit Bit is just another device for me to either forget to charge or lose it all together.

That was it! I stopped using the Nike Fuelband because I forgot to charge it one day so all my metrics were off.  The data was now bad. You can’t use bad data to track an initiative. In all reality, there is no motivation since I am an active person in general and don’t have problems with my ability to take steps.

Fast forward a few months. My boyfriend bought the new version of the Fit Bit so I shared my reasons why I had yet another device collecting dust on the dresser, followed by saying  “I should write a post on why wearables are not good for type A personalities…” Or, the alternative positive spin is "to determine how type A folks can get the best results out of wearables".

Too many devices, which to choose, which to use...  The same problem exists in a business environment. We need to choose the right application or tool to track our defined initiative. Lucky for us, it is normally someone’s job to manage the server so charging is likely not a problem.

I have been slacking in the exercise department since the Half Ironman last August. Since writing something down increases likelihood to achieve goals by 42% and sharing with others by 75%, I will share my own journey of 4 steps to figure out how to best use my wearables. 

Hint: I may need to get a new one to meet my goals. Stay tuned for the post on choosing the device to track your progress. 

Thanks in advance! :) Did I say I was a bit competitive too? I bet if you share your journey along with me, we will both succeed. 

Which wearables and tracking devices do you use? What is your strategy?

Truly Yours,

ThePukkaPanda