Having good tracking and feedback leads to great progress.
I’ve noticed that people work really hard on tasks when it is very evident exactly how something can be changed or improved or if there is at least an illusion of such evidence.
In school, children are measured on a number of parameters, test scores, athletic performance, debate competitions etc. Improving those metrics are associated with success, so kids attempt to improve those metrics and they very often are successful.
People who trade shares on the stock market tend to increase their portfolio over time, adding money to the portfolio when they can. Few quite buying shares on the stock market, some invest passively, but most after starting to invest, keep investing. I am suggesting that this is also because there are numbers indicating the users success in the stock market and a somewhat evident path to success on the stock market.
Let’s consider a more negative example, gambling, people who take up gambling often continue despite knowing full well that they are losing a lot of money in the long run. Here again, there are metrics showing you exactly how well you’re performing and what strategies you may try to improve your chances at winning.
Another example in fitness, biking/running vs weight training, if you join a run club or biking club and go for a couple of events, you’re likely to continue going. Your gym membership on the other hand, is very easy to quit. Most users buy a gym membership at the start of a new year and quit before January is over. While there are those who quit running too, the likelihood is far greater for your weight training. Why is this? One answer is community and accountability, which is fine. But another reason is tracking and feedback. Fitness trackers are very good at recording your runs, your exact cadence, run power, heart rate, distance ran and various other metrics. This lets you keep track of your performance and helps you attempt to improve these numbers. If you did a very long run, but you didn’t know how far you’d managed to go, then it isn’t as interesting.
So I think people can thrive with good statistics and clearly evident pathways to improve their life. But this is almost entirely missing in adult life. There is no manual or handbook to live life. Nothing telling you what next step to take to advance your life. Most of the growth in a person’s life happens during School and University. Then growth stagnates. If this is because there are no clear success indicators, couldn’t we put those back in?