Lessons on motivation from Fitbit

I have been rationalizing away my eating and exercise habits for several years with no real results. While I value good health and appearance, motivation to do the things I know to do has been lacking. The study of motivation finds that knowledge of what is right and the value of doing something are not enough to motivate behavior. Another facet of what makes something motivational is what we call saliency of the behavior. However, saliency is quite a difficult notion to explain and understand. Simply taken, the saliency of something is the extent that thing has one's attention. However, there are many ways for something to become salient. For a behavior to be salient it generally must be seen as relevant, useful, interesting, enjoyable, not risky, comfortable, or so on.

Recently my daughter gave me a Fitbit for Father's Day. I had never asked for one. In fact I knew very little about it and was not thinking about changing my exercise and eating practices. Here is what immediately happened.

I found myself taking walks when I would rather do something else.
I took a little bit longer walks.
I found myself running in place or up and down the stairs before bedtime if I didn't have enough steps.

Why? One reason is that simply measuring my behavior made it more salient to me in several ways. Accountability for my behavior became greater. My daughter and other friends who had it asked to be fitbit friends, which mean we could see each other's steps. Here comes more visibility, competition and challenge, another source of saliency. Then my son comes to visit for the summer and my excitement about fitbit was contagious and he goes and buys one. More attention (saliency) on my exercise because our bond in a mutual practice led to greater commitment.

My son then says he really wanted fitbit to track what he eats, calorie intake. I had not thought of that but working with him on how to use fitbit in that way made tracking calories appealing. Now we both were obsessed with measuring everything we eat. Immediately my eating practices changed. I cut out many different foods or eating occasions because now I could see the health risks and trade-offs.

Without seeking a change in my healthcare behavior, fitbit caused exercising and better eating to be more salient to me. While the value of good health thru exercise and diet hasn't changed, behavior has changed because saliency has changed. This example clearly illustrates the role of fitbit in saliency and the role of saliency in motivation.

If you can grasp the role of saliency in motivation, you will be considerably more effective at getting others to change their behavior. Hopefully the example of fitbit in my life can enhance your understanding and thus your effectiveness.

At least it is

Thoughts on The Summit

My grandson Lewis recently attended a fantastic conference called Summit. It involved more than 30 hours of lecture and even more small group discussion. The Summit covered many thought provoking topics that define Christian World View, such as the Church, comparative religions, creation, truth, Consciousness, good and evil, bioethics, economics, marriage, God's will, among others. The theme is that "ideas have consequences". The key point is that our perspective determines what see, so what shapes our perspective?

While the blue dots in this pic are the same size, the one surrounded by smaller red dots lots bigger. Such it is when we try to make sense of things. Our perspective is shaped by the ideas around us that we have. Our perspectives can create for us illusions if we do not have them anchored in what is true.

The Summit is a fairly exhaustive survey of the key assumptions that Christian scholars and theologians have developed over many years. While I cannot discuss each one, I will offer my thoughts on the ones I think are fundamental and where I believe the mainstream apologists are either incomplete or misguided. Below is a blow by blow critique of a few of these with order not expressing extent of importance.

John Stonestreet offers a discussion on "How we lost our minds". This is the classical depiction of history from pre Modernism (500 - 1700 AD), Modernism (1700 - 1960's) and post modernism (since the 1960's). While this is a constructive view of cultural influences on sense-making, I have found that much of what is explained about us in the New Testament is really no different from us today. This suggests a lack of progress or decay across time and speaks to a stable trait in human kind. I call this the Carnal Mind. Its not something we have lost. It is something that came with the Fall and exist until redemption. I wrote about it in my book called "Stuck in Stinkin Thinkin".

J P Moreland deals with "Knowledge, truth, and the Christian mind." He has some really good things to say about truth. he defines it as "the correspondence or matching of thought with reality." In this sense one is highly dependent on their thought in discerning truth (ex. if everyone thinks something is green when it is really yellow, the truth is its green.). He separates truth from reality (the actual attributes of something). I am a little disappointed it what I think he is saying about absolute truth. He gives an epistemological notion, "when one is 100% certain that one's view is true and there is no possibility of being mistaken". I would define absolute truth as a reality that is independent of our personal thought.

Moreland also talks about identity and consciousness. He says two things (A and B) are identical, then what ever is true of A is true of B and there is nothing true of B that is not true of A. He then distinguishes identify from cause and effect and co-dependence. These are helpful when we make sense of our identity in Christ. Moreland says our consciousness has 5 facets: feeling, thinking, choosing, beliefs, and needs. This is interesting because he adds two facets to what science says is our psychology (mind, emotion, and will). I do take exception to the fact he noted will as "free will". I have covered this ad nauseum. He then defines soul as our consciousness. I like this and it aligns with my definition of soul, anything in our self that cannot be discovered by a physical examination. I am now thinking why identity is not one of our consciousness facets. Good thing to reflect on.

 Greg Koukl discusses evil and suffering and the goodness of God. He positions this topic that for mankind, belief in God is kind of a Sophie's Dilemma, the best of two not so great options. I found this to be a major problem in our society where people are "evaluating" to choose Christ as whether its the best of many options. Paul found this in his ministries as ofetn he was met with philosophical debate. Koukl then makes some good points about evil and then some omissions I feel could be helpful. He first says "evil is something but its not some thing" (cute). The point is that evil is a reality. It has power and consequences. However, it is not a thing, but rather the absence of something, namely God. "Evil is where goodness is missing." So, if evil is not some thing, it was not created and not an explanation for is existence. Thus, it is error to say God created evil. I would have added to Koukl's presentation some thoughts about how we determine if something is "good". Basically, I would set forth the assumption (based on Scripture) that good is only "what is from God." The typical way we "determine truth" about good and evil is how it affects us or someone else based on our crtiteria. In other words, the worldly (carnal) perspective of "good" is circumstantially based.

Scott Waller discussed Economics. All I can get from the notes is his discussion of the impact of debt. This is disappointing in that there is a classic perspective about the intersection of Christianity and the free markets that young peeps really need to discuss. Within this discussion should be the role of various institutions in meeting societies needs (I discuss this in blog on purpose of business). In section on evil, Koukl claims God has given the institutions of family church and government to "lessen the impact of evil in the world." This is an interesting point in that evil is defined as a God void. I am not sure how these address evil. Institutions can address human needs (not evil), but there are others, such as for profit businesses based on economic forces, that God has ordained to meet human needs. of course, corruption hits all institutions and flaws their mission to meet human needs.

Jeff Myers includes some discussions on Leadership and being strategic. This is an area I have spend years studying and developing thought so i was naturally curious at his approach. I was fairly disappointed. He stated some myths about goals, which I found to be incomplete and actually incorrect. being strategic does not require goals. He states that being strategic is "organizing your life around God's plan." This causes people to keep searching for "what is God's plan for my life" and generally engenders guilt and frustration as we seldom can hone in on such a plan. I find being strategic is being committed to principles aligned with the truth that leads to success. Holding every decision captive to those principles in the moments we have to make them (decisions). I have found that being strategic is faithfully playing out what God put in us, without seeking the security or acceptance of the world.

One thing I found that was missing that I believe is fundamental to all sense-making about God and our relationship with Him - The Sovereignty of God was Collaborative destiny. This distinction has separated Christians throughout the Ages. An understanding of where a core assumption falls along that continuum has a significant impact on how an individual makes sense of most everything else.

I suspect many, if not all, of these scholars and I generally do not differ on the substance as much as how we choose to explain it and what we choose to emphasize. I found some great stuff that will be helpful to Lewis as he matures in his faith. However, I found a few spots I would love to have a shot at with him :-)