The Science Behind Reaching My IRL Half Marathon Goal

I recently achieved a goal I had set for myself - completing my first IRL half marathon. It was a goal I had thought about for a few years. The pandemic accelerated my focus on this as setting goals and making progress towards achieving them kept me focused on the things I could control when there was so much out of my hands.

While there were moments when I was ready to abandon training (especially on those cold winter days), my motivation came from a couple of the 21 neuroscience-based principles that we lean on in our work?at Bond, when we’re designing customer engagement programs: Goal Commitment and Progress Feedback.

As human beings, we have a strong drive for our actions to be consistent with our declared commitments. Commitment is a critical success factor in achieving our goals?and it was critical for me on this journey. When we are truly committed to a goal, we are more motivated to achieve it and one of the most powerful ways to achieve a Goal, is to declare it publicly. In my case, I shared my goal with others – as a result, their encouragement, check-ins and awareness of my goal motivated me to follow through.

Meanwhile, progress feedback mechanics fueled my motivation as well.?Cues that acknowledged my progress, both during my training as well as during the run, gave me a sense for what I had achieved so far and also my distance to go. (And we know what the science tells us about motivation – our motivation to achieve our goal increases, as we get closer to it.)

And on the day of the race, the nudges in the form of encouragement from family, friends, event volunteers and Toronto residents along the way brought me the rest of the way. Thank you to my colleagues at Bond, my family, and friends.

To learn more about these principles and about Bond’s design frameworks more broadly, please feel free to reach out to me. #21designprinciples #goalcommitment #progressfeedback #loyaltymechanics #createabond