Progress Monitoring

What it is

B. Harkin and colleagues pooled 138 experimental studies with 19,951 participants in Psychological Bulletin. Interventions that increased monitoring improved goal attainment. The effect was larger when outcomes were reported to someone or made public, and when progress was written down. The best-supported contrast is between progress reported to someone and progress kept private; the purely public condition rests on only three studies.

In effect

It suggests a way to share goals that helps rather than hurts: report progress rather than announce intentions. That fits with 2009 findings by Peter Gollwitzer and colleagues that identity intentions noticed by others were acted on less, and with 2020 findings by Howard Klein and colleagues that sharing with a higher-status person raised commitment.

What it does not say

It does not say announcing a goal always helps. Announcing an aspired identity is a different act from reporting progress, and the evidence on it points the other way.

It does not identify the best audience. The audience studies suggest status and how much you care about the listener's judgement matter.

---