Comments on: Fun With Data & Goal-Setting

By: llong

llong — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 23:48:42 +0000

Are you able to get member data? I’d love to see stats on how many goals people have on their lists, how many they have accomplished, how many they have given up on, and who has the most of these categories!

By the way, I’ve been a 43things member for about 6 years.

By: Danuta Electra

Danuta Electra — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 20:23:06 +0000

It is interesting to see that write a book is te least achieved goal. Do people set up subgoals to assist them with these tasks? For instance, you write there are goals we complete but do view as goals, such as graduating from school or college. These goals are long commitment and complex to achieve. The reasons why we achieve them are structural. Firstly, society creates a structure where people are required to complete these goals: there are external expectations and supports. Secondly, school and college students are bonded into cohort groups, and the closer these cohorts, and more driven and talented a cohort, the more likely the cohort is to succeed. Finally, these achievements are broken down into small, achievable subgoals, such as complete grade 5, and from that, complete algebra 1, and even more refined than that, complete algebra quiz on Tuesday. Do you think that the real problem with large goals is that people do not create the structures necessary to complete them? Ta 😀

By: Gail

Gail — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 20:18:33 +0000

There is a popular novel writing goal on 43 Things that is often achieved. The wording changes annually and amongst goal setters but it is in effect one goal and that is win NaNoWriMo.

This stands for National Novel Writing Month and that is November each year. To win one must complete a 50000 word novel within the month.

If all the NaNoWriMo goals were combined into one for charting purposes it is likely that goal would be amongst the achieved rather than not achieved goals.

By: martha

martha — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:18:23 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Emily. I know, we should all send them email to encourage them to get going! And to the Frank Sinatra guy (or gal) too!

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:09:18 +0000

Fantastic post!

I can’t believe 30,000 people want to write a book and another 10,000 want to write a novel. Think of all the untapped potential! The empty library shelves!

By: Fun With 43 Things Data | The Robot Co-op

Fun With 43 Things Data | The Robot Co-op — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:17:23 +0000

[…] http://martharotter.com/blog/index.php/2011/08/fun-with-data-goal-setting/ […]

By: martha

martha — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:52:28 +0000

Ha, thanks Jodi 🙂 Glad you enjoyed it, it was really fun to look at the data and find the interesting observations. Will be helpful for the other project as well, but considering playing with their API to see if I can connect frequency of updates to success rates or something useful like that.

By: Jodi Schneider

Jodi Schneider — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 17:21:20 +0000

Thanks for this — really interesting to see the analysis, as well as hear how you did it. And of course, hear your wisdom on goalsetting, Martha. 🙂

By: martha

martha — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:06:31 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Dominykas. I updated the post to include images of the charts as well, hope that lets you see the content better. Thanks for reading.

By: Dominykas

Dominykas — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 12:04:28 +0000

Would have liked to see the actual content – highcharts fails on my browser (Android with faked Safari UA string)