AU2017101549A4 - Personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid - Google Patents

Abstract

The disclosed personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid helps people to easily integrate key goal setting and attainment principles naturally into their daily lives. It uses visual representations to keep goal-setters informed about their progress and reward systems to keep goal-setters focused and motivated in the long-term attainment of personal goals. The aid also helps goal-setters disaggregate long-term goals into short-term and medium-term goals. The disclosed personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid is a made up of a substrate that can be affixed to a vertical surface using magnetic backing or non-permanent adhesive with a writable outer layer such that text or images written on the outer layer using a non-permanent marker can be a least substantially removed. The outer, writable surface is indelibly printed with a data table similar to the example shown in Figure 1 that sets up a structure for tracking the attainment of daily goals. The goal-setter indicates in each cell of the chart whether the goal has been achieved using removable, visual icons to indicate success or failure. The chart also scaffolds the task of setting and tracking of medium-term weekly goals, thereby breaking long-term goals into smaller milestones. Tracking goals through visual representations allows goal setters to easily monitor, assess and remedy their habitual behaviours. Goal setters can also set targets, learn the relationship between behaviours and outcomes, understand behaviours as part of a broader context, break goals into manageable steps and engage others as part of a support system. Reducing success or failure of short-term goals to their simplest possible form reduces the burden of maintaining a detailed written or numerical record, which frees the goal-setters' attention to focus on attaining their goals.

Description

PERSONAL GOAL SETTING, TRACKING AND MNEMONIC AID

People set a myriad of different goals for personal improvement that require daily attention and focus such as weight loss, fitness, mindfulness or quitting bad habits. The challenge in attaining these goals is to maintain improved daily habits over a long period of time. However, with busy schedules and divided attention, people often lose track of their goals and slip back into old habits.

Written or electronic diaries of daily achievements such as calorie counters, meal planners, weight trackers and workout programs attempt to solve this problem to some extent. These tools require the goal-setter to update written or numerical lots that require a certain amount of discipline to maintain. For many goal-setters, the additional burden of maintaining diaries and plans becomes ultimately self-defeating.

Also, written diaries do not provide an overall visual representation of the goal-setter's progress for trend analysis and reflection. Written diaries also make it difficult to engage family and friends as part of a broader support network.

Software solutions can partially overcome the limitations of written diaries through plotting data and sharing through social media. However, these applications can become lost or irksome amongst all of the other electronic apps vying for people's attention on phones, tablets and desktops. Conversely, some goal-setters find software solutions too technologically challenging or unnatural. Therefore, software solutions are not suitable for all types of goal-setters.

More importantly, both written and electronic diaries are hidden from view in ordinary life and require extra time and effort from the goal-setter to remember to write a diary entry or open the software to enter daily data. For many people, these tools for goal tracking soon become out of sight, out of mind.

To improve the likelihood of success, the personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid should be a directly visible and integrated part of the goal-setter's normal daily life, progress should be quickly ascertainable through visual inspection and the process for maintaining the record should be fun and engaging. Having a simple system that is readily visible and integrated into the daily routine as part of a reward system removes the barrier of remembering to enter data, motivates goal-setters to keep on track with their new daily habits and removes the burden of maintaining detailed notes or numerical data. Critically, this frees the mind of the goal-setter to focus on their goal rather than on maintaining a detailed diary.

For decades, the domestic fridge has been the 'information board' in homes around the world. It is used to post shopping lists, notes, children's art, calendars, key contact numbers and myriad other information. This is because the home fridge is one place that almost everyone in a household visits at least once a day. Therefore, the fridge also makes the ideal place for a personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid that can provide daily reminders without being overly intrusive in a goal-setter's life. However, other surfaces can be equally effective depending on the goal-setter's lifestyle such as walls, wardrobes and mirrors.

For this reason, our personal goal tracking and mnemonic aid is ideally made from a flexible magnetic substrate similar to the substrates used for flexible fridge magnets. However, other nonpermanent adhesive substrates are also possible for attaching the goal tracking aid to non-magnetic, vertical surfaces.

The outer surface of the personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid is an indelibly printed chart that provides the structure within which the goal-setter can track goal attainment in a visual format that is quickly and easily decipherable. The outer surface should be made of such a material that when written or drawn on by a non-permanent marker, the written text or drawn image can be at least substantially removed.

An example of a personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid is shown in Figure 1. In this example, seven vertical columns 1 correspond to the seven days of the week and an eighth vertical column 2 corresponds to a weekly goal. The rows in the example correspond to four consecutive weeks 3 across which two personal goals 4 are being tracked. In this case, those two goals are diet and exercise. However, any goals that require daily attention could replace these two examples.

Many variations of this template are possible depending on the number, type and duration of the personal goals. The template could chart goals over more or less than four weeks. There could be different goals inserted into the rows or there could be more or less than two goals. In addition, the template could be transposed such that the days of the week and weekly goals correspond to the horizontal rows, while the consecutive weeks and goals correspond to the vertical columns.

The chart is completed by the goal-setter according to the goal-setter's own success criteria. The goal-setter indicates in each cell of the chart whether the goal has been achieved or not on each day. The goal-setter could indicate success or failure in a variety of ways including using a non-permanent marker to draw an image or write text or using different coloured non-permanent markers to draw an image or write text. However, in the ideal version of the personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid, the goal-setter uses magnetic tokens or non-permanent adhesive stickers to indicate attainment 5 or failure 6 of the goal.

The tokens could take myriad different forms and might be customised by the goal-setter. However, the tokens used to indicate attainment and failure should be sufficiently different such that the goal-setter can quickly ascertain the overall pattern of behaviour. The design that indicates goal attainment should ideally provide positive feedback as part of a reward system such as a gold star or smiley face emoji. The design that indicates goal failure should be neutral or negative as part of a penalty system such as a red star or a grumpy face emoji.

Other than a binary system of attainment and failure, it would also be possible to have tokens or stickers that represent various gradations between these two extremes. It would also be possible to have multiple tokens to indicate either attainment or failure. For example, there may be many different smiling emoji token designs, all of which indicate goal attainment. Ideally, these tokens should be similar enough to each other and dissimilar enough from the tokens indicating failure to ensure that the goal-setter can easily observe behavioural patterns and trends at a glance.

While the tokens help goal-setters plot the attainment of daily, short-term goals, the Weekly Goal section of the chart helps goal-setters break their long-term goal into medium-term, weekly goals. In this section of the template, it is expected that goal-setters set up weekly milestones that need to be attained to stay on track towards attaining their overall long-term goal. This is done by writing the milestone in using a non-permanent marker 7. As the goal-setter reaches the end of each week, the goal-setter can also indicate whether this milestone has been attained or not by writing or drawing with a non-permanent marker or using a magnetic or non-permanent adhesive sticker 8. The goal-setter can then reflect on if the daily goals need to be adjusted to achieve the weekly milestone or alternatively whether or not the weekly milestones are realistic.

Plotting goal attainment in an easy-to-read visual format naturally incorporates key, goal setting strategies into the daily life of the goal-setter: 1. Removing the burden of maintaining detailed numerical or written records 2. Reducing goal attainment to its simplest possible form i.e. daily goals with binary options for success or failure. 3. Clearly identifying patterns of good and bad behaviour and in particular identifying the onset of bad behaviour or the need for remedial action. 4. Setting targets such as improving on the previous week, getting a certain number of attainment tokens in a row or beating a previous personal best. 5. Providing a semi-quantitative measure of behaviour versus outcomes so that if certain behaviour patterns are not achieving the desired outcomes then the behaviour patterns can be adjusted appropriately. 6. Contextualising momentary lapses in behaviour as a small part of a greater pattern of good behaviour so that the goal is not abandoned but instead returned to. 7. Gamifying the process of goal attainment through rewards and merit systems 8. Braking large goals into manageable steps.

Making the personal goal setting and attainment system openly accessible and visible: 1. Regularly prompts goal-setters to continue with their goals. 2. Reduces the burden of reminding oneself to complete the chart. 3. Engages close family members and friends for additional support, feedback and accountability.

In addition, the fact that charting the progress is a hand-on, tactile process helps to engage goal-setters and brings an element of childlike fun to the process.

Claims (4)

1. A personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid comprising of: a. a substrate in rectangular, circular, elliptical, polygonal or free-outline shape, that can be affixed to a vertical surface by magnets or adhesion or hooks and loop fasteners whereon the outer surface of the substrate is indelibly printed a table of seven vertical columns corresponding to the days of the week plus an eighth column for recording a weekly goal and one or more horizontal rows showing consecutive weeks where each row is subdivided into one or more horizontal rows corresponding to specific personal goals and b. an outer surface to display writing or images imparted thereto by a user, the writing or images when written by a non-permanent marker being at least substantially removable and c. a plurality of non-permanent adhesive labels or stickers or magnetic tokens with a plurality of designs that can be stuck on to and removed from the substrate within each cell of the table so as to indicate different levels of goal attainment.

2. A personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid as described in Claim 1 except in which the table is transposed to have seven horizontal rows corresponding to the days of the week and an eighth row corresponding to a weekly goal and one or more vertical columns representing consecutive weeks where each weekly vertical column may be subdivided into one or more vertical columns representing specific personal goals.

3. A personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid as described in Claims 1 or 2 on which the user uses a non-permanent marker to indicate different levels of goal attainment by drawing or writing instead of non-permanent adhesive labels or stickers or magnetic tokens.

4. A personal goal setting, tracking and mnemonic aid substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to the accompanying drawing.