Writing it down changes what you do

Psychologists who study behaviour have a long-standing annoyance. Ask people to record what they do, and what they do changes. Count your cigarettes and you smoke fewer. Note every snack and you snack less. For a researcher who just wants an accurate count, that's a measurement problem.

For anyone trying to change their own habits, it's the most useful problem in the field. That's especially true if your days tend to slip away without you noticing where they went.

Reactivity, in plain terms

The effect is called reactivity. In a 1999 review in Psychological Assessment, William Korotitsch and Rosemery Nelson-Gray summarised decades of self-monitoring research. When people record their own behaviour, the things they want more of tend to increase and the things they want less of tend to decrease, just from being written down.

They were careful about size. The effects are fairly small but reliable. Writing things down won't transform anyone. It does reliably nudge in the right direction, which is more than most productivity advice can claim.

What makes it stronger

The review also lists what tends to make reactivity bigger. Read it as a design brief:

• Record at the time. Recording close to the behaviour works better than reconstructing it later.
• Make the recording noticeable. Some studies found that a more conspicuous recording method produced bigger changes, though the evidence there is mixed.
• Set a clear goal. Reactivity grows when the change you want is spelled out.
• Get feedback. It grows again when the record leads to some kind of response.

Why the app asks out loud

Each item on that list maps to a decision in Whatcha Doing. The question comes while the last stretch of time is still fresh, not at the end of the day. It arrives with a pop you can hear, on purpose. Monday's plan supplies the goal. Sunday's report is the feedback.

It's also why the app asks instead of watching. A tracker that records your screen silently in the background measures you without you noticing, which is exactly what researchers do when they want to avoid reactivity. That's the right approach for a study. It's the wrong one if the change is the point.

Being watched tells someone else what you did. Writing it yourself changes what you do next.

Sources

• Korotitsch, W. J., & Nelson-Gray, R. O. (1999). An overview of self-monitoring research in assessment and treatment. Psychological Assessment, 11(4), 415–425.