How Ranking Becomes Demotivating

I recently celebrated my one-year Peloton anniversary. 

Over those 52 weeks, I have completed over 700 “workouts,” a mix of cycling, strength training, yoga, stretching, and meditation. Since last June when I stepped up my dedication, I have averaged 300 minutes of exercise per week. I am in the best physical condition of my post-college (post-organized athletics) life.

I wrote previously about the approach to fitness pedagogy that infuses the Peloton platform, and how I think it successfully balances structure, differentiation, and motivation. Whether intentional or not, the company has created an atmosphere that is well-oriented around inviting people into the space, and then providing the support needed to stay there. 

While Peloton has been experiencing some well-publicized business strategy missteps, those problems are not a function of the product itself, as the platform has a remarkably low churn rate (the number of people leaving each month). Some of this is the fact that once you’ve invested in the bike, it feels foolish to abandon it, but speaking as someone with a history of treadmill, NordicTrack, and pilates reformer machines that become clothes racks in his household history, I think something more is at work.

For me, sticking with it for a year has been a combination of motivation and results. Knowing that I have over 150 consecutive days of activity, and being reminded of that by the interface makes me more likely to dosomething, even on the days where I might feel like doing nothing. 

But over time, what I’ve noticed is that the external motivation becomes less necessary, now having experienced the tangible benefits to doing some movement-related activity on a daily basis. It is increasingly a habit, a practice, similar to writing.[1]

This shift has happened because I’ve experienced the benefits of increased engagement, including improved fitness, better sleep, and an overall positive feeling that I’ve done something good for myself.

Here’s something that hasn’t helped in building my fitness practice: Ranking my progress against other Peloton users.

This has surprised me a little bit. I thought that I might enjoy my march up the bell curve of performance metrics on individual rides. In the beginning, it was humbling – though explicable – to see that my typical performance on a ride was around the 25^th to 35^th percentile of riders, with a peak of the 50^th percentile. I was confident I would see progress on this metric, and over time, I would be comfortably above the median ride after ride.

It’s not happening. While my average performance relative to the other riders has nudged up a bit, I am rarely above the median. 

After a year’s time, ranked next to others, my progress has been negligible. Despite that, I know that my progress has been quite tangible.

There’s a number of reasons how these two things are possible, and why they illustrate the limits of utilizing relative ranking as a measure of progress.

First, the other riders have not been standing still either. During a ride, the instructor will often give shoutouts to people doing milestone rides, and there’s people who have done 2500, even 3500 rides. At my current pace, I will cross that threshold in seven years. Clearly, lots of people had a head start on me, and there isn’t any reason to believe that I’ll catch up with them, even as I make progress of my own.

Second, there is a big, almost indistinguishable mass in the middle portions of the bell curve where I tend to live. Out of curiosity, after one ride in which I finished around the 45^th percentile, I scrolled up through the leaderboard to see how much harder I would’ve had to ride in order to make it to the median. As it turns out, there were riders with identical average output to mine that were at the median. In other words, two people with the same visible score could be 300 ranking places apart.

Third, I’m now riding amongst more experienced Pelotoners (Pelotonians? Pelotonites?). As I’ve ridden more, I’ve sought out longer, more rigorous rides as an increased challenge. 

If there were external stakes on how I ranked among riders, I would be seeking out the easiest rides, an doing shorter rides where I can sustain maximum effort for the duration. 

But doing this would likely result in slower progress for myself, even as my metrics relative to others on the same ride would look superior.

Peloton seems very cognizant of the danger of using these comparisons as motivation or the most meaningful metrics. We’re constantly counseled to stay true to our own journey, and focus on what we need to progress.

Maybe that sounds a little squishy, but in reality, it requires me to practice increased responsibility over my own choices as to what is meaningful and good for me in this particular space. It is a combination of being mindful about the process on a day-to-day basis, while defining the long-term goals that are most meaningful for myself.

I trust how all of this relates to how we use grades to rank students, and how this risks disincentivizing the kinds of behaviors that lead to learning. By deemphasizing ranking, I am encouraged to explore and even take risks by trying more challenging programs. 

While making each ride an outright competition against others may result in sporadoic superior peak performances as I push my limits, it’s much less likely to foster an atmosphere that makes this fitness practice not only sustainable, but enjoyable and nourishing. 

Long term, the benefits are clear. If learning and development is truly the goal of education, it strikes me that we should be thinking about our systems of evaluation along the same lines.