Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: How Progress Steadiness Affects Motivation

Rarely is the path to goal accomplishment perfectly smooth. Making progress on everyday goals is often unsteady, in that each unit of effort or time spent generates unequal results. In this research, we examine how progress steadiness affects motivation. Although unsteady goal progress is common in both work and personal pursuits, we suggest that goal pursuers find it discouraging. We hypothesize that even when goal progress is equal in amount and speed, unsteady (vs. steady) progress decreases people’s sense of accomplishment and motivation to continue, and increases quitting. Across a variety of goal domains, findings from vignette experiments, recall studies, and real-time achievement tasks support these hypotheses. We also explore the mediating psychological variables and identify how manipulations targeting expectations about progress steadiness and encouraging a more abstract view of progress can reduce the negative effects of unsteady progress.