Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose
How the KingFit app for diabetes self-management education leverages the science of intrinsic motivation.
To often in the world of diabetes, we are witnessing companies use outdated methods of motivating patients to take action. Companies go into scary details on the “punishment” for not managing your health which in the case of diabetes could be losing a foot, going blind or living on dialysis. Other companies are offering cash rewards or giveaways for people who are willing to engage with their health plan.
It is no wonder so many people are unmotivated to take their prescriptions, follow-up with their provider, or eat healthy! The methods of extrinsic rewards and scare tactics have been proven to fall flat on long-term engagement.
Rewards are nice, and understanding the consequences of your poor health habits is helpful, but for long-term engagement with health plans we must switch our focus to helping our patients create intrinsic motivation.
In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink explains the three keys to creating intrinsic motivation.
- Autonomy: Our desire to be self directed.
- Mastery: The urge to get better skills.
- Purpose: The desire to do something that has meaning and is important.
Let’s start with autonomy. For most of the history of healthcare, patients have had little say in the care they received. Healthcare lacked autonomy. There are multiple initiatives today that are focused on putting the power back in the patient’s hands with the purpose of increasing patient autonomy. Eric Topol captures this innovative way of thinking in his book, The Patient Will See You Now.
In the case of diabetes self-management, or more specifically diabetes self-management education, mass amounts of patients are disengaged because they have no control over the education program structure, topics or timing.
At KingFit, our approach to diabetes self-management education is leveraging the science of autonomy by giving users the ability to consume the content when they want, how they want, and the ability select which topic they wish to start with first.
Outside of the proven new science of motivation, we leveraged methodology of innovative content platforms like Netflix and YouTube which are built on autonomy and have the user base to prove that it works.
Next in the equation we have mastery. When designing our diabetes education platform, we leveraged two key resources to create an experience that influences mastery.
In his book Mastery, Robert Greene states that the most important step to becoming a master at anything is an ideal apprenticeship. He breaks the ideal apprenticeship into three key phases.
- Deep Observation Phase
- Skills Acquisition Phase
- Creative-Active Phase
It is well known that patients are not spending a lot of time with their providers. When a patient is newly diagnosed with diabetes, they are initially set up for failure by not entering a deep observation phase where he or she can learn everything they need to know about well-managed diabetes.
Robert Greene explains that humans evolved with a super power that can be leveraged during the deep observation phase on the path to becoming a master at anything. This super power is mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons help us learn faster by watching other humans do something first. We believe that if someone newly diagnosed with diabetes “Netflix Binge Watches” our content from industry experts, they can leverage mirror neurons and save themselves a lot of stress and worry about their future.
The next two phases of an ideal apprenticeship include skills acquisition and the creative-active phase. Our certified diabetes educators do a great job in recommending basic techniques to practice and build skill as well as micro experiments in which the patient can be creative while taking action.
Combined, deep observation, skills acquisition and creative activity lead to mastery. Mastery in diabetes self-management leads to medication adherence, device engagement, and a lot less emergency room visits.
Unfortunately, most people don’t believe that they can master their health management. This is where Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset philosophy comes in to play. Carol proved that people live with two mindsets. People either have a fixed mindset (most people) or a growth mindset.
- Fixed Mindset: The talent I have today is who I am. I am limited in my ability to do certain things.
- Growth Mindset: I can learn any skill and become better with practice and patience.
Although it seems simple, this mindset shift is profound. In her experiments, Carol showed that this simple mindset transformed an entire school’s performance. Students performing the lowest in the state made the shift to believing they had the ability to improve and scored at the top of the state the following year.
The growth mindset is something that our educators hit on repeatedly in our application content. When someone is newly diagnosed with diabetes, one of the first things they need to hear is that their situation can improve and that they have the ability to improve it.
Finally, we have purpose.
In his famous TEDTalk turned book, Simon Sinek explains the golden circle of finding purpose. You MUST start with “why”. In our culture, we have been so focused on the “what” and “how” that we have forgotten the most important piece. In the case of diabetes self-management, the “what” is well managed diabetes and the “how” can be multiple actions but why?
The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard puts it like this,
“Our first step is to understand motivation’s root, motive, which means a reason for action. It’s the ‘why’ we do something. To develop a motive for action, our mind, with or without conscious guidance, filters through various thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and chooses from them a set of reasons to do or not do something. Our mind’s clarity on and commitment to that choice dictates our level of motivation. If we are clear and committed, we will feel high levels of motivation. If we are unclear or uncommitted, motivation will be low. From this process comes a simple axiom: The mother of motivation is choice. Our mind chose a reason for action, and it either committed to that choice or it did not, and thus we experience a high level of motivation or a low one.”
Helping patients identify a powerful “why” statement is key to long-term intrinsic motivation. In the KingFit app, our educators hit on the importance of a powerful “why” and users also receive powerful morning motivation that brings them back into that mindset on a regular basis. A powerful “why” gives diabetes management meaning and thus creates the final piece of the puzzle to intrinsic motivation which is purpose.
For too long we have been using outdated science when it comes to long-term motivation. This is creating non-adherence with medications, disengagement with health plans and unmanaged diabetes for millions of people. Unmanaged diabetes is costing the US Healthcare System over $300B every year.
It is time to leverage the new science of motivation. It is time to give the KingFit application to patients newly diagnosed with diabetes in addition to their medications, monitoring devices and provider support.
If you would like to know more about how you can partner with KingFit, please contact me at Miguel.johns@kingfit.io
Thanks for reading!
Miguel
