I have long held that that which you measure you will improve. This seems to be true regardless of whether or not you make an extra effort to improve the thing you are measuring.
That is, just the act of measuring something seems to automatically get you to take steps to improvement.
So if you want to lose weight, hop on the scale every morning. If you want to save money calculate your Net Worth every month. If you want to read more, record the number of books you have read this year so far (and update the record weekly).
Another example of this comes from a recent Hydro One study where consumers are given monitoring devices that let them track their hydro usage in realtime. The result? Given a way to measure their usage people used less electricity:
“The bottom line is that this study — the largest ever conducted in Canada – found an average 7 to 10 per cent reduction in electricity use over the course of a year, when compared to the same months and seaons in the previous year. This finding supports past studies, including one out of Oxford Unversity, that came to similar conclusions.”