It seems that everything pings these days, everything except the things that matter.

Browser alerts, desktop notifications, calendar alarms, a thousand apps with a thousand pings – they do it because it works… for them.

The fact that most pings are set up to be self serving doesn’t change the fact that the ping works. What needs to change is who the ping is working for, and the ping needs to work for us.

And yes, not all pings are self serving – I’m all for calendar notifications that help me live with integrity because showing up on time is good thing. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

The kind of ping I want to talk about is the message from your friend that says, “Hey, tomorrow’s Saturday – which ParkRun are we doing?”

Not “are we doing ParkRun” but rather “which ParkRun are we doing? (because tomorrow’s Saturday and that’s what we’ve agreed to do on Saturdays…)”

You have the opportunity to set up more of those kind of pings; the kind of ping that puts you on the hook in a community who believe what you believe; the kind of ping that creates a virtuous cycle of peer pressure that gets us all to where we want to go.

The ping is a powerful motivator, and you can make them work for you by finding the others who want to go where you want to go and then putting yourself on the hook.