Skin in the Game

This post was written by my student and fake CFO, Art Gilbert. If you’d like to be a guest writer, I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say! Please send me your thoughts at insideoutyoga@va.metrocast.net. For now, enjoy Art’s post!

For the past ten years, Susan has held the Plank Challenge every January. She does it because building her students’ core strength improves their yoga poses and transitions. Her hope is that after planking for a solid month, people will make planking a habit. The reward for completing the Challenge for the first nine years has been a free yoga class; in 2023, 60 students signed up and eight finished. 

This year, she tried a new approach. Participants had to kick in $10 up front, with the understanding that the total 2024 pot would be split among those who went the distance. If she had used that program last year with the same number of entrants and finishers, the winners would have received $75 for their ten dollar buy-in. So I liked the new plan--it sounded like easy money. 

But it turned out that having skin in the game, even just a small wager, dramatically changed peoples’ behavior. The completion rate soared from 13% in 2023 to 62% this year, with 39 people finishing the Challenge. The winners received a $16 payout. Not $75, but still a sweet 60% return on their $10 investment. The weekend after the Challenge ended, I saw the same force in effect at a Super Bowl party. People who picked squares in the Super Bowl betting board were way more interested in watching the game than the rest of us.

So the Plank Challenge is over for another year. Should I keep planking anyway? James Clear, in his wonderful book Atomic Habits, says that if you have a messy room, you can set a goal to tidy it up. Reaching the goal means you’ll have a clean room—for now. But if you keep the same bad habits, you’ll soon be surrounded by clutter. His take is that you should forget about goals and focus on building systems, i.e. processes that lead to results you want to achieve and maintain. He also speaks of the difference between outcome-based habits and identity-based habits. Picture two people resisting a cigarette. One says “No thanks, I’m trying to quit.” The other says “No thanks, I’m not a smoker.” Every Tuesday and Thursday I’m surrounded by people who identify as yogis. They show up, again and again. 

Now that the Plank Challenge is over, I may not have money at risk but I still have skin in the game. The “skin” is that planking improves my yoga experience, and yoga and exercise up my odds of being able to do the things I enjoy for a good while to come. Sorry, Susan, there are no five-minute forearm planks in my immediate future. But I’m still planking every day!