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How does auto goal work?

Will it increase infinitely if I reach my everyday goal? I started with 5k on my new vivofit3 and after 3 weeks its already 14k and it getting hard to reach it every day =)
Is there a limit of goal steps or I shoud just turn auto goal off at some moment?
  • My experience is that with auto goal, for every day you reach the goal your device sets the goal a bit higher for the next day. Don't know if there is a limit, but I doubt it.
    Not sure whether it works the other way as well, ie lowers the goal if you don't reach it, but I guess it does.
    I stopped at around 16.000 steps and set a manual goal instead, made me a bit less stressed over reaching the goal each day :-)

    /S
  • Your goal will reduce if you miss. I also eventually set a manual goal for each day as it was getting out of hand.
  • Because I'm really nerdy and I couldn't find an answer anywhere I worked this out. There may be other nuances but basically from my data this is how the step goal works:

    When you beat the step goal:
    If your current goal is less 7,500 it multiplies the % you beat the goal by 0.25, and adds that to your current goal.
    e.g. goal=6472 actual=6703 =>3.6% over goal. This % is multiplied by 0.25
    So (3.6 x 0.25)=0.9% increase. Therefore tomorrows goal is 6472+0.9% or 6472+58=6530
    Below 7,500 increases max out at 6%/day
    Between 7,500 and 10,000 the % is multiplied by 0.15, while above 10,000 the % is multiplied by 0.05.
    Between 7,500 and 10,000 the increases maxes out at 4%/day, and above 10,000 its 2%
    At all ranges the minimum increase per day when you beat the goal is 0.5%

    When you miss the step goal it works as follows:
    First day you miss the % is multiplied by 0.05, if you miss consecutive days the factor is 0.35. Below 10,000 the max decrease is 5%/day while above 10,000 the max 7.5%

    Hope someone out there finds this interesting... was bugging me for a while.
    Things that seem to cause outlying goal changes seem to be no internet sync, or zero steps in a day.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 3 years ago in reply to Stephen.peter.martin

    I just logged in to say that I found this interesting!!!

    You Nerd. Haha. ;-)

  • I never comment, but yes..... this was worth commenting on! Well done you Thumbsup tone5

  • Its very interesting, so it means that the algorithm doesn't look at trend at all. I thought that if your progress is slowing down then it stops increasing your goals or even lowering.

    • Hey Nerd (and as an IT professional I really do mean that with all due respect!): Great analysis! This has also been bugging me for quite some time and I was very happy to find that someone had really dug in to determine the methodology. I was actually hoping that Garmin had it designed such that the more fit one became, fewer steps were required to maintain that level of fitness--or to improve it. But your research indicates that they are instead using the carrot on the stick method of continuously pushing us adherents to further heights of glory. That works, too. Thanks for the excellent data and insight!
  • Well done. I always wondered about that. Is there a maximum?

  • Yes, there is a limit. The maximum auto goal value is 30k steps. I was the champion of Garmin Connect's 500k Weekly Steps Challenge in the first week of December 2018 and auto goal never surpassed 30k steps.

  • I need about an hour for 10k, I'd need a part-time job to do 30k XD At least there is a maximum, even if it's kind of crazy.

    Thanks for all the interesting info here Slight smile