Are you proactively tracking your progress along the way? Your progress in your personal and business world. It’s important to be able to track improvements as you go. If you are someone who hasn’t developed the good and healthy habits of productivity, you need to really kind of put on some virtual training wheels in the effort to begin to get momentum for the things you want to accomplish.
Do you know what your actual goals are and do you know how to clarify them?
You need to really dig deep to get clarity. Set yourself up and plan for success.
Have you done the pre-work for your goal with the end in mind?
Meaning have you done homework on what the goal is and created a blueprint for how you are going to arrive at the finish line. You need to be as clear as you can so that you can check things off along the way. Of course, there will be a great many things that you have no idea about and that’s the fun part, but if you can set aside as many of the known pieces of the puzzle as you can you will feel much better tracking your improvements.
Do you know what actionable steps you need to take to get to your goals or is it uncharted waters?
Creating a blueprint of what your goals are is super helpful because then you have an idea of what needs to be done. If you have never done something that’s ok too. Research, research, research. The research is a big action.
Have you already begun your goal?
If you are already working towards your goal you need to stop and go back to the very beginning. To track your improvements you need to do a complete rewind and recap what you have done already. Write down all of the actions thus far. You can’t know where to go if you don’t know where you have been.
Do you know what your objectives are for a set time period?
When you have new goals there will be many things that you can’t predict, but creating a game plan on how to go about reaching them will go a long way. Write down as many actionable steps as you can. Things that you may already know or believe you may. You can edit them as you go. Set a time to accomplish a goal. If you don’t it’s just going to end up wishful thinking.
Have you written down your week’s schedule?
Your personal life, business life, and your goals in life should be written down in calendar form to accomplish them. Figure out what you want to accomplish in a given day so that it’s clear for the purposes of tracking your improvements.
Do you know how to manage your time?
Time management skills are crucial for goal setting and achieving. I used to suck at time management and that was a big downfall. Luckily I have learned how to manage my time way more in the past few years. A great way to manage your time is to recognize the time-wasting behavior that you currently have. Do you find yourself browsing your phone and internet a lot unnecessarily?
Do you know how to evaluate yourself?
Reflect on each day, week, month’s accomplishments (at the end of each one of course) so that you can check off what you have done. This will go a long way towards tracking improvements.
How do you measure your progress?
For the items that are actionable, you can check them off your calendar. Write down as many things that are a task. Even if you need to do research on how to accomplish your goals. Set it as a to-do on your calendar. You can put it on there to research daily or several times per week. Then at the end of that time period, you can check it off. That will clearly show that you are or are not progressing.
How did you do today?
Look at the calendar at the end of each day. Did you check everything off? Most of it? Don’t beat yourself up if you fell short, just work harder tomorrow. The important thing is to visibly see your path.
Have you made a list of your known distractions, commitments, and responsibilities that may take you away from progressing on your goals?
These are very important because if you already know what they are it will help you forecast your plan of action. Sometimes there are daily routines that need to happen, so set up a time for working on your goal before or after the commitments.
Conclusion
Self-evaluation. Weekly, monthly, yearly check-in list. You have to build habits to increase and maintain your motivation to be able to track improvements.
