LEARNING HOW TO ASSESS YOUR OWN PROGRESS WITH GOALS // How, When & Why You Need to Track

In order to accomplish something, we need to have a goal. And in order to know if we're getting anywhere with that goal, we need to be assessing the progress along the way. So it never matters what your goal is, but you do need a way to track it. And we know that when we track progress, when we track how we're doing with our goals, we're more likely to achieve them and make progress instead of just setting a goal and seeing what happens. We know from studies tracking your goals, whatever they are, however you decide to track them and assess your progress is going to make it more likely that you're actually going to make progress and get closer to achieving them. This is a super simple process and there's two basic steps to figuring out how you're going to assess your own goals or whatever you're working on. The first is to decide how you're going to track what you're trying to accomplish. And the second is to decide when you're going to be tracking what you're trying to accomplish. So we'll break down the when first and then we'll get into the how. But they work together. And you might do the how before the when based on what you're doing, but the when is, are you going to be tracking daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly? The nuance to this is if you're tracking something every day or maybe even every week, depending on your personality, that might be too much for you. You have to be able to commit to and sustain how you're assessing your progress. So if tracking something daily isn't sustainable for you, stretch it out to weekly or monthly, don't overdo it because then you're not going to track it and you're going to get frustrated after a couple weeks and then it's not going to do anything for you. So. So if tracking something daily or weekly is too much, stretch it out. And the converse of that is if you're tracking something yearly or quarterly and there's too much space in between the times where you're assessing your progress, you might lose momentum. You might not be seeing enough of your efforts to hold yourself accountable to maybe what you're not doing, but also to recognize and celebrate the wins along the way. So, so you have to know your personality. There needs to be some self awareness. You need to know based on whatever your goal is, if it's something you need to track every day or every year or somewhere in between. A lot of people who are trying to lose weight, they'll weigh themselves once a week or once a month, but they'll log their food every day for maybe a month to get a good sense of what they're doing, or they'll track their workouts every day. So if your goal is to lose weight, there are some things that you could be tracking daily, and there are some things that you could maybe be tracking weekly or monthly or quarterly based on what you're doing to lose the weight. Just like if you're trying to make more money or have better relationships, you could be tracking the data weekly or monthly, but you could also be tracking how you're feeling. So you have to know what you're working on to figure out the when and the how. And the how is exactly that how you're going to track what you're working on, what your goal is? So you have your big goal and you have a sense of your own personality and what works for you in regards to when you might want to be tracking these things? Now it's the how. Are you going to use a checklist every day, every week, every month? Are you going to print out calendar where you can mark off data? Are you going to write more? Are you more of a creative brain where asking yourself questions like, how did I feel about the past month? How am I feeling about my efforts? And journaling more about progress? Tracking your progress doesn't necessarily mean only writing numbers down or the data behind setting a goal. It also has a lot to do with how we're feeling about ourselves and our life and our progress along the way. So don't miss that part. Again, figure out what works for you. Some people are super analytical and they need the numbers and the data points and the reference points, points, and that's okay. That's what works for them. But if that has never worked for you, don't discount the idea that you might need to journal more, that you might, at the end of the week, need to sit down for 10 minutes and journal about how you're feeling about your goals, what you accomplished, the people that you've connected with, or the things that you've learned that week. Think about the questions that you need to ask yourself to decide if you're making progress towards what you're working on. Don't just think of tracking and assessing your progress in terms of numbers. It can also be in terms of feelings and words. We've also used things like rating scales, 0 to 10, and it's more subjective. Zero could mean I'm not doing anything, I'm not making progress, I don't feel great, whatever the zero means and then 10 could mean things are perfect, they're fantastic, I'm making progress or I hit that goal. So if you're going to use a rating scale, decide what that looks like so that it's consistent. Every time you mark a number on that scale or that you acknowledge on that rating scale how you're feeling or whatever you're assessing. Just make things consistent for yourself. Decide the how, how you're going to do it. Are you going to use calendars? You're going to write it down, you're going to use a notebook, are you going to journal and decide the when? How frequently are you going to be assessing your progress based on your goal, but assessing your progress along the way of whatever you're trying to work on is going to increase the likelihood that you will reach your goal or that you will make progress toward it anytime we're left to wing it, or we set a goal and we have no way of assessing how we're doing along the way. We. We don't know how we're doing along the way. So then we can't celebrate what we're doing well, and we can't hold ourselves accountable to maybe some things that we need to learn or mistakes that we're making or things that we need to hold ourselves accountable to that are going to help us shift some things and make more progress. You know yourself, you know your personality, you know your lifestyle. You have to do what works best for you. But assessing your progress is going to increase the likelihood that you're going to feel overall satisfaction and happiness with your life because you're going to hold yourself accountable and you're going to know how you're doing along the way based on whatever you're trying to accomplish. Here's a bonus for you. If you've never tracked a goal yourself, maybe you go to the doctor and they track your blood pressure and your weight and every time you go for a check in. But if you have never tracked your own progress towards something, if you've never sat down and figured out when and how, you're going to keep an eye on yourself and assess your progress toward whatever you're working on, here's something that I would love for you to try to get your brain working in a way where you're holding yourself accountable and you're recognizing how well you're doing along the way. And because you're having more involvement with assessing your own progress, I want you to list out the areas of your life that I tend to use with my clients, and you can make this work for you. But here's what I do with my clients. Career, financial, physical health, emotional, mental health, mindset, growth and learning, relationships and leisure time, free time, how you spend your days. And then depending on your lifestyle, you can add spiritual or religious use, at least those seven. The career, financial, physical health, emotional, mental health, mindset, growth and learning, relationships and leisure. And you list those out, and then you write 0 to 10 next to all of them, and you decide what 0 means. Zero might mean it totally sucks. You feel terrible about it. It needs a lot of improvement, whatever it means. And 10 could mean it's perfect. It doesn't need any work. You love where you're at, whatever it means for you. So now you have the areas of your life listed out, and next to each one, you have the rating scale,012 all the way to 10. And then go through and figure out and assess how you feel. Or based on your rating scale, mark off a number next to each of those seven or eight. If you're using that spiritual, religious, connectedness category, mark off next to each one how you're feeling, how you're rating that. Then you can go and see, hey, these few numbers are really low in these categories. These are some things that maybe I want to put some focus on or I need to work on. These are some things that are going really well. Go me. How do I celebrate them? How do I use them to my advantage? But if you've never assessed your own progress, doing something like this can get the ball rolling. Then it can also help you set goals and figure out maybe if you're not even setting goals, what you need to work on or what you want to work on based on your own rating system. And then you can revisit it once a month or quarterly and see how you're feeling about all those different categories based on the goals that you set from your rating scales. So there is just a little bit of a bonus tactic that I tend to teach my clients to help them start to assess their own lives. And then they can assess progress and track progress along the way based on the goals they set from those different categories. But if you haven't been assessing your goals in some kind of way outside of maybe what your boss or your doctor or somebody else is doing for you, it's really important that this is something that you consider because it is going to increase the likelihood that you make progress because you're tracking it and you're keeping an eye on how you're doing. But assessing your progress and measuring how you're doing is going to allow you to have those additional benefits of overall good sense of well being, satisfaction in life, and overall happiness. When you learn to track and assess your progress along the way with whatever you are doing.