Track Your Progress to a Better Life

You have taken the time to figure out where you want to go with your life, the steps needed to get there, and when you want to to reach each step.  You have also defined the Next Actions you need to take in order to get there, but how do you know where you stand at a particular time in your journey?  By tracking your progress!

There are many different ways to do this.  To name a few:

• Journal
• Spreadsheet
• Bank account
• Programs installed on your computer
• Web applications

Choose the one that works best for you and your destination.

Tracking your progress is an important part of your journey because it will show you where you are at any given time.  It will let you know whether you are going to hit your target date for each milestone, and whether your are ahead of or behind schedule.  This will give you the opportunity to change things if you find that you have fallen behind schedule.  I like to track my progress every week during my Weekly Review.

A couple of examples from my journey:

Productivity
Destination: I am a GTD Master (Black Belt)
Milestones: Hit the relevant points on the GTD Mastery 100
Next Action: Review the GTD Mastery 100 list to determine which points are relevant to my life, and to determine which ones I have already achieved. Complete!
Next Next Action: Prioritize the Mastery skills that I want/need to implement.  Kris from Fresh Focus...on Productivity! recently started a series on the Mastery skills that I will be commenting on as well.
Progress Tracking: I printed out the list, checked off what I am already doing and crossed out what isn't relevant to me.  As I complete each step, I simply check it off the list.

Health & Fitness
Destination: I weigh 180 lbs.
Milestones: I weigh 265 lbs. by August 1, 2008
Next Action: Schedule workouts on my Calendar for every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Complete!
Next Next Action:  Get to the gym!
Progress Tracking:  I use a program called VidaOne Health & Fitness.  I have been using it for a few years now, and I like the fact that I was able to install the program on my Treo with the Palm OS.  The program allows me to track my weight, my workouts, and my diet.  Since it is on my Treo, I can enter information just about anywhere, and then I get home it's a simple sync to get all of my data on my PC.

It doesn't matter what you choose to track your progress, just choose something!  Knowing where you are in your journey will help you stay on course.  If you can see at a given time that you are on schedule or ahead of schedule, it will be motivation to continue doing what you are doing.  However, if you are behind schedule or off course, regularly tracking your progress will help identify this so you can get on schedule or course.

Past posts in the A Better Life Series

1. What is Your Starting Point
2. What's Your Destination
3. Plot your Course to a Better Life
4. What Are Your Next Actions to a Better Life?

Comments

[Kris @ Fresh Focus]

Hello there! Thanks for the shout out.

Part of my motivation to do the series was that I wanted to take myself through it. I knew that if I promised my readers, then that promise would spill over to myself.

It is indeed a step in the right direction to have an intent to do something. But that intent must come to fruition by actions. Sometimes those are the hardest things of all to get going!