Can you really say how far you’ve come? Do you know what you’ve accomplished, exactly how much you’ve improved, and what you still need to work on? If not, you are probably not tracking your progress. Tracking your progress makes you more productive because you can clearly see what is working and what isn’t working. Tracking helps you stay in touch with your goals and then review your progress along the way. It helps you understand how one thing is furthering your productivity and another thing is hindering it. And, it keeps you motivated.
The Big Reasons To Track Your Progress
After you get your life goals in order, and know where you want to head, then you can and should start to track your progress. Without tracking, it’s hard to see how far you’ve come and how far you have to go, and it’s easy to lie to yourself, get lazy, and be unproductive.
In short, tracking keeps you accountable and increases your chances of success. When you measure how far you’ve come and how far you have to go, it becomes clear that failure is an option, which is a huge motivator to keep being productive and working on your goals.
When you can’t clearly see how far you’ve come or have to go, you don’t feel a sense of responsibility to get things done today because you can’t feel how far away things are or how much you’ve done.
Tracking your progress helps you make the changes you need to make. And, change is the only way to get to where you want to be. As the saying goes – If you keep doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting.
Every change that I made was because of my higher calling. – Angela Rye
5 Ways To Track Your Progress
1. Bullet Journal
Get a bullet journal and create trackers and spreads for everything you do. A bullet journal is a type of planner that helps you customize and organize your life in your own way. There is no template for you to follow or boxes to fill in, like in normal planners. Instead, you create spreads based around your life and your goals, which makes it like a planner, notebook, diary, and to-do list all in one.
You can keep track of anything that is important to you and you can do it in any way you want. For instance, if you are a blogger, you can keep track of your posts and how well they performed, helping you hone into what your audience is really looking for so you can create more relevant content – hence, be more productive!
You can also keep track of you often you spend quality time with your partner and get a reality check on how little or how much you nurture your relationship. This is a great way to realize if you need to create new relationship habits and what kind you need to create.
You can create charts, lists, visualize representations of progress, and anything else that you can come up with.
The downside to this is it takes a while to set up each month and week. And, you need to devote some time to writing in your bullet journal daily. But, for people who like journals, writing things down, and being organized, a bullet journal will make you feel productive just by writing in it.
Starting and maintaining a Bullet Journal has been one of the most positive changes that I’ve made in quite a while. With that being said, I dread the start of a new month because setting up monthly tracking charts is such a slog. pic.twitter.com/38e9NHrGze
— Nick Snyder (@ncksnydr) March 1, 2018
Need inspiration? Get on Instagram and check out all the bullet journal tracker ideas.
2. Diary
A daily diary – whether it be a food diary, financial diary, relationship diary, or personal diary, is a great way to note the progress you are making in your life.
You can keep track of things in your diary and then look back a week or two down the road and visually see how you have progressed or not progressed. It’s a great eye-opener. We often think that things are changing when they are not, and by being open and honest in your diary day-to-day, you can really see when things are still the same.
For instance, I once read an entry from three years prior. I realized that I was struggling with the same personal issue that I had been back then and, despite a lot of personal development, I hadn’t been able to tackle that area yet. It gave me some insight into what I needed to do to be more productive in that area of my life, and I was able to start making some headway.
3. Consult A Trusted Friend
We can’t always see in ourselves what other people see. So, if you are aiming to be more productive in your career, health, relationships, hobbies, or other things that your friends can help you dissect, then go ahead and ask them for their constructive criticism to help you see any blind spots you have may have. Then use their criticism to tweak your strategy and become more productive in that area.
4. Use A Visual Reference
If you want a visual reference of how far you’ve come, you can do that is a number of ways.
For instance, you can fill a jar with pennies that symbolize a certain measure for each penny. For instance, if you want to do a habit for 365 days, you can create a jar with 365 pennies. Then, simply move one penny over for each day. It’s a great way to see how far you have come and how far you still have to go, and it will definitely motivate you to keep going!
One great way to stay on track? Keep visual cues nearby. If you see your progress, you’re more likely maintain it. pic.twitter.com/YNcjwLCyoF
— State of Slim (@StateofSlim) April 26, 2016
You can also create a board and give yourself a gold star (or something similar) every time you complete a task. I saw someone doing this the other day and she said it was a huge motivator for her to stay productive in her home cleaning and organization.
5. Use Apps
There is an app for that. We’ve all heard that saying, and it’s true.
Whether you want to keep track of habits, financial progress, ovulation, calories, workouts, mileage, daily tasks, or anything else, you can find some sort of app to help you do so.
Two of the apps that I’ve had experience with are Goals on Track and Simpleology. They are both great in their own right for keeping track of progress and helping you move towards your goals. I plan to create reviews on this site about both of them and how they each have their own unique way of helping you see your progress and getting you to where you want to be. But, until then, I highly suggest you check them out and see if they may be right for you.
