by
marcia on Jun 17, 2009 at 7:12 AM
One reason people don't accomplish their goals is that they get distracted and lose track of things that need to be done consistently in order to move forward. Maybe you have set a perfectly achievable goal, but without effectively tracking your goal and knowing your progress, you will get discouraged when the first obstacle gets in the way and eventually just give up.
So we need to discipline ourselves to keep it on track until it's accomplished. There are several ways to effectively track your goals.
1. Review your goals regularly, preferably daily
Keep yourself constantly reminded of your goals by reviewing them at a specific time each day. It can be first thing in the morning or just before going to sleep at night. Write down all your goals in a notebook, or store them on your computer. When you review them, envision how accomplishing that goal will make you feel. Check your current progress, understand what you did to move it forward, and find out what else you still need to do.
2. Break down a goal into actionable steps
Many people tend to easily get overwhelmed by all the things they need to do to accomplish a goal. The trick is to break down a bigger goal into smaller actionable steps. Once you break it down to doable steps, all you need to focus on is just one small step. As long as you keep doing these small action steps, the completion of the goal will take care of itself.
3. Break down a goal into quantifiable results
For some goals, it may not be easy to know exactly what the steps are to get started. One way to keep track of your progress is to find a measurable aspect of your goal, and write it down as a number. For example, if you want to finish reading a book, the number is the number of pages to read. If your goal is to save money for a vacation, the number is the amount of money you put aside. As long as you know what this number is, you will always know your progress toward your results.
4. Track a goal by the amount of time you spend on it
There are certain kind of goals that are difficult to find any obvious measurable aspects for their end result. For this type of goals, you can try tracking the amount of time you spend on doing things required. For instance, to stay in shape, track how many hours you work out per week. For becoming fluent in a foreign language, track how much time you spend studying the language per day.
No matter what type of goal you set, you should always find something to track its progress so you’ll always know whether you are making progress or not. If you are, you will feel encouraged. If you aren't, you will know that what you are doing isn't working for you and you adjust your plan.
Once you have mastered how to effectively track your progress on your goals, you can accomplish anything you want.
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