One simple thing to track progress of your goals

We are just three months away from setting lofty personal, professional, financial and health goals. And 80% of those goals will fail. But there is one simple thing you can do to track progress of your goals.

Take stock of your progress periodically

And by periodically I do not mean the annual goal setting exercise we all undertake at the beginning of the new year, where we also look at whether we achieved last year’s goals!

I mean that you should have a schedule in place to check how you are progressing towards the goals you set for yourself.

I take stock of my professional goals every quarter and financial goals on my and my kids’ birthdays. Those financial goals also include my investment goals and kids’ birthday seems a good enough motivation. Health goals keep reminding of their existence through various aches and pains, so I am always updated there.

Besides this, if I have a feeling (mind you I might actually be wrong about it!) that I need to do something extra to make the needle move, I sit down on a Saturday and take stock of my progress. A Saturday because that’s the day I devote to administrative tasks and usually have time at hand. Also, since Saturday is a no-client-work day for me, there are no pressing deadlines to be met. Because stock-taking is one session for which schedules usually do not work.

Going down the rabbit hole reveals new stories

I often sit down to do X and after identifying the problem and working out a solution, I veer down a path that leads to something interesting and useful. Trust me, when you sit down to take stock of your situation, you are bound to come up with great ideas about your work or personal goals.

But that also brings me to the another thing that goes hand-in-glove with the stock-taking exercise. Facing the failure, if there was one.

Do you keep self-care uppermost in whatever you do?

You should.

When you take stock of your progress and realise you have not achieved everything you set out to do in that quarter or year or even a month, be kind to yourself. 

Remember this. If you are achieving 100% of your goals regularly, you are shortchanging yourself. You can do more than you are currently trying to achieve. Next time you sit down to set goals, assign yourself a couple more things to do.

If you achieve even 80-85% of your stated goals, you are good to go. We are taking stock just to identify the 15-20% that did not get done and move it to the next level. Abandon it, delegate it or schedule for later. Whatever is right for it.

Live up to your potential

I also want to remind you that if you are regularly achieving 100% of your stated goals, you are setting targets below your capability. It’s time to raise your own bar.

Here I want to take a moment to talk to those with success below 70-75%. Try to think of a reason. It could be anything from more important work cropping up to a pressing personal problem that could not be postponed. Life happens to all of us and we must respect that. I know I am being repetitive but this is a message that cannot be left to imagination and needs to be reiterated repeatedly.

Final thoughts

This stock-taking exercise will help you to finetune your further time management practices. You will understand your own routines better and be able to prioritize and schedule tasks better. Remember that time management is always a work in progress. You need to keep finetuning your frameworks so that they work for you even when your situation keeps changing. And you cannot deny that life is very dynamic and nothing is the same as the previous day or month or year. At least after the pandemic, we all are on the same page about this.