Once you have set your goals it is important to measure your progress regularly. This will help you stay on track, to not get distracted and lose sight of what you want to accomplish. In fact, it is a good idea to review your goals at least once a day. They should also be written down and you should create visual cues that are visible to you throughout the day that remind you of the goal. You should develop a tracking system for the key metrics that determine progress toward your destination. For example, if the goal is to lose weight, set a goal weight and then weight yourself daily, or no less than weekly and chart your progress. If the goal is financial, determine the metric, whether it be income, net worth, cash in savings, or debt reduction, and chart this number every month. It is important to develop this measurement system to keep you on track with your goals. The reinforcement it provides helps maintain discipline and reminds you to behave and make choices that are consistent with the actions needed to achieve success.
Having visual reminders that you see regularly is particularly helpful. As you begin to see the progress you are making it further helps to maintain your momentum and sustain your effort. This measurement is what allows you to see the progress. Certainly, most people have setbacks and do things that derail their progress. Old habits are especially challenging if they are not consistent with your current goals. They will tend to resurface, especially in times of stress or challenge. Again, measurement of progress will help you see this influence sooner and to get back on track as soon as possible. A minor setback is inevitable, but allowing it to undermine you permanently and giving up on your goal is disappointing and detrimental to your self respect and emotional state.
Certainly some goals, depending on how high they are set, are not reachable even with consistent effort and discipline. This means you should start with near term goals that are realistic and achievable. It is fine to aim high and challenge yourself. You will certainly accomplish much progress in the direction of your ultimate goal. By linking achievable short term goals with more ambitious longer term goals, you can focus your measurement on the short term progress, and will naturally be moving in the direction of the longer range objectives. Determine how you plan to measure the progress toward your short term goal. Develop a charting system. Break down the goal into action steps and schedule the action steps in your calendar. Chart how often you accomplished the scheduled actions steps each week. If the number is zero, there is a problem with the plan. Perhaps it was not realistic to your current circumstances and obligations. Maybe you did not schedule the steps at a good time or you did not allow enough time. If you lost your motivation to do the steps, either your goal is less important than you thought, you either don't enjoy the actions or they are difficult, or you have too many other priorities that are taking your time and energy away from the thing you most want to do. Sometimes priorities need to be reordered.
If the actions you need to do to achieve the goal you want are difficult or not enjoyable, but you know they are good for you, there are strategies that can be used to help you do them anyway. This is where development of habit and discipline start. Usually we set goals that require some change in our current behavior in order to reach them, otherwise we would already have the results we seek. Our outcomes are the results of our routines, habits and repeated behaviors. Changing our set behavior is not easy, but it is certainly possible. Behavior change starts with the will to change. You must decide that current behavior and results need to be replaced by different behavior and results. You will be more likely to continue with this change if the new result you seek is important to you.
You will also continue the new behavior if you can learn to find it rewarding in some way. Attaching reward to behavior makes it stick. When behavior sticks, it becomes new habit. Habit yields results of repeated action. If you know what repeated action will result in what outcome, and you know what outcome you want, you can reinforce the behavior with reward systems. The rewards can be simple. Measurement of action steps is a good way to create reward systems. Schedule the actions and count the number of times you perform them. This measurement process reinforces performance of the action. Perhaps you can earn a small reward each time you do the action a certain number of times.
Measurement of outcomes is also important. If you have the correct action steps, the outcome should follow naturally. Confirm this through measurement. If the outcome is not what you expected, reevaluate your action steps. Measurement of outcome demonstrates the product of the effort you made, the actions you took, the consistency you showed. When the outcome satisfies the goal you set, celebrate. Savor the achievement. Appreciate your power to change and to succeed. Soon it will be time to move on to the next goal. Most importantly, find a way to enjoy the process and the journey as it unfolds. End results are important but we must not lose sight of the daily, hourly and moment to moment experience of living and striving.