Quantify your progress

I often encourage others to measure their progress toward their desired goals.  For example, I tell my clients to identify a large main goal – something that is big enough to work toward over the next 6 months, year or two years.  From there, the client is pushed to think of major milestones along the way to that main goal – between 3 and 7 milestones.  Beyond that we back up from the milestones with smaller actionable steps that can be taken to reach each milestone, and ultimately the main goal.

I encourage clients to further track their progress by reflecting at the end of each week on the small daily actions they’ve taken throughout the previous week toward their steps, milestones and main goal.  Not only is it a tangible way for them to see their actual progress, but it can be used to quantify one’s progress over a period of goals, or years.

Here’s what I mean about quantifying one’s progress from the tracking I just described:

Let’s say you track your progress toward a business goal for which you’ve given yourself a year to complete.  For example, increasing the revenue from the sale of your art.  But be even more specific, define the exact targeted total annual revenue number.

If you’ve tracked your progress toward last year’s revenue, you now have a basis from which to start measuring your forward progress.  If you haven’t tracked it in the last year, but you want to make this something you track year to year, then you need to start somewhere.  How about now?

At the end of the year you can count up your steps and progress results compared to last year’s as well as your current revenue over last year’s to come up with a percentage of increase (hopefully it’s an increase in revenue).

If you’ve never tracked your progress like this before I would invite you to begin doing so in the upcoming new year, so the following year you’ll have something to compare that year’s progress against.

A challenge I would propose, if you have tracked your progress like this before is:  try to meet your revenue goal with fewer steps and milestones than the previous year.

Here’s another article I recommend reading from Inc. Magazine: 7 Things Highly Productive People Do

Posted by: Nick Ventuerlla