Tracking Your Way to Success: A Beginner’s Guide

Have you ever set goals to save money or lose weight that never came to fruition? I, too, have set goals that I never reached. Despite being motivated, there were areas of my life where progress seemed impossible. That's until I discovered the power of tracking. 

In my post, Unlock Your Potential: Two Books That Helped Me Reach My Goals, I discuss how these books empowered me to see that no matter how motivated we are, the secret to success ties back to our habits and daily routines. We should track our habits for the best results to measure how they work for or against us.

Since I started habit-tracking, my life has significantly improved. The best part? I didn't have to make drastic shifts or huge sacrifices to be successful. I've learned that to move the needle, you must make small, consistent, trackable improvements to your everyday routine, and over time, the results will appear.

There are three steps you should take to track your way to success: 

1. Make your goals specific and measurable. 

2. Make your goals moderately difficult (they can't be so easy that they don't challenge you, but they can't be so hard that it's not sustainable).

3. Track your progress to review your results and tweak as needed.

Here are some examples:

I want to save more money this year 

Make it more specific and trackable: I'm going to save $1200 this year or $100/month

How to track progress:

• Buy a counting piggy bank and check it every month to ensure you're averaging $100.

• Make a chart with a calendar and color that month green every time you make your goal. Every time you fall short, color it red. Now, you have a visual to see how close or far off you are from reaching your goal by the end of the year.

I want to lose weight

Many of us have this goal, but it is difficult to achieve because it's too broad. I have this goal, so I had to think about the actions I needed to take that would have a side effect of weight loss. 

Here's how I made this goal more specific and trackable: 

First, I committed to working out for 30 minutes straight for at least 20 days/month. That would mean, at the bare minimum, I needed to work out at least five days/week. What I learned in the first couple of months of doing this was that it was still too broad for me, so I didn't stick to it. 

So, I changed my goal to 255,000 steps/month (or 8,500 steps/day). The shift to tracking steps per day versus workouts per month worked better for me. The step goal was still hard enough to push me to achieve my long-term goal of losing weight but easy enough that it was sustainable.  

How I track my progress:

I track my steps on a wearable fitness device, and once I started tracking this goal this way, I lost ten pounds in three months.

Tracking your habits helps you realize when something isn't working so you can tweak it to work in your favor. We often think achieving results means pushing ourselves to do something we don't like. The point of habit tracking is to discover how our daily routines are helping us achieve our goals and to choose sustainable habits that we can measure so we can become successful.