Exactly How to Track Your Progress: By Day, by Week, by Months, and by Years
“Freedom has been defined as the opportunity for self-discipline,” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Since I took up journaling and developed clear morning and evening routines, my lifestyle has been molding into a concrete shape. Hesitancy started eliminating itself, and how to find time in the day to do something no longer stood a question — it’s just a matter of setting priorities right. If something is my main task for the day, I’ll wake earlier, move other tasks around, but I will get that thing done. It’s my one thing, speaking in Gary Keller’s language. In fact, my lifestyle is now predominantly focussed on writing a book (the plan is for the first draft to be completed by June 2020), and during my journaling sessions, I refer to book writing as “my one thing.”
Time-wise, my progress tracking follows a particular calendar. Here’s how I do it and how long it takes me.
EVERY DAY (20–30 minutes):
Every evening — once I already completed my tasks for the day and am in bed or about to go there — I take my journal out, report on how my day went, and how I did with the goals for my day. I also write between 3 and 8 goals for the next day (usually 3 is enough for days when I work — since I work long hours — and 7–8 goals are doable on my days off work). I do all of these with my phone in airplane mode so that I don’t get distracted by notifications. I sleep with the airplane mode on, too. These evening routines are crucial because they send a signal to our brains, which the latter then have the whole night to process and accept as a challenge.
My morning routines are usually quicker because I had already decided what I would be doing the evening before, so I just copy the goals I wrote in the evening (sometimes with slight amendments — when I realise I had forgotten about something or decide to change my priorities). I do my morning journaling sessions before I switch off the airplane mode, too.
Evening journaling sessions usually take me 15–20 minutes, while morning sessions take me 5–10 minutes.
EVERY WEEK (20–30 minutes):
I have my big, long-term goals written out in a google doc (that’s actually the only kind of progress-tracking I don’t do in a physical journal, but you can pen these, too). And I aim to do as much as I can for my long-term goals during each week (for some of these goals, I have clear deadlines). So, at the end of each week, on Sunday evenings, I report specifically on how I did with the big goals. I have 3 big goals at the moment — I recommend not having more than 4. I had 5 at one point and that was quite difficult as there was one goal I could never find time to do anything for — in the end, I concluded that it wasn’t important enough for me, removed it from my goal sheet, and stuck with the remaining 4 goals.
I rate my progress with each of the goals out of 10 and then give myself an overall score (which is out of 30 in my case, since I have 3 big goals). These weekly sessions can be quite sobering, as sometimes I feel low and think that I haven’t been productive. But when I report on the weekly progress, I actually realise that I achieved immense progress with my goals.
EVERY MONTH (~60 minutes):
The beginning of each month is actually the time I really love — it’s fun and uplifting to trace back your previous month and see exactly how you were doing throughout it. I usually do this process on the first day of each month. This takes slightly more time than the daily and weekly routines because it requires going through a month worth of notes. Additionally, I usually go through the photos on my phone, too, to see if there’s an event or something I did the previous month that I forgot about and didn’t report on in my journal. Something important rarely escapes my journal, but it can happen. The things I jot down in my monthly sessions don’t all have to be super important or big-goal related. I usually even note the fun things I did and really enjoyed or the cool new people I met. Anything that left some impact on me is note-worthy. After I complete my monthly round-up, I set a couple of goals for the next month. Quite often, the round-up I would have just done helps with that because I go through what I had been doing and can see, for example, that I went to bed late a lot of the nights or consumed too much of unhealthy food. So that’s when I can put something like “eat healthier” for my next month’s goals. If there is something that I know I will be doing (like the half-marathon I ran this month), it’s easy too.
Remember that there is no right or wrong way to do these monthly round-ups. The things I track usually speak to me on the emotional level, and it’s really fun to be a historian of my own life in that way. Going through a whole month worth of activities may sound a little exhausting, but the fact that you have notes from each day helps immensely. So it’s definitely not as difficult as it sounds and — as I mentioned before — quite fun!
EVERY 3 MONTHS(~1–2 hours):
I’m only starting to adopt this concept now, so this comes with a warning that I have very little experience here. But I am currently listening to “The 12-Week Year” audiobook and it talks about how crucial it is to arrange and plan for 12-week periods (or 3 months). The authors of the book, Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, say that it is possible to achieve more in 12 weeks than most people do in 12 months or a year. How? Because when we create plans for the upcoming year, our brain knows that it’s a very long period and, therefore, is likely to treat the plan without a sense of urgency. The authors claim that November and December are usually the busiest months at most companies because a lot of goals require being completed by the end of the year, and — until the last few days — nobody gives them enough attention. On the contrary, planning the next 12 weeks as one would a year, can make us far more productive and achieve what some people do in one month in a week and what people do in a year in three months.
EVERY YEAR(~2–3 hours):
Despite advocating for 12-week timelines instead of 12-month ones, I am definitely going to do a yearly round-up around the end of December — as well as set some goals for the next year. The reason why is because this is more of a creative process than a business plan or anything like that. Summing up my year will give me a quick insight into what I did the previous year, and in years to come, will serve as a written history of my life. Thanks to all these writings, I will never lose the feeling of time or forget what happened in 2019. I will also write down a couple of things I want to do more of in 2020 and big important events ensuing (my first book draft will definitely be one of them!).
EVERY 3 YEARS (~1–3 days):
The three-year period definitely has a special place in my heart — for slightly different reasons. I use three-year periods to dream BIG. This August I learnt about the concept of 3-year vivid visions, and I immediately created my own. A 3-year vivid vision is basically how you view yourself in three years. The fact that it’s a whole three years is actually its advantage — because it allows you to go as crazy as you want in your writing. Write that, in 2022, you’re earning 10x what you are now, that you have a car, and work at your dream company. Whatever it is that is important for you and will give you fulfilment is yours to write — nobody can stop you or make fun of you. Remember that you’re writing a vision, not a plan. You only write, in the present tense, how your life is but you don’t really list the steps it took you to achieve this life — deal with those later during your 12-week planning and daily routines. When I told my mum about the 3-year vivid visions, she was a little sceptical, but then warmed up to the idea. I suggested she write about the countries she would have travelled to in the next three years, the countries she dreams of visiting — like the U.S.
“But I have neither people to travel with nor the money to go!” she objected firmly.
“Well, write that you have a company of friends you’re travelling with and that you went together to these countries.” She silently obliged.
Describe your dream lifestyle in three years. Don’t be realistic. If you don’t have the means for something, write explicitly that it’s now 2022 and you do have those means. This is the fun of the process.
I wrote a rough timeline to do this as 1-3 days because I edited mine a couple of times and then designed it in Canva to look beautiful. It’s important for it to look beautiful because you then need to put in a visible place and read it regularly. This is your life now, and you’re already living it.
How you will achieve this vision will be laid out during your daily, weekly, and quarterly planning sessions.
All of these may look like tiresome, time-consuming activities, but if you add them up, it’s only about 2–3 hours each week. Most of us spend more time than that aimlessly scrolling through social media. Besides, if I told you that dedicating 2–3 hours a week can supersize your productivity and give your life new meaning, would that persuade you to try them out?
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