How I Track My Results And Why You Need To Do It Too
Posted by Kagisho in Conscious LivingMay 12th, 2011 | no responses
Tracking is rarely mentioned in personal development books. However, I think tracking is important. Why is it important? Tracking gives you a clear picture of your progress and helps you decide whether to maintain the same course of action or change a new set of action to get better results.
When you don’t track your results and feedback, you are trying to achieve your goals blindly. Lack of tracking means you may unknowingly walk around in circles. You stay frustrated because when don’t get the desired results and when you don’t know what is wrong, you can’t make specific changes to change the outcome.
How Tracking Helps Me To Become More Productive
Let me share with you an example. If you noticed, I have not been blogging for the past 2 weeks. This is because I’m currently preparing for my final year exam and I spent long hours studying.
I track my time to check whether I invest enough productive time studying. I found out that I am more productive when studying in school (70% productive hours) as compared to studying at home (25% productive hours).
How am I able to provide you with figures? These are not blind figures that I got out of nowhere. Before I start studying, I write down the time that I start studying and the time that I stop. I also have a section where I will write down the productive hours that I spent.
You have to know this. Time spent doing something does not necessary means high productivity level. Productive hours mean you focus only on working on high value tasks that will bring you closer to your goals. In my case, my high value task is studying.
I also work in short burst. I use a countdown timer to time 1 hour of focused studying followed by 10 minutes break. Repeat this process. At the end of the day, I divide the total productive hours by the total hours spent (total hours = time start studying to time ended) and multiply by hundred.
I get a percentage that I can conclude that studying at home is not as productive as compared to studying in school. If I did not track my time, it is impossible for me to see a clear picture and make the change to enhance my productivity.
How Can You Apply What You Learn Today
If you don’t track your results, you don’t know what action you are doing today that is leading you to the outcome you have today. If you want to change your outcome today, you have to change the action you are taking. Tracking helps to identify what is not working so that you can make the necessary changes.
What you can do now is to track your time like what I did so that you can spot “weaknesses” that you can rectify and improve on. You can also track your progress toward your goals.
Take one of your goals that you want to achieve this year and think about the actions that you took during the past few months to move you closer to your goals. You will not be able to recall the exact actions that you took unless you track your action using a journal.
So starting from today, take an action everyday that will move you closer to your goals. Track your action by writing what goal oriented action you did for today. You can also track the amount of time spent every day on goal oriented tasks. Review your results every week.
When you review your results at the end of every week, you can see whether you are closer or further to your goals. If you are not closer to your goals, you can flip through your journal and see are you spending enough time on goal oriented tasks? You can also review the actions that you took that did not produce the desired results and make the necessary changes.
If you want to improve your productivity so that you can take more effective action to move closer to your goals, opt into the newsletter below. I am writing a new ebook on how to improve your productivity and by opting into the newsletter, you will be notified when the new book is out.
Cheers,
Vincent
Post from: Health Money Success
How I Track My Results And Why You Need To Do It Too
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