It’s impossible to succeed without moving forward. You define your dream, build goals around those dreams and then take action on those goals. But if the action you are taking does not help move you forward in achieving your goals, you will never succeed.
The key is to track your progress. You must be able to measure your progress somehow. How you do that is by tracking your progress. Let me give you an example:
Let’s say you are studying to get some license. In order to get that license, you are required to take a test and pass four key sections. In order to pass the test, you must learn the material. You talk to others who have the license you want and they tell you that you will need to study between 300 – 400 hours in order to pass the exam.
You have six months to do this. How do you learn the material in those six months? By studying and taking practice exams for each section during this six month period. This requires that you devote 180 days to studying and taking practice tests. You further determine that you will need about 360 hours of study during those 180 days. With 360 hours at your disposal, you decide that you need to devote two hours a day to studying and taking practice tests. Since you work eight hours a day, you make a plan to study one hour in the morning and one hour at night. So, each day you track how many hours you are actually studying.
After the first month, you look at your tracking schedule and realize you only studied fifty hours, or ten hours less than you budgeted.
This is feedback. With this feedback, you are able to re-set the remaining amount of time you need to study for the next 5 months and then track your progress. Each day you monitor your progress through your tracking schedule in order to make sure you are on track. After six months, your tracking schedule tells you that you studied the requisite 360 hours. You take the exam, pass it and get your license.
Tracking your progress is critical because it tells you if you are on track in your progress. Tracking provides you with the critical feedback you need in order to determine if you are moving forward. Without tracking your progress, there is no way to know if you are on track. Tracking makes success possible.
About Thomas C. Corley
Exceent advice. I plan to put it into effect immediately.