Track Progress
FREE Toolbox To Reach Your Goals
One of the most basic tips when you want to fulfill a specific goal is to track progress. Take daily notes, write down how it goes and face the truth!
The great thing with this is that you force yourself to see things as they really are. As life moves on in ultra-speed, it's just so easy to forget what you really want to accomplish. It's easy to stagnate.
Even if you're quite sure that you’re making progress, write it all down just to be sure. Somehow most of us have a tendency to only remember good things and happy events. For life in general - that's great! But for learning something new - not so great!
So what happens as you get it all black on white is this:
- You cannot deny potential failure to reach your goal
- You can take timely actions
- You can see improvements and celebrate them
All of the above of course applies to waking up early as well. It's a tough goal, but so rewarding when you are able to do it consistently :-)
How To Track Progress?
So let's see what the best way is to actually go about tracking that goal, shall we? Let's start with a a quick guideline:
- Place your tracking paper on the wall
- Update your progress each morning after waking up
- Write down the time you went out of bed this morning and the time you went to bed last night
- Transfer all your notes to your computer about once a week
Our purpose is to make tracking your wake up time as simple as possible, yet still useful. That's why I urge you to write down your go-to-bed-time as well. Also, if you're able to transfer your notes to your computer I'll soon tell you how to get out some great trend graphs, without having to lift a finger!
And the reason for why I suggest you put it up on your wall is two-fold. First, it's easy to update (no need for computer) and second, you will see how you're doing all the time. Simply put, you will have to face the truth =)
Now, I'm not saying that the result will be negative. I believe the opposite of you of course. Especially with this method :-) And that's the great thing here. As you start noticing how you fulfill your goal, you will start to feel great and get the momentum needed to keep it up. Smart, isn't it?
So to help you a bit on your way, I will provide you with a great toolbox to get started.
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First of all, you need a stylish paper to record all your times (much fancier than my paper note seen above...) so if you want you can just print the pdf-file seen here. |
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And second of all, I have a fantastic template that you can transfer all your data to. I used this one for a long time and it automatically provides you with all the graphical views of interest. Just download the zip-file seen here and try out the excel tool. |
You can decide yourself if you want to track 5, 7 or any other number of days per week. And one of the most useful graphs shown is the one displaying how much time you're actually losing each week by sleeping in. I felt that this one really had a powerful affect on me.
Now start to track progress as soon as possible. And let me know about any questions or concerns in the comment field below. Enjoy!
Early Riser > How To Wake Up > Track Progress
Thanks for reading! By Matthew M. McEwan