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A No-Cost Tool to Reach Your Goal Faster and Easier

It’s the secret weapon for success used by Olympic athletes, successful entrepreneurs, and now you – making a daily record of your progress, writing it down. Setting goals is the important first step, but without a record of progress toward your goal, you’re not getting nearly as much as you can from your efforts.

How will writing it down help?

Commitment – The simple act of logging it every day affirms your commitment to achieving the goal you have in mind. Will you make excuses? You can easily excuse yourself by saying you don’t have time, or that you forgot. When you do that, you tell yourself you are not totally committed to your goal, that it is not important to you.

Action – Planning a daily log helps you break your goal down into achievable units. You don’t have to do everything at once. In fact, you cannot expect to do it all at once, so enjoy the process of thinking it through step by step. Given your specific situation, how will you get from where you are to where you intend to be? What other elements might influence your results?

Focus – Writing it down causes you to focus on your goal. Five minutes of focus beats hours of random distraction every time. Writing it down causes you to notice the effects of small changes, even those that occur over weeks or months rather than days.

Feedback – Here’s a big payoff. If you’ve structured your log correctly, you’ll see the effects of your efforts right away. You can pinpoint actions that slow down or speed up progress to your goal. Have you changed your diet? Is your emotional state changing? What other activities could affect your progress?

Motivation – Seeing progress mount, day by day, is itself motivating. It’s easier to lose weight, for example, once you’ve seen a few of those extra pounds disappear.

Logging your progress can become a habit in as little as four to six weeks. Once established as habit, you’ll be as uncomfortable if you fail to write it down as if you forgot to brush your teeth.

Below is the log I use for exercising. This is an example you can use to tailor your log for your own needs:

Start by stating your goal and the outcomes of achieving your goal. State your outcomes in the present rather than future tense.

Exercise 30 minutes every day

1. I look 10 years younger

2. I wear my pretty clothes

3. I buy clothes off the rack

4. I enjoy the way I look in the mirror

5. I have boundless energy

6. My thinking is sharp and clear

7. I remember easily

Now create your log sheet, leaving blank lines for every day of the week even though you may not use them all. Remember, the log below is only an example. The log you create for yourself will be better than any I could create for you.

Exercise Log

Date/Time Begin	Time End	Type	Ending Heart Rate	Hours Sleep	Diet	Environment temp/humidity	Emotional (1-10)	Energy (1-10)

My Log Notes:

1. Fill in today’s date and the time (hour: minute) exercise began and ended. Remember, the goal for this log is 30 minutes every day.

• “Type” is the kind of exercise:

• a. Walking
• b. Biking
• c. Hiking (geocaching)
• d. Yoga

• Ending heart rate – check this as soon as exercise ends.
• Hours sleep – last night’s sleep.
• Diet – what did you eat in the past 24 hours?
• Environment – Estimate temperature and humidity during exercise.
• Rate emotional well-being using ascale of 1-10 with 1 being poor, 10 being excellent
• Rate energy level using a scale of 1-10 with 1 being poor, 10 being excellent.

Adapt this log for whatever elements you want to track. For example, although I am not currently tracking distance, I will probably add it in the future. You can and should change anything and everything to suit your needs precisely.

At the end of each week, review your progress. Whether you’ve done well or not, look for elements in your log that may have influenced your results. Review again when you have a month’s data. By then, you’ll have a good idea of what influences your success and where to concentrate your efforts most effectively.

One Response to “A No-Cost Tool to Reach Your Goal Faster and Easier”

1. Zena Says:
   October 27th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

   Good words.

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