Photo by Scramblejam

There are many different aspects involved in setting and keeping goals, and in building positive new habits – one of the most important I think is having some visible way to track your progress.

Our chosen goals and desired changes can often become lost in the myriad demands on our time, and without a consistent system for openly monitoring our day-to-day progress, we are restricting our ability to successfully stick to a our plans.

Whilst there are lots of possibilities for intelligently tracking progress towards an objective – weight charts for the dieters, savings graphs for financially astute – I regularly tackle goals that warrant tracking a daily or few-times-a-week occurrence.

If you’re trying to give up smoking, manage your spending, meditate daily or visit the gym 3 times a week – an invaluable tool to help you establish your habit is a visual tracker that allows you to cross-off/mark/star the days when you have successfully achieved your aim.

Over the last few years, I have experimented with various different systems for monitoring my daily habit changes – Joes Goals is a very popular online system, and is completely free; I’ve also tried the Goal Pro software, which I didn’t get on so well with. My preferred type of tool is a tangible paper-based system – I’ve toyed with the Ben Franklin Hack from Zen Habits and have created more than a few different versions of my own tracker worksheet.

Once I began to play around with these systems, discovering what worked and what sucked – I was able to figure out what my ideal solution was going to do for me, and how it needed to work. Eventually my system evolved into the tracker I use now, every single day, and which I highly recommend.

Daily Habit Tracking with the Compact Calendar Hack

The Compact Calendar is a visual calendar planning system, invented by Dave Seah (a very clever chap). His original idea was to use the Calendar for planning in meetings – enabling users to visually map out blocks of work and to plan resources. I originally downloaded the calendar to do just this, but found I hadn’t really needed to use them as intended – the printed copies I had were hanging around unused.

It was then I realized that the simplicity and elegance of the Compact Calendar layout lent itself wonderfully to a Daily Progress Tracking system – I could mark the days with a sticker, a square, circle or whatever (or some complicated notation system) and I had a huge space on the right to add notes, ideas, mini-mind-maps, feedback and comments where needed.

I started with playing with the system the next day, and found it had everything I needed, and was so simple and easy-to-use that it just worked.

Now, for every new change I am trying to make, or new goal I am trying to reach, I create a Compact Calendar Daily Tracker – I write a motivating title for my goal, write down the important notes and caveats which are relevant to my goal (visit gym for at least 30 minutes, don’t buy chocolate, drink lots of water) and I’m done – My goal is set, the rules are laid out and I have a customized daily tracker where I can mark my progress as I go.

As far as tracking your goals is concerned, it doesn’t get much easier.

Notes and Suggestions

• This tracker system works really well for well-thought-out, objective goals, where you can be damn sure about whether you achieved it or not. I know exactly whether I got up on time or not, or if I ate chocolate or not – make sure the criteria for a successful tick are crystal clear.
• If you’re starting a tracker part-way through the year, you can minimize the negative impact of a big blank unsuccessful space at the start of the year by coloring it in, outlining it or writing over the top of it.
• Don’t be put off by the visual impact of a whole year on one page – if you’re tackling a 30-day challenge or tackling a short-term goal just draw an outline round the designated time period and forget about the rest.
• There are no rules for using this system really – You can write whatever you want on the right, and fill-in the boxes on the left in whatever way floats your boat at the time.
• Get creative! – Use your worksheet as a chance to get really creative and fun. Achieving your goals is supposed to be a challenging, but enjoyable process – make filling in your worksheet enjoyable too! Use bright colours, squares, squiggles, mini-diagrams, sketches of yourself… Whatever works!

Habit Tracker Gallery

Below are some scanned worksheets that I have been working on since the beginning of the year, showing progress towards some of my current goals.

Blank tracker Worksheet	Blogging Worksheet 2008	Exercise Worksheet 2008

The post series on Success Mastery has garnered a lot of attention in the last couple of weeks, and I have been busy developing several posts that follow up on specific ideas and techniques. In the meantime, I’d like to share with you some great articles from other blogs which fit nicely with the concept of success mastery.

30 Days to Success – This is one of Steve Pavlinas most popular articles, and gives a powerful technique for experiencing success by committing to a 30 Day Challenge of daily activity geared around trialling or conditioning a new habit. An absolute must-read.

Discipline is an Illusion – Zen habits blogger Leo Babauta recommends avoiding the trap of relying on self-discipline to achieve things – His idea is to find great ways of motivating yourself instead.

Habitual Mastery – Scott Young shares a series of posts on creating, implementing and sustaining new habits of success. he touches on areas such as conditioning new habits, and experimenting with new possible habits.

The Secret Habit to Success – Leo proposes a challenge to help you create new positive habits, with the first one being the process of establishing those habits.

Turning Habits into Goals -A final post, again from Zen Habits is about changing your new habits in relation to your goals. Consistent daily habits are a great way to reach a goal you’ve set, and this post will help you start that path.