How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions? Have you set your goals? Created your task list? Started changing your habits?
After you have created some new habits, remember to track your progress. Tracking your progress can get you to your desired outcome more quickly and easily.
It Helps to Keep Up the Momentum
Keeping up with new habits is a challenge, since you are adjusting to doing something different in your daily life that you were not doing before. From switching from your morning cup of coffee to tea, to remembering to fit in a workout before bed at night, you need time to adjust to the change. There might also come a time when you lose some of your motivation, making it harder to stick to your new resolution. By tracking your activity in a journal or planner, you can see how you’ve been keeping up with the new habit and remind yourself every day that you’ve created a new priority.
You Can Track Your Progress
Tracking the resolution isn’t just a matter of checking off a day’s accomplishment, but also making notes about how your success is impacting your life. This is why using a journal is highly recommended. You can write about how you feel about the change, if and when you are seeing improvements from the new habit, and what adjustments you’ve made along the way to improve your outcome.
It Helps to Tie Them in with Your Goals
Many new habits are created in an effort to reach certain goals in your personal or professional life. By tracking progress of your habits, you can also record your completed tasks from your larger-scale overall goal. Maybe you have a goal of one day completing a 10k, so you need to start new habits of walking each day, then running each day, then making sure you are fueling your body with healthy foods. These habits are helping you to reach your end goal.
Tracking Makes it Easier to Adjust Your Habits
Some of your new habits will need to be adjusted to fit into your actual life. Be sure to allow enough time for a fair assessment before giving up on your original idea. How long do you give your new ‘habit’ before you decide to trash it or amend it? Look through your journal and make an informed decision. Have you been consistent? Is it providing benefit? Have you been sabotaging yourself because you really don’t want to change?
It’s your life. Design it, create it, and live it to match your vision of your best life.
