Beginning of this year, I wrote about turning New Year’s Resolutions into achievable goals. One of the things I mentioned that help in creating success was “Keep Steering”. Since it’s almost the end of the month, this might a good time to look at progress.
Interestingly enough, what I found was a mixed bag. With some things, I’m making amazing progress . Others are moving along smoothly. And some are just languishing.
Now, I could just accept this as a matter of fact, but I truly want to hit those goals. So I started to look at the differences between the slackers and the superstars in my list.
The first thing that immediately stood out were the things I didn’t make any headway on. They all had one thing in common – there was no clear and well-defined action attached to them. That’s an easy fix.
So what’s the difference between great progress and OK progress? Well, as strange as it sounds, it’s a checklist. Seriously. That’s all. The things that are working out really well show up on some sort of checklist that I frequent daily.
Now mind you, the “OK” goals also require almost-daily work – but having items on a list that I check off forces me to actually deal with them every day. (OK – the precondition here is that you need to actually * look* at the list…)
So there seems to be a progressive refinement: Resolution -> Measurable Goal -> Action -> Daily Checklist.
I’ll update myself accordingly – and by the end of February, we’ll see where that has gotten me.
Tags: productivity, checklist.