Tracking the Success Plan

You’ve set your goals and are working towards them but aren’t tracking how your plan is going. Why not?

I’ll be honest with you. The secret sauce to being successful at goal setting has three ingredients:

Understanding the potential barriers that will slow you or stop you from achieving the goals.
Learning to create a success plan that only includes actions you control.
Tracking the success plan to see what impact it is having on your big goals.

Welcome to the Goal Setting & Tracking Series! This is the fourth and final article in the series and I’m so glad you have followed us along this journey. If you’ve missed the other articles I’ve got you covered! The articles in the series are:

Rediscovering Your Passions | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
Barriers Challenging Your Success | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
Creating a Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
Tracking the Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series (this one)

In the first week of the series, you used The Ultimate Life Goal Journal to help rediscover your passions and set long-term goals. You were on a mission to create the life you want, knowing that goals are much more than just about career aspirations.

Then in week 2, you continued through The Ultimate Life Goal Journal and identified barriers that will stop or slow down your progress in the short term. Finally last week, you continued by breaking down the goals and barriers to create a success plan.

How did you do this week?

The best way to keep yourself accountable and to be able to adjust the plan is by tracking the success plan. Have you ever set a goal and wonder why you aren’t getting closer to achieving it?

Have you been stumped as to why the goal seems even farther away than before? Are you planning out your actions and tracking the end results of those actions?

The truth is if you aren’t tracking your actions and monitoring how those actions affect your goals then you can’t adjust. By the time you figure out things are not working you may have missed the opportunity to adjust to meet your timeline.

Let’s look at a weight loss goal for the year. You may have set a goal for a set number of pounds you want to lose over the next year. However, the body is complex and is affected by many factors: water, exercise, new routines, stress, sleep, food, gut health, etc.

Your success plan may have a plan to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day, exercise 3 times per week for 30 minutes each, and portion food as per health guidelines. Let’s just say you aren’t tracking how you are doing for this plan consistently and don’t consider your mental health, sleeping habits, or what medications you are taking.

However, you are starting to feel good about the activity you are doing and decide it’s time to get on the scale. You are shocked to find out that you haven’t lost weight and feel defeated. What now?

My best advice is to not go overboard and weigh yourself constantly. The scale is not the only way to measure success. However, you want to be tracking your success plan and see if there is anything that might be affecting the weight loss.

Maybe there is another barrier that is slowing your progress. Without knowing how your body is reacting to situations, you will have a hard time meeting your goal.

Spend a few moments every week and start tracking the success plan so you can identify any surprises that might be affecting your progress. I recommend looking at:

What went right this week?
What didn’t go as planned?
How can you adjust?

The Ultimate Life Goal Journal helps infuse motivation into your life goals. It is the life goal resource for people who want to create a life they love. That being said you also need to know the Ultimate Motivation Hacks for Life Goals. This is a free 16-page guide perfect for people who want to know how to infuse motivation into their life goals.

Once you review how you did last week, then create a new weekly success plan (ready-made template in the Free Goal Setting & Tracking Bundle) that continues to be in line with your 1-year plan and overcoming barriers that you might have.

Remember that the success plan includes actions within your control. The secret sauce to goal setting is understanding the potential barriers, creating a success plan, and tracking the success plan.

Tracking how your plan is affecting your goals is necessary to make sure you are moving closer to goals. If you aren’t tracking your progress then you could just be “busy” but not really gaining progress.