Tracking your progress

Ever had this feeling that after a long stressful day of thinking you achieved a lot, you actually have done nothing but you just felt like you did a lot? Yeah, I always have this feeling but I have a good news now.

This year I decided to improve on my soft skills and become a more better person, so I enrolled in a training at GemMine and it was made compulsory that we write on Medium (😳 — my reaction at the time). This will be my first article here so please pardon me.

Our first class at GemMine was on “Progress Tracking”. This class really helped me a lot on how to track things I plan to achieve in a day. Whether I achieved them or not.

… So let’s get into it 😉

What is Progress Tracking?

I’m sure that you may be wondering what progress tracking is. During the class at GemMine, the mentor Mr. Daniel Sumah defined progress tracking as “following through a process to achieve something (a goal)”

Why you should use progress tracking?

You might be thinking why you need to track your progress or what the importance of it is. Here are few reasons why you should track your progress;

• It can help you go through a process much more faster.
• To check whether you’re improving or not.
• To know whether you’re taking the right the steps to achieving that goal (possibly get a mentor or a friend that you tell about the things you do)
• To reinforce your knowledge
• It makes you accountable to yourself and your goals.

How to track your progress

We’re getting to sweet part 😋

I’ll list out steps on how to track your progress but before I do that, a poem was read to our hearing and there were some things I found very helpful and I feel it could be of help to you also.

• Stop looking down on yourself, stop overthinking but DO, just do. Be active and stay productive.
• It’s okay to be afraid and it’s okay to fail. But if you don’t try and fail, how will you succeed? So, don’t be afraid to try, don’t be afraid to take risks, you’ll definitely succeed in the long run.

Okay, back to our main talk. How to track your progress 👀

1. First of all, what you want to do is to - Write down a clear goal. Have a goal. A goal gives you purpose for the day and it points you to things you have achieved during the day.
2. Gather your tools to track your progress (very important)

• Get a journal where you will write out your goals. At least write down a goal in 2 days and complete that goal, just start small. Here’s an article on how to journal (Focus on II : How to journal)
• A platform where you write about your progress (Medium for example).
• A portfolio — For someone with hard skills, maybe a developer or designer, have a portfolio where you display your work and skills.
• Somebody to report to (let’s just call this an accountability partner) — y talking to someone about what you’ve done, more ideas come in and things you missed out will be remembered. The person you will talk mustn’t be a mentor, the person could be a friend or a sibling.

3. Mindful work

Mindful work is basically having a focus on what you’re doing, focusing all your energy on that thing. Taking out distractions (maybe freezing your twitter app for some hours) to focus on that particular thing.

4. Access — This is like after the whole day, you go back to your journal to review it.

• Ask yourself if you were able to achieve that goal you wrote down.
• Did you follow the right process of what you wanted to achieve? — What changed?
• What did you learn?

Since after the class I am now able to track my progress, I am now able to know things I’m not doing right and tackle them. I got myself a book where I write down things I want to achieve and after I’m done with those goals I review them to be sure I did them right, if not, I see what I did differently.

Also, in order to achieve these goals I set, I put mindful work into practice. I put my phone on silent mode not to get distracted for a couple of hours then I check back for any important notifications (like giving yourself a little break). Before the class, I use to think I have covered much because of the number of hours I use on a particular thing, but now in a space of 30mins I cover more than I expect. The fact that I’m a student, this is very important for me. You have to be focused to go far and understand whatever you’re studying.

I also told a friend of mine to be my accountability partner (that’s what I call it, lol). I talk to her about things I do on a weekly basis and this has really helped me track my progress because she always talks about it so I don’t forget.

After the whole thing, as I said earlier I check back and ask myself what I learnt from the whole process, what changed.

This is how I track my progress and I hope this article has shed some light on how to track your progress.

This article is courtesy of GemMine and all the facilitators (check them out on Instagram and on web). They pushed us to write on Medium that’s why you see me here. Till another time guys, I hope you’re able to track your progress now. Thank you 🙂.