A Scientifically-Proven Method to Help You Achieve Your Goals
I’m a big believer in tracking my progress toward reaching my goals:
I track my fitness with a Garmin Vivosmart fitness tracker, I track my bike rides and runs with Strava, and I keep track of how my business is doing with LivePlan.
For me, just showing up at the gym or keeping the chair warm at work isn’t enough. There’s no motivation to improve and it’s hard to figure out what types of workouts I should be doing at the gym, or what work I should be doing in the office if I don’t set goals — both for myself, and for my teams at work.
This feels pretty obvious to say, but I’ll say it anyway: Setting goals is a fundamental part of improving. If I don’t know what I’m working toward, I don’t know what I should be doing on a daily basis to reach my goal. In case you haven’t already read it, you can check out my article on How to Improve Your Company 3 Times Faster Than Your Competition. (hint: it’s about setting goals)
I also track my progress religiously. I want to know if I’m making progress or if I need to do something differently.
My LivePlan dashboard tells me if my business is on track to meet its financial goals. And my various fitness dashboards tell me if my last run or ride was faster than the one before it.
Until recently, though, I didn’t know that setting goals is only one part of the equation for success. It turns out that how frequently I monitor my progress toward my goals impacts whether or not I will achieve those goals.
Little did I know that obsessively tracking my progress was a key to success.
According to a recent study published by the American Psychological Association, checking in on my progress frequently actually increases the likelihood that I will succeed.
In fact, the study shows that the more often that I check in on my progress, the greater the likelihood that I will succeed. The same study also concludes that my chances of success increase even more if I report my progress publicly or otherwise physically record how I’m doing.
If you take a closer look at this study, you’ll see that the research is focused on people who are setting lifestyle or fitness goals such as losing weight or quitting smoking. But, what’s interesting is that the findings are very similar to what I’ve found when I’ve looked at the research on business planning.
When I’ve examined the research on business planning, it shows that when a business creates a plan for its future, the business grows faster than other businesses that don’t plan. Business planning is nothing more than setting goals for your business: sales goals, budgets to keep, and strategic milestones to attain.
So, it makes sense that setting goals for your business and setting personal fitness goals have a similar effect: they improve your chances of reaching those goals.
They key insight is that you need to not just set these goals, but track your progress as you go to increase your chances of success. Here’s a quick three-step process for helping you achieve your goals, backed up by the science of planning and monitoring:
1. Define your goal:
This whole system isn’t going to work unless you set goals that are concrete and measurable.
For example, if you want to improve customer satisfaction in your business, you need to have a method for measuring customer satisfaction. Where are you today, and where do you want to be three months from now?
It’s good for your goals to be a bit of a stretch, but don’t make them completely unrealistic either. You and your team aren’t going to be very motivated if the goal seems completely out of reach.
2. Track what you want to change or improve:
Monitoring progress is the critical piece that comes between setting a goal and attaining that goal.
Monitoring progress ensures that goals are translated into action. Even more important, make sure that you have a schedule that you keep to review your progress. Some things you might want to check daily, others weekly, and still others monthly. Whatever schedule you decide to keep, the key is sticking to that schedule.
Here at Palo Alto Software, we review our financial metrics with the management team once a month. But, we also check in on those metrics frequently during the month to make sure we’re on track.
Remember: The more frequently you check in on your progress, the more likely you are to achieve your goal!
3. Report publicly on your progress:
If you’re tracking your fitness goals or trying to quit smoking, then posting your goals and your progress on Facebook might be a great idea.
You probably feel a bit differently about your business goals, though. For business goals, make them as public as you can within the company. Some companies are not comfortable sharing data internally, but I’ve found that sharing more openly just leads to everyone having a better understanding of what the goals are and how they can help reach those goals. That’s what we do at Palo Alto Software, and it works.
If you can, share your goals with your company and regularly update everyone on your progress. The science is on your side that this will help you grow faster!
If you’ve had any personal experience with sharing and tracking goals — either personally or in business — I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Originally published at www.liveplan.com on December 21, 2015.
