The Importance of Charting Your Progress

By Breanna Gunn 

When you’re making any big change—whether it’s giving up caffeine or scaling your business—charting your progress is a crucial step in your overall success. 

Why? Let’s dive in. 

It Creates A Feedback Loop For Success

How do you know if you’re growing if you’re not keeping track of all that you do? To stay motivated and on course, it’s important to identify each milestone and recognize when you’ve reached it. 

This milestone offers proof that you’re growing and shows that you can change over time, while at the same time showing that you’re making progress towards achieving your goals. It serves as a kind of positive feedback loop. Each milestone provides you more evidence of your growth; this in turn helps you keep pushing ahead and setting the next milestone. 

Who doesn’t love that?

It Creates A Digital Success Folder

A success folder is a place where you keep all of your progress charted. Save screenshots or files for completed projects you’ve done. Include anything you consider an achievement. You can use this material for motivation when you need it — and it offers evidence of how far you’ve come.

It Will Help You Set Better Goals

Vague goals are hard to chart progress on, and the way you set your goals can make a difference in your development. In order to set a milestone you’ll achieve, it has to be SMART:

• Specific – Identify exactly how you will know once the goal is achieved.
• Measurable – Attach some numbers so you can easily measure it.
• Actionable – Break it down into the steps needed to reach it.
• Realistic – It needs to be something you can achieve.
• Timely – Set a deadline for when you’ll do it.

With clearly defined milestones, you’ll know for sure when you reach them, and they’ll be more effective in both reaching your goals and charting your progress. 

It Reframes How You View Mistakes

Mistakes aren’t failures; they’re learning experiences. They don’t impede your growth. They’re a necessary part of growth just like successes. If you understand this, you can take action toward goals and more easily reach your milestones. 

You can reframe your mistakes when you look back and realize how they helped you learn something new that got you closer to your goal. 

Charting Your Progress Is Important Work

Successful people chart their progress as a matter of course. It becomes a habit. This means setting aside time for strategic planning and taking the time to learn new skills and techniques. Put time on your calendar to set goals, review results, and remind yourself how far you’ve come by referring back to your digital success file. 
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