Monitoring, Measuring, and Revising

Your goals and systems may change during this process for a variety of reasons. Your circumstances may change, making your goal unachievable, your values may change, making your goal undesirable, or you may find that your systems are not effective. That’s ok. Regular monitoring will help you determine whether you are on track with the right goal, or you need to revise your plan. 

How often you measure your progress towards your goal will vary according to the time frame you’ve set for yourself, but you should monitor your systems weekly.

In our example, Suzie created a plan to start exercising 5 minutes at a time, three times per week, and prepare a meal at home 3 nights a week, for the first four weeks. At the end of each week, she would sit down and spend a few minutes reviewing her progress, assess what worked and what didn’t, and revise as needed.

At the end of each week, spend some time  assessing your plan. Ask yourself these questions:

Did I accomplish the action items I planned?

If not, why? What got in the way?

What can I do to make it easier to meet this next week?

If the answer is  nothing, how can I revise this plan, or create a new action item that would be a better fit?

You can measure your progress towards your goal as often as once a week, but if you have a timeframe of greater than 3 months to meet your goal, it may be better to measure every two weeks to once a month, as it can take 2-4 weeks to solidify your new habits. 

Measuring your goal should be straightforward. What you do with the information can be more difficult to determine. When assessing your progress towards your goal, ask yourselves these questions:

Am I making forward progress on my goals?

If not, is there a system problem? Is one or more of my systems ineffective? For instance, swapping gluten free bread for wheat bread isn’t an effective weight loss tool. Try limiting your number of all bread products.

Is it a time problem? Have I given myself enough time working this new system to start seeing measurable changes? If your goal is weight loss, you might not see a significant change in the first few weeks. Weighing every two -three weeks may be more effective. 

Is my goal really achievable? For instance, are you trying to lose 5% body fat in six months? This may be reasonable for someone starting at 30% body fat, but extremely difficult and potentially unsafe for someone starting at 23% body fat.

If you continue to struggle to meet your goal despite working through all of these potential issues, it’s probably time to revise your goals.