Tracking Your Progress

All companies worth their salt track different metrics of the company. Companies track their profits, losses, efficiency, inventory, etc. They have tools like Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, etc. So why shouldn't you, as an individual, track your own progress? Whether you are a freelancer, an employee, or a small business owner, you should also track your progress. In and outside of your work life.

What to track?

Your efficiency

Are you doing your work in the most effective but least time possible? Are there any constant distractions and obstacles that you have identified that might negatively affect your efficiency?

Financials

You cannot ignore and not track your financials if you want to keep on doing what you're passionate about and be closer to your goals unless you're already rich. Financial troubles might be an obstacle to your bigger goals if not prevented to happen in the first place. Prevention is better than halting your goals to fix your financials troubles.

Obstacles

Different obstacles for different people with different goals. Tracking your progress will greatly help in identifying these obstacles. Whether the obstacles are your own bad habits, environmentals factors, financial factors, etc. you have to be able to identify them and remove or minimize them from your everyday operations. Tracking your progress allows for the opportunity to identify even the littlest of obstacles to be the culprit that is keeping you from achieving your goals faster.

Bad habits

These are one of the types of bad habits and I specifically listed them here as items that are very important to track because almost always we are our own worst enemy.

Expected/Estimated date of achievement

Do you need to move your expected/estimated date of achievement? Tracking your progress with regards to your efficiency, current obstacles, and progress towards your goals will help you determine this objectively.

Your relationships with your loved ones

Are you spending enough time with them? You can spend time with your loved ones (and you should!) without feeling guilty of not giving your all and your best to your passion project by being able to see where your hours are spent. How many hours have you spent in working towards your goals? 60 hours? Nice! I can take a break this weekend and spend time with my loved ones.

Your social life

How are your connections? Do you still attend networking events? You might be missing on good opportunities that are related to your goals if you're not careful and let your social circle rot. From time to time go out and spread your wings again. Get away from working on your goals and be out there. You never know, being out there might actually speed up your progress towards completing your goals.

How to track?

Keeping a journal is a very effective way of tracking your progress towards a goal

Importance of tracking your progress

1) It helps you in formulating new strategies (if necessary) and pivot directions (if necessary)
2) It helps you keep your focus no matter how long the goal takes to finish
3) It helps you make decisions base on trends
4) It helps you identify inefficiencies in your efforts day-in day-out
5) It helps you measure your progress objectively
6) It helps you measure your efforts and progress objectively

How To Determine What You Really Want In Life

What would you do if money is no question?

Determine what makes you truly happy

By this, I don't mean eating ice cream happy. Not that kind of happiness but a more deeper kind of happiness.

By this I also would not mean travelling, fine dining, trying out surfing, skydiving, shopping, etc. Although there are many people who are really passionate about these things and have made a career out of them most people really just want these things for fun and happiness. I'm talking about what are you most passionate about? The one thing that will make you "work" for hours end and days end. Then you can call "working" not working at all since it's your passion. You will never work again a single day of your life. So what is it? What would you rather be doing if money is no question rather than go to work as an employee to be able to eat and pay the bills and save a little and have a little fun every now and then.

If you have an answer to this question then congratulations. Most people don't really know the answer to this question and just go in their daily lives without a real sense of adventure or quest.

If you'd like to know what you really want in life you have to dig deep inside of you. Most people don't give time to reflect on themselves. 

Don't lead a half-life, Matthew, I'm trying to help you find your passion. When you find your passion you'll never work again. Of course, you'll probably work extremely hard, but it won't seem like work. Because it is your passion, your purpose, your reason for being here.

- from the book "Success Secrets: Letters to Matthew" by Richard Webster

Think of the things you would like to achieve. Become the best software developer you can be? Become the greatest salesman? What do you want to become? Be as high level as possible. We are talking about dreams here and not just goals. Dreams encompasses goals. Dreams are all about emotions. After listing the items. Maybe you have 3 or 4 of them, now sit down and relax your body and close your eyes. Imagine what would it be like if you are to become the best software developer you can be. Imagine the money you will earn. The opportunities to work on your own time anywhere in the world. Let the feelings brought about by these imagination fill you. Now think of the things that you have to do to achieve this dream. Obviously you will need to work extremely hard. You will need to sacrifice time for other things for this dream to come true. Was it ok for you? Would you be able to accept these sacrifices? If not, are you willing to? No matter what, no matter how hard it will be? Do the same thing for the other items in your list. Afterwards, reflect on this experience, which dreams of yours gave you the most ecstatic feeling? Are you now ready? This item will be your dream. This mental picture of yourself achieving your dreams will be the reason for your life.

 Now that you have determined what you really want in life it's time to plan out and identify your goals that are aligned with this dream.

Failing Means Lack of Follow Through

when you get right down to the root of the meaning of the word * succeed * , you find it simple means to follow through..

The lack of success, or the failure to succeed, is the lack of follow through. So in order to succeed we must follow through our goals. But, of course, it's easier said than done. But now that we know what the essence of failure, which is lack of follow through, we can now face the enemy and try to overcome it.

What are some of the most common reasons for lack of follow through?
They are

1) It is not really what you want.

That's why when something else comes along you get easily distracted and might pivot or change your goals completely. Here are tips on how to determine what you really want in life.

2) You were unable to change who you are or part of who you are. 

If you keep doing what you've been doing then you can expect the same result. Because insanity is doing the same things but expecting different result. If you want to achieve something you don't have you got to do things you've never done before. Determine the things you need to change about yourself.

3) Not being able to keep yourself on track

By tracking your progress (or lack thereof) you can determine where to adjust your efforts and where to continue your efforts. Plus, tracking your progress motivates you when you're doing good and helps you put things into perspective when your progress is not that good.


All of these 3 are equally important.

Some people have determined what they really want to do with their life but they fall short because they were unable to change some of their bad habits that are becoming more and more of an obstacle in achieving their goals. Some people needs to enhance their skills in order to move forward and achieve their goals and in this regards they might have failed in enhancing these skills resulting in failure to achieving their goals. It is important to note that not all bad habits will keep you from achieving your goals. In fact, there are very successful people who in spite of their bad habits or vices were able to still reach success. In this matter, perseverance in spite of these obstacles in our selves overcomes these things to achieve success.

Some people have determined what they really want to do with their life and have the right kind of values and skills and good habits but they still fall short in achieving their goals. This is where Not being able to keep yourself on track matters a lot. It's like a hard worker with the mission vision of the company but then the company lacks the CEO. In every company, keeping track of progress is of paramount importance. Tracking one's progress enables one to see where he or she can be more efficient by examining previous efforts and results. Tracking one's progress enables us to at least have a vague prediction of the future or be able to determine likely scenarios in the future and thus be able to allocate our efforst in the future more effectively.

Why making a list of your goals is still effective

Making a list of your goals is still effective but it's not the be-all end-all of achieving your goals. This is one of the reasons many people brush off listing their goals because listing their goals doesn't do it for them. But listing your goals is just one of the steps in achieving your goals. In fact it is just the beginning, the first step being determining what you really want in life. Then when you have listed your goals, it's time to determine the possible obstacles that you will face, as well as you are currently facing that will make you less efficient or effective in achieving this list. After, you should create a system around your life (meaning everyday waking hours of yourself). This is to be able to make doing the things you need to do as natural and efficient as possible in the most consistent way possible. It wouldn't also hurt to have tools that you can use every day that reinforces your productive actions and help you.


In this blog post however, I will focus on how to write down an effective list of goals. First, determine what you really want in life. It's hard to write down your goals if you don't know what you want in life. You might think, "but isn't determining what I want in life the same with the goals I will list?" They are mostly the same, if you don't process what you want in life to more specific items, now, these items are what becomes your goals.

I might go as far as saying that determining what you really want in life are your dreams. And your list of goals are your targets to be able to achieve your goals that are in turn aligned with your dreams. Dreams are more about the purest emotions and sensations that determines what makes you ultimately passionately happy while goals are more about concrete and specific targets that you set out to achieve.


For example, you have determined that what you really want in life is to be a successful software developer and be able to work from home freelancing making applications. You might say this is not specific, S.M.A.R.T. method teaches me to be specific about my goals. But we're not in goals yet. We're still in dreams, that part inside of you that lights up, that feels your entire being with fire and passion and peace at the same time.

Now that you've determined you want to be a successful software developer and be able to work from home freelancing making applications, you will now get to being more specific about it. This process will require you to brainstorm the goals that are aligned with your determined dreams. For example, you can come up with this list:

• Study design patterns more
• Study Reactive programming
• Build a library and publish it on github as open source
• Publish a technical blog regularly
• Start a side project
• Apply for work from home projects (either full time or part time)

Now that we've listed our goals, it's time to determine obsta... Wait!

Do you think your goals are specific enough that they can be converted to actionable items (Getting Things Done)? Let's see.

Study design patterns more - What exactly do we want to achieve from this? Why do we need it? Is it aligned with our dream of becoming a better software developer? Definitely yes. We've already determined that it's indeed important to be able to study design patterns more. But to what extent? Here, we can say, study design patterns more up to the point that I can explain them in my own words, apply them in my projects, and put up a tutorial about design patterns to see if I have really understood them. Now that's more specific. Being a software developer, we already know that there are LOTS of design patterns out there. Do we really need to know all of them? In my line of work, mobile applications developer for Android Appications, I want to focus my field on business and consumer apps and do not go to games development. Design patterns used for business apps are most often different from the design patterns used for games development. So I break up "Design Patterns" to more specific design patterns: I have determined that Facade Pattern, Factory Pattern, Composite Pattern, Command Pattern.

Study Reactive programming - Right now I just want to be able to understand reactive programming, create a simple app on my process of learning it. But it's not yet necessary for me to apply reactive programming on my next professional project. I have determined to myself that I am giving design patterns knowledge higher priority over reactive programming knowledge for now. So I can say that my goal is to study reactive programming, apply it on a simple small pet project on the process of learning it to see how it's implemented.

Build a library and publish it on github as open source - Right now I don't have a specific library that I want to build. But I am positive that building a library and publishing it as open source on github will be an invaluable experience for me in becoming a better software developer because of the skills I will gain in developing a library and the feedbacks I will get by open sourcing it. So one of the action items that might go here is determine what library to build.

Publish a technical blog regularly - The lack of specifics in this goal is apparent. What topics am I targeting? Obviously these technical blogs will have to do with programming so that it's aligned with my dream of becoming a software developer. But what topics? Or at least I should identify the categories for the topics. Being a software developer, I know that coding encompasses a vast area of knowledge in terms of software development. I can focus on topics/categories relating to accessing and optimizing database and business objects on my applications. I can focus on the security part of my applications. Maybe the architecture I will use. And also, how regular am I targeting to blog? I am thinking blogging twice a week (Wednesday and Saturday) for 3 months for now. And determine after 3 months if I will continue with 2 blogs a week or level it up with 3 or more blogs a week.

Start a side project - The first question here is, what kind of side project? We have to align this side project with becoming a better software developer. Something challenging enough. How long am I planning to allocate for this side project? 3 months? What skills am I expecting to get from this side project. I want to be able to apply the design patterns that I will learn to this side project. So obviously, starting a side project goal comes after learning the design patterns. I am thinking of creating an ecommerce mobile app that will encompass database, security, user profiles, that comes with animated UI transitions and interactions for an engaging ecommerce mobile app.

Apply for work from home projects (either full time or part time) - Here I have to determine specifically if I want to have a full time or part time work from home gig. Because right now my dream is to become a better software developer and I have determined that I have lots of things to enhance first in my software development skills I have decided to go part time work from home first. I strongly the money will come after me when I have achieved my becoming a better software developer dream automatically.

Now that we have made our list more specific we have also naturally came to the ordering of these items.

1.a) Study design patterns more

1.b) Publish a technical blog regularly

1.c) Start a side project

2) Apply for work from home projects (either full time or part time)

3)Build a library and publish it on github as open source

4) Study Reactive programming

1.a), 1.b), and 1.c) can be done simultaneously with my time.

You also need to put a deadline or milestones in your goals

Study design patterns more - 3 months

Publish a technical blog regularly - after 1 month, review my efforts and see if I have achieved my target frequency of blogging.

Start a side project - 3 months

Apply for work from home projects (part time) - start focusing on this after 3 months

Build a library and publish it on github as open source - everyday allot 15 minutes of my time in determining what library I want to build.

Study Reactive programming - study this after 3 months

Now we can have a list of goals like below:

1.a) Study design patterns more - finished by March 15, 2017

1.b) Publish a technical blog regularly - on February 15, 2017, review my efforts and see if I have achieved my target frequency of blogging.

1.c) Start a side project - finished by March 15, 2017

2) Apply for work from home projects (either full time or part time) - start focusing on this after on March 15, 2017

3)Build a library and publish it on github as open source - everyday allot 15 minutes of my time in determining what library I want to build.

4) Study Reactive programming - start this on March 15, 2017

Being specific enough in your goals prevent you from wandering off when distractions arrive.

S.M.A.R.T. Plan Method

When listing down your goals you have to do it the smart way. With the S.M.A.R.T. Plan Method.

Here's how it works. Just remember the acronym and you're good to go for the most part. Practice makes perfect.

S - Specific

      Being specific means that you have squeezed out the whats in your goal.
      For example:
      "Study design patterns more"
      Questions you should be asking yourself because "Study design patterns more." is too big and             vague of a goal:
      What exactly do we want to achieve from this?
      What is its alignment with our dream of becoming a better software developer?
      To what extent are we studying design patterns? Here, we can say, study design patterns more up         to the point that I can explain them in my own words, apply them in my projects, and put up a             tutorial about design patterns to see if I have really understood them.

      Now that's more specific.
      What particular design patterns do I want to learn more? In my line of work, mobile applications         developer for Android Applications, I want to focus my field on business and consumer apps.             So I break up "Design Patterns" to more specific design patterns: I have determined that Facade           Pattern, Factory Pattern, Composite Pattern, Command Pattern.

M - Measurable

      Your goal should be measurable in terms of progress. How would you know that you're on track?
      You should be able to answer the questions with How Much or How Many.
      For example:
      How many design patterns should I have been able to explain in my own words on March 15?
      How many design pattern tutorials should I have published by March 15?

A - Achievable

      Goals should have timeframes. Is your goal achievable for your set timeframe? Are the concrete
      action items that are required to achieve this goal possible to do in your current situation? If not,
      you may need to adjust your timeframe or you may need to set smaller goals first that are aligned
      with this bigger goal and focus on them first.

R - Relevant

      This criteria is very important. Is your goal relevant or aligned with your dreams? If your goal is
      not relevant to your ultimate dream you might find it to be a struggle in keeping your focus in the       action items for your goal because the goal might not be aligned to what you really want in life.

T - Timely

      Assign a reasonable deadline for your goal. Better yet, divide them into smaller milestones so you
      are kept motivated every milestone until you reach your deadline. Treat this deadline very                   seriously so that you do the action items required religiously and consistently every single day             possible.

Advantages of having a S.M.A.R.T. Plan

• Keeps you motivated during your journey towards achieving your goal.
• Gives you the structure to be able to track the progress of your goal.
• Helps you identify goals that are too big for your current situation and break them down to more manageable goals.
• Helps you identify goals that are not aligned with what you truly want in life.
• Helps you not be overwhelmed by the goals you set out for yourself.

   

Why you need a To Do List in your Life

I heavily rely on To Do Lists. As a matter of fact I have relied on them very much that whenever I am without a todo list I am quite not as focused. Why would anyone need a todo list? Isn't just enough to just identify what you need to do and just get it done? Or isn't it enough to just go with the flow of your day? Doing things or tasks as they arrive. For me this is a definite no-no.

Why?

Well personally speaking, I have come to the realization that To Do Lists are very effective to me in the following:

1) Focus

Having a To Do List lets me focus to do an item in my list. How? By having the knowledge that what I am doing have been previously identified by me as a task that is worthy of doing (whether this task is an urgent but unimportant one, or an urgent and important one, or not urgent but important one - as described by Stephen in his 7 Effective Habits of Successful people)

2) Prioritize

Having written down all of my tasks in one list (and actually I categorize my items of doables w/c would be for another blog of how I categorize my doables), I am now able to determine w/c items are more important than others. Hence I can now do this more important items first before doing the less important ones as long as the time is right. Doing an action task requires also that you do them in the right timing - w/c is mentioned in David Allen's Getting Things Done system which I highly adhere to).

3) Track

I can track w/c items I have already done and w/c items are sitting long in my list left undone. Based on these information I have the clearer mind to decide what to do with my left items and I can have a sense of better accomplishment which leads to higher motivation when I view the items I have already accomplished.

4) Efficient Time Usage

Because I have my list of items I have to do, I want to do, and I need to do, I don't waste time on unnecessary things like bumming around for way too long (because sometimes it helps to bum around but on a tracked time and not for as long as you feel like it which might lead to laziness!), watching TV (heck, I hardly watch any TV at all regularly, although I'm still guilty of sometimes splurging on many hours on my favorite series like before the Breaking Bad, or Silicon Valley, hehe ^_^

5) Keep Sane

Sometimes you have so many things in your mind or you know you need to do so many things that it just drives you crazy! Having a To Do list with the proper mindset and a proper system of having a To Do List will surely help in keeping your sanity. I highly recommend David Allen's Getting Things Done system and not just a one long super list of To Do list.

6) Simplify

To Do list greatly helps me simply my life. I can easily detect unnecessary things and avoid them. I can easily determine if an item in my list is not that important or urgent and move them to their proper category. This really helps because I don't have to constantly think about things I need/want to do because they're just there in my list and not at the back of my mind. You see, simplifying your life greatly improves in keeping your sanity ;)

7) Free up unnecessary memorization

Just like what I had mentioned in simplifying your life because things will not be constantly on the back of your mind and constantly popping up from time to time, having a to do list will avoid these items from being unnecessarily in the back of your mind all of the time. Just list them, tuck them away on a category and focus on your next actions and not actions that are for someday or "maybe" ;)

I hope this helps you decide to finally have a ToDo List System of your own if you don't have a regular ToDo List yet. And if you do have already a ToDo List feel free to share how it helps you in your life ^_^

A comparison of the GTD / Todo Apps for Android

What I look for in a GTD App:
- alarms/notifications that can be set per hour/daily/weekly/monthly & yearly
-sync with online services like Toodledo.com,Google Tasks, Google Calendar, Dropbox, Remember the Milk, etc.
-prioritization
-ease of adding tasks
-ease of viewing tasks
-projects and subtasks capability
-notification by location
-interface
-sorting
-searching

Astrid Task
GTasks
Mobisle Notes
Task List - Todo List
2Do
Jorte
Remember The Milk
Springpad
Taskos
Any.Do
DGT GTD
Wunderlist
MLO
Nozbe
Tasks+
OpenLoopz