Like many, during lockdown and COVID I found myself not working out. I was eating poorly and feeling the effects of both as the weight on the scale climbed. Since then, I have really been prioritizing my physical health and have finally gotten into a wonderful routine. I get up at 5:30 every day, go to the gym, and get in an amazing workout. It consists of functional stretching, conscious movement and high intensity interval training. After a recent workout I got to thinking…how do we measure progress in our lives? Is it simply through comparing ourselves to others? Or do we actually have metrics that can show us exactly what direction we are heading and how quickly? What I’ve realized is that most of us don’t have systems for tracking our progress! It feels like we aren’t ever making any. And this can feel frustrating!

Tracking Your Transformations

A month ago I started a 60 day transformation workout challenge. I did this specifically because wanted to see how much I could personally improve if I stick to a routine, stay disciplined, and make a conscious commitment to something I say I want. At the beginning of the 60 day journey, my trainer took all of my measurements. I found out how much I weighed, my body mass index, my body fat percentage, my muscle mass. We even did a series of exercises that measured my performance. 30 days in, we are at a checkpoint and on Friday we retested. 

The number on a scale is not an accurate indicator of what our health or fitness level actually is and the same goes for other areas of our lives like business as well. 

How are you measuring your progress?

Whatever goal that you’re pursuing, whether it’s physical health or not, how are you measuring your progress? And if you’re not, you are missing out on such opportunities to re-energize and re-motivate yourself to gain momentum when you are working on a big project or big goal. When we do these checkpoints every 30 days, we’re able to see how we are actually progressing. You’re able to take a big goal and cut it down into smaller chunks and pieces that makes it feel manageable while reigniting your excitement for the work that you’re doing.

 As soon as I looked deeper into the data around my metrics, I was really excited. I was ready and motivated to show up this week and to go for it a hundred percent. If I have never had a baseline understanding of where I started, how would I know where I was now and where I was headed?

How I Measure Progress

This is in personal and in business. I do this with my team every single month. At the beginning of the month, my team tracks metrics. I am able to see in my business and ask:

• How many more followers have we gained?
• What was our previous month’s revenue? 
• Email click and open rate? 
• What trends do we see?
• What are our customers saying?

This gives us clear insight into how we should move forward.

• How can we be flexible? 
• Where do we need to improve? 
• What’s not working?
• What is working really well?
• What areas are we doing really, really well in and how can we continue to do that?”

That transparency into the data, whether it’s around your health, business, or finances, is so critical to do these check-ins to measure your own progress. And let’s be honest, some of us would rather not know. They say ignorance is bliss for a reason. That’s because seeing the brutal honest truth of where you are can be painful, but is never as costly as the pain of staying where you are. And that’s exactly where you will stay if you don’t begin to measure your progress and celebrate the micro-wins! 

Ready to make the change?

So, here are some suggestions for you. If you are moving towards overall optimization of your physical health, of your business, of your finances, take the time every 30 days to track your numbers. This could be tracking your revenue or tracking your progress and journal that down. Then look at it; analyze it. See how you’ve improved. It’s going to keep you dedicated and committed to the thing you said you’re going to do. Most importantly, it’s going to remind you why you started. 

We don’t just hope to have a different relationship with our body or more money in our account and magically just wake up and have it. There’s a process that must happen in order to achieve these things and if we fall in love with that process, and tracking our progress is part of it, then you’re going to see so much more success, traction and momentum as you move towards your goals.

Give Your Progress an Upgrade

If you are looking for guidance on identifying your starting point and creating those attainable goals, I highly suggest that you go and grab my Upgrade Your Reality Bootcamp. It’s all about helping you to get so explicitly clear about where you currently are in your life, in every area, finance, health, and wellness career relationships. If you don’t know where you are, you are never going to get where you want to be. https://torigordon.com/upgrade-your-reality-bootcamp