Here’s a short quiz. How many minutes did you exercise this week? How many hours did you sit yesterday? Did you take more than 2,500 steps today? How about yesterday? Most people will have no idea. If you are working towards any goal, you should be tracking your progress.
There is power in tracking. In fact, research has proven that tracking your progress can improve your chances of reaching your goals. Moreover, you can improve your chances even more if you publicly or physically record it. Here are five ways why tracking works.
1. The Mere-Measurement Effect
The Mere-Measurement Effect says that merely measuring or questioning an individual’s intentions or anticipated regret changes their behavior. In other words, you may change your mind when you realize it will negatively affect your efforts to reach a goal.
For example, you will watch what you eat if you are trying to lose weight. Inevitably, you will become hungry. Since you’re tracking what you’re eating, you may put that cookie back and grab an apple instead because you’re tracking your progress and would have to write it down. As a result, you are actively making smarter choices and small changes.
This goes beyond exercise or weight management. It can affect other aspects of our lives. The Mere-Measurement Effect can sometimes be enough to change your habits and reach your goals.
2. Focuses Your Attention
Tracking your progress helps you stay on track because you’re paying attention to your behavior. Although tracking can be an extra step in your day, it is an excellent way to force you to pay attention to your goal or the behavior that you’re trying to change.
3. Creates a Baseline
A baseline is a starting point to use as a comparison. Your baseline will help you know where you are and give you something to compare yourself against a future you. More importantly, it can help set realistic goals.
For example, you currently walk 2,500 steps a day. However, setting your goal of 10,000 steps may be harder to achieve without tracking your steps. It’s better to work your way there by setting achievable milestones, such as 5,000 steps a day. Without a baseline, you could embark on a journey that isn’t attainable, which can quickly become frustrating, and you give up. A baseline is essential to establish milestones that help you progressively work toward your goal.
4. Shows Progress
Nothing is more satisfying than seeing your efforts pay off. Continuously tracking your progress helps measure your improvements. Furthermore, celebrating big and small wins is important to motivate yourself, build confidence, and maintain momentum.
5. Identify Problems
If you aren’t tracking yourself, how do you know if you’re making progress? If you can’t review your efforts, it will be harder to identify what you need to change. Otherwise, you may wonder why you aren’t progressing. As a result, you’ll become frustrated and give up.
Tracking your progress can give you the information you need to understand the problem, why it’s happening, and how to get back on track toward your goal.
Tracking Your Progress
There are many ways to track your progress. You could use a fitness tracker or app, keep notes on a calendar, journal, day planner, or even sticky notes. Whatever you have can work. Regardless of what you use to track yourself, you should record as much information related to your behaviors as possible to help move you toward your goal.
When starting, tracking your progress will take time and effort because it’s not yet a habit. However, if you stick with it, the benefits will pay for themselves when you start making progress. Once you start seeing your progress unfold, your efforts start to get easier. Your confidence grows, and you see your hard work paying off, increasing your motivation and maintaining that momentum. So, start tracking your progress. Those who track also stay on track.
The Takeaway
Tracking your progress is essential to achieving a goal. It forces you to focus and helps influence your behavior. Once you establish your baseline, you can start tracking your efforts and monitoring your progress. Additionally, tracking your progress will help you identify potential issues and let you make adjustments to put yourself back on track. So, grab a notebook or an app, start tracking yourself, and work towards your goals.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your workouts, weight, mood, calories, and more. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect supported gadgets to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
