This morning, I found myself standing in front of my bathroom mirror, holding a ruler and taking measurements of… various things.

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

I like this quote, often attributed to Peter Drucker. But, there are lots of smart quotes we all never follow. The best lessons are those that are learned by yourself. Here’s mine. I hope It helps you to achieve your goals, learn new things, and even win arguments.

The problem

This year I made a decision to take a break from my daily work routine and focus on my personal goals and projects. It allowed me to rethink my priorities and work towards a more fulfilling life.

As I embarked on this journey, I was filled with excitement and anticipation about all the cool stuff that lay ahead. I set out to establish new habits that would help me lead a better life, both personally and professionally.

At first, everything seemed to fall into place, and I was able to go about my tasks with ease. I focused on doing things when I felt good, and I felt proud of myself for doing something. However, as time went on, I realized that staying motivated and committed to my goals was not as easy as I had thought it would be.

As I was going through my to-do list, I realized that one of my significant and crucial projects had not been updated for a long time. It was a surprise for me! I had been keeping myself busy all the time! Or… at least that’s what I thought.

I began to wonder how this could have happened. Was it because I was trying to juggle too many things at once? Or maybe I wasn’t prioritizing my tasks effectively? It was clear that something was not working as intended, and I knew that I had to take a moment to analyze what was going on.

I needed to pause to reassess things. Or I could easily find myself wasting my days scrolling through social media and indulging in unhealthy eating habits. Without making any progress on my important project. Days could turn into weeks, weeks into months, and then, the whole year would have passed. It doesn’t seem good to me. It was entirely opposite to what I had imagined in my head when I started.

The journey

Upon self-reflection, I realized that I had difficulty pinpointing my blind spot. However, after some thought and observation, I came to the realization that I was not alone in this struggle. In fact, it appears to be a common challenge among individuals. Surprisingly, many are not even aware of this blind spot. This obstacle I am referring to is the act of progress tracking. It is easy to become busy and FEEL productive, but that does not necessarily mean we are making progress toward our goals.

Here’s come the reality – time is limited, and motivation is freaking unstable. When I felt motivated I did something complicated and felt so proud of myself! When I didn’t – I did something easy to make me feel productive. But, honestly, nobody cares how busy I was. Everyone needs results.

It’s essential to remember that, in the end, it’s results that matter, not effort. While effort is undoubtedly necessary, it’s only by producing tangible results that we can truly show our worth. Athletes, for example, are not celebrated for their effort alone. It’s their performance that ultimately determines their success. Similarly, in the business world, it’s not just about working hard; it’s about achieving results that set you apart from the competition. Whether it’s finishing a painting, writing a book, or completing a personal goal, it’s the results that matter most.

Remember, in the end, it’s not just about how busy you are but about what you’ve accomplished. And, surprisingly, it works in both ways – achieving the results doesn’t often require being busy.

YOU also need results. Especially if they are related to yourself and your projects. Honestly, your projects must be the most important to you than proving something to someone else. (In my case – I need the result of my projects).

The solution

There’s a catch – long projects’ progress is not obvious. Long projects can be challenging because progress may not always be immediately noticeable. It is easy to become lost during the extended period of time that you are working on them. Occasionally, there may be some visible indications of progress that can give you a sense of accomplishment, but this is not always the case. For instance, when working on a project like getting in shape, it can be difficult to see tangible progress over months! Or learning a new language. Or developing a video game.

Video game. “Hey! I can do games!” I remembered. “I’m a game producer, after all!”. And I also did some exercises with progress tracking in the mobile app. At least I have something to start.

After a short research, it turned out that the only thing I keep consistent enough was my morning physical exercises. Let me show off a little — I was able to increase my ABS crunches from just 30 to a whopping 300 per set in just four months of daily exercise! Thanks to the app — it has both notifications and a fancy graph where you clearly see your progress. And it also displays gaps in the graph when I skipped working out (which makes me feel bad).

So, if it works, I need to apply the same principle to other areas of my life that I want to improve on. Shrink motivation spikes or other possible distractions to keep the progress more consistent. And to make it less affected by my personal perception. I need a system. Again. I love building systems!

It feels like applying a more professional producer approach to my life, so seeing progress and results will be a good thing. I crave that same feeling of accomplishment in my personal life. Basically, I need to manage myself as I would manage someone else. Sounds harsh. My first thought was to use JIRA, but it seems too complicated and time-consuming to manage. I need something simpler to make the planning fast and that won’t turn into “planning just to feel busy”.

I’ve been writing daily dairy in Notion for a long time and already stick to it. Why not add habit tracking to those daily pages? To achieve this, I added a new parameter to my Notion diary page. That helps me monitor my progress. To calculate the percentage of completed tasks against the maximum amount, I included a short formula that makes the process easier and more accurate.

BTW, if you are also interested in using Notion to track your habits, there are several habit tracker templates available both online and on Notion’s official templates. However, the most crucial aspect is having a way to measure your progress regularly.

For today, I am tracking eight habits simultaneously while replacing established ones with new ones as I progress.

If you want to learn more about my productivity approach, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter. I will be sharing more details in upcoming posts to help you improve your productivity and achieve your goals.

The results of my efforts were astounding! Just by adding simple visualization, I was able to dramatically increase the efficiency of my daily habits. From a measly 20% to an incredible average of 55-60%, nearly tripling my initial efficiency. And that’s not all, in just two short months, I was able to further improve my average to a staggering 72%! Worth noticing, that achieving 100% efficiency is difficult to maintain as it requires a decent amount of time each day. Which is not always readily available, especially if you’re doing a lot of non-habit (or project) activities. So I aim to the 75% daily.

Last week, I decided to take a closer look at my weekly goals tracking. At first, I thought I was doing pretty well. Especially when I compared my progress to a time before I started tracking my goals. However, after making similar calculations, I realized that I was actually only completing 27% of my planned tasks on average each week. Ouch! This realization made me take a step back and reevaluate my approach to goal setting and tracking. I realized that in order to be more consistent and successful, I needed to make some changes again. For example, I might need to set more achievable goals or break them down into smaller, more manageable tasks. Additionally, I need to hold myself accountable for meeting my goals.

What does this say to us?

Just simple tracking of ANY progress increases its efficiency. Even simple visualization. In fact, adding even a simple graph to the tracking process is often the most effective step toward achieving the desired outcome.

The approach

“Just measure your progress and you’ll be OK” is a simple and self-explained topic, but it’s not the only thing I’d like to tell you. I want to add a bit of WHY and HOW to use it in almost anything goal-oriented in your life.

With a little bit of imagination, you can see everything in your life as a project. A big one, like a getting new job, learning a new language, or getting yourself into new relationships. Or a smaller one, like getting on vacation or training your dog a new trick. You can achieve your goal without hesitation just by doing what you’re doing. Or you can approach it as a project and apply basic project management techniques.

If you’re feeling fine in the first option, that’s totally fine. But when you’re struggling with something — it’s a good notification that you might need to do it another way. Basically, without any measurements, we cannot clearly see where we at in the project and where we’re heading to. And be sure that we’re heading in the right direction.

But why is measuring your progress so important? For one thing, it helps to keep you motivated by providing a clear sense of accomplishment as you move closer to your goals. It makes working through bigger projects much more enjoyable. Additionally, tracking your progress can help you identify areas where you may need to adjust your approach or put in some extra effort. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular to use such systems in language learning mobile apps.

One approach to managing non-work-related tasks is to treat them like a project. By doing so, you not only increase your chances of achieving your goals, but you can also do so in a more efficient and predictable manner. This approach can also help you develop important skills in managing tasks while working with others. For example, you may need to coordinate with family members or friends to plan a vacation. Or work with a team of volunteers to organize a community event. By seeing these life activities as projects, you will learn valuable skills that help you professionally.

Split it into steps. Then into smaller steps. Then schedule them one by one. And don’t forgive to make it visually appealing!

You can’t manage people if you can’t manage yourself.

This quote, although its origin is unknown to me, has been stuck in my head for several years. It highlights a crucial aspect of interacting with people. When managing people, being organized is a must. If we want to lead people correctly and help them make good work, first of all, we must have our different tasks completely under control. This is only possible if we have complete control over our own tasks and responsibilities.

So, we have to manage ourselves first.