Happy New Year and welcome to 2019!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on my Intentional Living Guidebook & Planner which helps me work through my goals for 2019 from start to finish.

I have to share with you how excited I am after completing Step 2: Create A Vision Journal. This step is a journal prompt which allows you to write in the present tense as if it is December 2019 – just less than one year away – and you are in the best possible place you could reach if you aimed and worked hard.

After doing this journal prompt I am so eager to work through the Guidebook and realize all of my dreams for the year. It’s truly energizing to see how much difference one year can make if I work for it. The time is going to tick by either way. You may as well spend it trying to make as much progress in life as you can.

I’m in the process of defining my goals and how I am going to achieve them and one of the things I wanted to talk with you about is how to track the goals you set for yourself this year and a few of the things that help me to do this.

First, I strongly recommend starting this process by setting your goals up properly. For more on how to do this, check out my most recent blog post 7 Tips To Set Great Goals.

One of the tips in my last post was to ensure your goals are all measurable. Measurable means that there is a clear way for you to quantify and track your progress and to know when you’ve achieved your goal. Measurable goals are things like “Save $10,000 for a family vacation to Maui,” “Lose 15 pounds by April,” or “Fill 4 sketchbooks by the end of the year.” I call these quantifiable outcomes or, outcomes that have a numerical value.

I have a few tactics that I use to stay on track. The first thing I suggest doing is to break down your goals into long, medium, and short ranges such as quarterly, monthly, and weekly. For example, if you want to lose 15 pounds by April, you’ll need to lose around 4 pounds a month, or about 1 pound per week. The main reason I recommend doing this is to help stay on track, but it can also give you an idea of how realistic your goal is. For example, if your goal was to lose 40 pounds by April, you would quickly realize that you would need to lose 2.5 pounds per week, which may not only be unrealistic but could also be unhealthy.

Once I have my long, medium, and short ranges defined I will enter as much as I can into some type of tracking system such as a calendar, journal, or app.

I designed my Intentional Living Guidebook & Planner to be used for quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning and goal tracking.

Admittedly, I do use an app on my iPhone called Wunderlist which reminds me to do certain tasks, especially recurring tasks. I’ve been using Wunderlist for over a year now and highly recommend it to people who prefer digital methods of staying on top of your regular tasks.

How do you keep track of your goals throughout the year? I would love to hear about methods that work for you.

-Sarah