Tracking Goals – How do you do it?

I'm setting up a series of year-long goals for myself in 2012 and I'm not sure how to track my progress in a way that will inspire me to keep going.

I sort of want to do weekly updates, thus having 52 blog posts that parallel my journey for each goal. But I'm wondering if monthly updates might be better— I know daily is just asking for trouble since part of the learning curve for habits is failing at them for a bit first. (It's only fun logging progress, not so much the failures.)

So I was wondering, how are other folks going to track their goals? Are you using third-party websites or blog posts or spreadsheets or colored pebbles in giant glass jars?

*pokes goals and ponders*

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Martha.net
-- Unquiet Bones (Writing)
-- Custom-Models.com (Model Horses)
-- Perish Twice (Warcraft)
... because you can never have enough hobbies.

I think weekly will be better personally. You're right, daily is asking for trouble because it becomes a chore - but if you leave it a month you will have a lot more to write and many people I know prefer to read short bursts rather than longer ones. Also, when I started my blog I intended to update it every week ... then month ... it's turning into every year :-) Joking!

Seriously, the problem with doing it monthly is that you may find you forget to put something in so you need to back track and that may confuse the readers.

I'm kind of doing the same thing because I'm helping someone so I'm logging my progress for her. I hoped for a daily update but that will be impossible now because I've got so much on. Now I've started emailing her when I've made a major progression or a big mistake - that type of thing. Also if you do it on a daily basis it may become a little mundane as most things do when done on a daily basis.

Hope that helps.

Mel

REMEMBER: It's the things you DON'T do in life that you regret, not what you do, do!

I've set up a spreadsheet for myself, with daily, weekly, and monthly goals.

Right now, my goals are as follows--

Daily:
--Write >750 words of fiction
--stretch every night

Weekly:
--Exercise for at least 2 hours
--Read at least 1 chapter in a book I haven't read before

Monthly:
--finish a knitting project (or at least don't start a new one when I've already got a bunch on the needles)

When I reach my goal, the cell turns green. Last week, I read but I didn't exercise (other than walking during lunch, which I'm not counting towards my exercise time), so the cell turned orange. If I miss a goal completely, the cell will turn red. It's an easy, visual way to keep track of where I am with my goals.

I think if, by the end of the month, the majority of my cells are green, I'll reward myself. We'll have to see how things look at the end of January, though.

The old fashioned way(since me and electronics don't mix well, I use them at bare minimum). I write down what I want to accomplish in the current month. It gives me a wide time span to finish them, and if I finish before the month does, then my reward is to "take the rest of the month off". It's good incentive for me to finish the projects early :)

One thing I've done before, which worked well, was to write down my goals on a sheet of paper and pin them up on a wall or on the fridge, and then highlight them when I'd reached them. Highlighting makes it really easy to see what you've completed.

Goals are great for most people. As the other's have mentioned above, write down what you want to accomplish and give yourself a due date. So many people here like NaNo because they have a deadline. No reason you couldn't give yourself a deadline for your goals.

Of course, advice about goals from me probably isn't the best. For me they're stupid. I don't control my life so trying to say, "I'm going to accomplish X and then Y" is wasting my time. If I'm trying to accomplish something and not paying attention to the people around me, they'll start resenting what I'm doing. "You would rather do X than be with me!" Boohoo.

For example, I want to get "The Seraphim Protocol" published. Is it going to happen? Probably not. I can't even get my friends to look at it, why would a publisher give it a second glance? Does it matter that it probably won't get published? Naw. Because for me goals are stupid.

Webgoji, your friends probably don't want to read your book and find flaws in it, because they are your friends. This is true whether your ms. is wonderful or not. They don't want to ruin the friendship. (My friends don't want to read my mss., either.) That does not mean a publisher wouldn't be interested. A completed manuscript is not meant to sit in a drawer. Send it out into the world and see what happens.

MarthaB--It all depends on your memory. Are you the kind of person who gets distracted and suddenly finds that a week (or a month) has gone by and none of the goals have been addressed, let alone accomplished? If so, I'd recommend setting up a daily check-in with your spreadsheet, your blog, your bulletin board, the sticky notes on your computer monitor, your to-do list, your peeps, or whatever.

I find that keeping a spreadsheet by itself does not remind me to write every day. Posting every day on a forum does. I may bore people by updating my progress, but the mere fact that I do it on a daily basis reminds me to get the writing done. It certainly works during November.

I know a pro writer who literally schedules all her time in advance to make sure she does the writing she intends to do. She blocks out the parts of her day, and there they are, in her appointment calendar. This works for her. Might be too rigid for people who aren't full-time writers.

Having a method of keeping yourself on track is just as important as writing down the goals, IMO. Which reminds me, I need to write some for myself.