Tracking Habit Change Progress
One thing that can really help you be successful in your habit change endeavor is to track your progress. When you track your progress you will know how you are really doing, not just how you think you are doing. In your own estimation, without tracking, you can think you are doing much better or much worse than you really are, but with tracking you will know for sure how you are doing.
In tracking your habit change progress you will be able to see even tiny improvements that would have been missed otherwise. You will also be able to see where you need to work harder or think up new ways to help yourself succeed with your habit change.
Ways To Track Your Progress
There are many ways to track your progress. You will need to decide how often and in what way you will do the tracking. Most experts seem to agree that for daily habits, daily tracking works best and for weekly habits, weekly tracking works best. Some things may need to be tracked several times a day depending on what it is. Record your success at each instance and do not rely on you memory.
One easy way to track yourself is to make checkmarks on your calendar. This works well if you are only trying to track one thing that is easy to remember. If you are trying to record something that happens several times a day, a diary or journal might work best for you, for example, a food diary.
If you need to track several things at once, for example if you are wanting to start taking several different supplements at the same time, you could make a chart listing every supplement with a space to put a check mark next to it, either one page per day or one page per week. The chart could be a physical piece of paper or on your computer. If you are a smart phone user you could search for apps to help you track your habits or goals.
Review What You’ve Recorded
Be sure to review your list, chart, or journal regularly to actually see how much progress you are making. Reviews are best done weekly for daily items and monthly for weekly items. After your review, then you can decide if you need to make any changes to your routine in order to help you succeed.
If you’ve tried tracking your habits before and it has helped you, please leave me a comment and let me know how you did it and what you were tracking.