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5 Ways to Track Your Progress (And Why it's so Important) - RescueTime
Write in a diary
... for 5 minutes a day.
At the end of each day, take a few minutes to write about what you worked on. Make sure to note both your “small wins” and any setbacks.
At the end of the month, flip back through your notes and see how far you’ve come. It’s amazing the clarity you get from seeing the progress you made over a longer period
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10
Key Ideas
Being purposeful with your day
Time management is about taking control of the time you do have available and using it optimally for productivity while creating balance.
How to plan your day
Much advice about time management is about creating a to-do list, reminding you what you want to do. However, it's more important to use a schedule, which tells you when you're going to do it.
- Create "bookends" for each day. Consider your morning and evening routines, then "block" in time for your most important tasks. For example, a 2-hour writing-block every morning after breakfast.
- Set aside time for your most important projects. The object is to be purposeful about what and when you're going to do something.
- Schedule in breaks. A schedule has to be realistic. That means including time for breaks, food, exercise, social time, and other "non-school" tasks that keep you happy.
Be aware of how you’re spending your time
To build a better time management system, you need to know what you currently spend your time on. You need to know where you're losing time to the wrong things.
To track your time, spend a few days writing a "time log" to track how you spend your day.
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Key Ideas
Learning how to prioritize...
...means getting more out of the limited time you have each day. It’s one of the cornerstones of productivity and once you know how to properly prioritize, it can help with everything from your time management to work life balance.
Master lists
Capture everything on a Master List and then break it down by monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
- Start by making a master list—a document, app, or piece of paper where every current and future task will be stored.
- Once you have all your tasks together, break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
- When setting your priorities, try not to get too “task oriented” - you want to make sure you’re prioritizing the more effective work.
Eisenhower Matrix
The matrix is a simple four-quadrant box that answers that helps you separate “urgent” tasks from “important” ones:
- Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible
- Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it
- Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else
- Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible.
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Key Ideas
The Progress Principle: Tiny steps build motivation
If you wait for the ideal conditions before you start, you'll probably never do it.
A lack of motivation is an emotional issue. That means there is no hack to save you. The best way to get motivated is just to start. Small steps on meaningful tasks will build motivation.
Look for ways your work impacts the people around you
Procrastination is worst when we don't see the point of our jobs. The connection to a larger purpose helps us find meaning and motivation at work.
If your job doesn't make a huge impact, think about how it has helped the people you spend your day with. Each day, write down three ways your work has helped your coworkers.
Giving advice to someone else can be motivating
We don't lack motivation because we don't know how to be motivated, but because we don't know how to act on our own knowledge.
When we feel unmotivated, it's common to seek advice. But research shows that giving advice can be more motivating than receiving advice.