I don’t know about you, but I want to be a better person at the end of 2016 than I am at the end of 2015.
When the calendar flips to a new year, it’s natural for all of us to evaluate the journey to our current self and to contemplate what we want to change in the coming year. The waypoints by which you and I measure our respective progress might be very different from each other. The weight of each of our individual goals can shift from year to year, too. But most of us want to be wiser and improve on our circumstances.
I’m one of those people who make new year’s resolutions. I’m also one of the disappointed folks who has regularly seen those resolutions evaporate at some point of the year only to end up back on my list next December.
Soon after turning 30, I wanted to change that predictable pattern. I didn’t want to pay for a life coach or external structure. I knew I had to create some sort of personal accountability system beyond lists and aspirations.
I was struck by the notion that I track almost everything in my business to discover both problems and efficiencies. I even teach the importance of business and marketing analytics at seminars and professional conversations around the country. I decided to create my own personal analytics system to see the patterns and rhythms of my life. I hoped that this knowledge would work as both a measurement tool and an incentive system.
So far—even if sometimes at a glacial pace—it has.
Especially this time of year, you can find lots of digital and physical tools out there to help with goal setting and tracking. Do explore them to see which of them works best for you. Or draw ideas from different solutions to make your own. That’s what I did. Unlike my business tracking system on my Mac, my personal system relies on a paper form and a pen.
In case my system might inspire yours, I’ll tell you how it works.
First, I identified a list of healthy habits, enriching activities, and realistic-but-challenging accomplishments. Then I assigned point values for each task or outcome, based on degree of difficulty, time required, etc. (Since the start, I’ve not changed the point values—only added a few more activities that I’d like to track.)
At the end of every month, I tally the points and divide the total by the number of days in that month to get a points-per-day score. At the end of every year, I list the averages by month to be able to compare them to seasonal patterns from past years. I also average those twelve monthly scores to get a yearly approximate for average-per-day. (If I were more scientific, I would add up all the scores and divide by 365 or 366.)
You might assign rewards for a certain total of points. I’m so competitive that my reward is a rising score. So far, that has been incentive enough. My daily points average have risen 43% from 2009 to 2014.
Just as the first step in financial order is knowing where your money currently goes, personal analytics can give you a baseline for future comparison. Just as a food journal can alert you to the difference between your perception and your reality in your diet, a personal activity tracker can separate your intentions from your behavior. While there’s no cure-all to make your resolutions happen, a points system can at least give you actionable insight.
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Image purchased from iStockPhoto.com
