Have you ever started pursing a goal only to stop after a few weeks? From my experience I have found that whenever I did not achieve a particular goal it was because I forgot what I had to do day-by-day to achieve that goal. This scenario has probably happened to you before:
You’ve stuck to your diet and exercise plan perfectly for 7 days. Something comes up on day 8 distrupting you from your fitness plan. Day 9 you are recovering from whatever happened on day 8 so you tell yourself that you’ll continue the fitness plan on day 10. Day 10 rolls around and you forget that you were on any sort of fitness plan.
An easy way to solve this problem and keep you on track to your goals is to track your behavior (also mentioned in the working man’s weight loss tips). You can either create your own checklist or use an online habit tracker like Joe’s Goals . Here’s what my daily checklist looks like:
- Healthy Breakfast
- Healthy Brunch Snack
- Healthy Lunch
- Healthy Afternoon Snack
- Healthy Dinner
- Exercise
- 8 cups of water
When a task on the list is completed, I mark it with a check mark. When I did not complete a task I mark that task with an X mark. I update my checklist at least one per day (even on my off days like day 8 and 9). Keeping track of your progress does the following thing:
- A checklist holds you accountable
- A checklist reminds you what needs to be done each day
- Your past progress helps motivate you to keep you going
- An unchecked task triggers your inner OCD to push you to complete that task.
- You feel accomplished everytime you check something off from the list. You are more likely to stick to your goals if you feel you are making progress.
Maintaining a checklist should take you no more than a few minutes per day and it should give you great results (high ROI). Give it a try and let me know how it works out for you!
