You can't make progress toward your goals if you don't even know what progress looks like. While that may sound like an obvious truth, you'd be surprised by how many people I talk to who don't know what kind of progress matters to them most.
Here are some questions to help you discover the metrics you should be paying attention to:
What do I want?
After six years of coaching hundreds of people, you'd be surprised by how many individuals I have worked with who are not in touch with their desires at all. Sure, they might know where they prefer to get sushi after work, but they don't know or acknowledge what they want most deeply out of their lives. Many of us have accepted blindly what society tells us to want, as if there was one American dream that will magically fulfill us all. Others have succumbed to the agenda of various people in their lives, whether it be parents or relatives or friends. None of these answers can actually lead you down the path of true meaning and satisfaction. You must answer for yourself — what do I want?
How will I know I got what I wanted?
Give yourself a clear description and paint a vivid picture. If you claim that you want to "get fit," for example, the next question is going to be difficult to answer, because you have a vague definition of success that provides no direction on how to get there. If you instead choose a goal like "losing 20 pounds," "working out five days a week," or "a visible six pack," you know exactly what you are moving toward, and now you have an end goal to reverse engineer.
What steps must happen in that process?
Although the famous song describes going from zero to 100 "real quick," it hardly ever happens quickly in real life. There's a process involved with many steps in between for everything we desire to accomplish. Hopefully it won't take 100 steps, but you do need to determine what steps will be required in your journey. The good news is, no matter what outcome you are pursuing, there are surely others who have already gotten there and can share their experience with you. Reverse engineer the path to figure out what step one looks like for you today.
How do I want to feel along the way?
This question may be the most important one of all. I've often said to clients: The end does not justify the means, but rather, the means create the end. Whatever energy you put into the process will end up leaking into your final product. Make sure you know how you want to feel when all is said and done, and then make it a priority to begin generating that feeling right now. If you postpone the feeling now, you'll probably still withhold it from yourself after you cross the finish line.
These four questions will help you determine what progress you most want to see.
If you're an entrepreneur, for example, you may determine that progress looks like building your client base, increasing client retention, and boosting your sales numbers. If that's what matters to you most, it's important to keep that at the forefront of your focus. If you instead end up measuring things like Instagram followers and how many people like your posts, you might end up trying to win a game that doesn't even matter to you in the long run.
Don't make the mistake of measuring progress that doesn't matter, only to realize the goals and dreams that matter most have gotten left behind.