Virginia WaltonWe have talked about setting our own personal metrics in the same way we track key performance indicators.
Afterall, it really is the same concept. You monitor those numbers because they are critical to success, be it your function, your line of business or your bonus!
The criticality of these numbers drives the frequency with which you monitor them.
Let’s apply that same approach to your personal goals.
For the purpose of this article, I am going to use the New Year’s Resolution or goal of losing weight. That is one most of us can relate to after all you can’t turn around without seeing an advertisement for weight loss programs, nutritional programs or fitness equipment.
We are going to treat this resolution like we would a business matter. My background was in Risk Management, so the most frequent matters were resolving varies audit or regulatory issues. Or simply put, fixing a problem. Here are the steps you most likely follow when dealing with an issue.
Step one- Define the end goal.
In this case, define the number of pounds to lose or ideal body fat percentage. Maybe you need to work off the quarantine 19, making the end goal weighing 19 pounds less than you did January 1st.
Step 2- Define an achievable time frame.
You wouldn’t tell your team to build and implement a new process next week!
You would determine the criticality of the matter, how much time is needed, and then add a cushion because nothing goes as planned!
Maybe you have a wedding, big event, vacation that you want to be ‘bathing suit ready’ for. Factor these into your timeline.
If the 19 pounds needs to be gone by your August vacation, you have 30 weeks from January first to hit the goal.
Step 3- Create milestones based on that timeline.
Again, you would want to make sure the team is making progress, so you need to be able to measure it.
Using 30 weeks as the timeline, you need to lose approximately 0.75 pounds a week. If you set the goal at one pound per week that should be achievable and gives you a cushion.
Select a day such as Monday to weigh yourself. Use the same time each week to measure your progress.
Step 4- Create an action plan to hit the milestones.
You would expect your team to produce a plan on how they are going to resolve the issue in the office, why wouldn’t you have a plan for yourself?
No plan, no results!
If you need to lose 1 pound per week, you need to exercise more and eat less. Turning that into an action plan could be:
- Exercise 5 days per week
- Eat 1200 or less calories 5 days per week
Step 5 – Evaluate progress
Based on the milestone you created decide the frequency to review. For this example, monthly review your progress.
Did you lose four pounds?
- Yes, great keep following the action plane!
- No, review your action plan. If you kept with the plan but did not have the desired results, adjust the plan. If you did not keep with the plan, what got in the way? What was the obstacle and what needs to be done to remove it?
You should be tracking the results each month. This does not have to be fancy or elaborate. This is for you, not the Board!
Make your method for tracking something easy so you can keep up with it.
If it is fitness or wellness related there are tons of technology solutions to help you track your sleep, exercise, steps, movement, weight, mediation, calories. I bet most of you have at least one device that does most of this.
If not, invest in the technology. View it like the technology spend on a project or issue remediation. You are probably signing off on those regularly at work. Same approach here.
Invest in it!
And I don’t just mean buying the gadget, I mean invest in using it. Invest in the habit.
I use My Fitness Pal to track my food but when I get out of the habit of using it I eat more and make poor food choices.
I use another app for mediation which tracks the number of times I mediate and for how long. I love this one! I’m up to over 825 consecutive days. As a competitive person, this has helped make it a habit because I keep setting a new goal for myself. Yes, the next goal is 1,000 days!
The bottom line is bring your executive skills here. If you are not making progress, you need to ask what is getting in the way. Just like you would if a project at work was falling behind. Root cause analysis too!
This is going to be the hard part! You have to be honest with yourself.
And here you can’t blame the IT department for not prioritizing your request!!
While this is hard, it is the best part because you are able to see what needs to change.
One of the biggest reasons we do not keep our new year’s resolutions is accountability. Guess what? I can help you with that. Having a coach helps keep you on track.
If you are ready to make the change, let’s connect!