Review, Assess and Modify for Success
By taking the time to review progress and see how things are going you will be able to better achieve what you want to do.
Too often I would watch probationers start something and then over time just stop. This process usually included a period of slowly disengaging from what they had been doing until they just weren’t doing it any longer. Excuses for stopping usually fell into losing interest, not being able to keep up with it or not believing it was working.
Most of the time, the problem with these excuses was they were made without any effort to look at how things had changed or were changing for them. They made no attempt to see what might be the issue that was affecting them and how they might be able to improve upon their outcomes.
If you never look up, you will miss the new horizon that's ahead of you.
If you don’t continually review progress and see what is working, what isn’t working and what can be improved, you will not be able to sustain and maintain anything you want to accomplish.
Take stock and evaluate your growth. Doing this will allow you to better see and understand how what you are doing is affecting you. This review could be mental, physical, emotional or financial, depending on what your goal is. Evaluating how things are going gives you an opportunity to see what’s working, what needs tweaking and allows you to feel some progress in your journey.
Taking stock means spending time observing what you are accomplishing and how effective it has been.
Say you are trying to create a new habit of waking up at 5:00 a.m. in order to workout and prepare for your day. After you have been working on this new goal for a while you should review your progress with it. Maybe you are only managing to accomplish it a couple of days a week. Why is this happening? What is keeping you from the daily follow through? Maybe you have kids that are waking you up in the night or you can’t relax until you read, but then you don’t stop reading until midnight.
Now that you have this information, do something with it. Maybe until your kids manage to sleep through the night, 5:00 a.m. is not a good plan. It’s okay to scrap a plan if it is untenable. It’s better to look for another time to workout then to try and force yourself to do something you can’t. If you try to force something to work you will find yourself either failing or just quitting.
If you're staying up too late, maybe set an alarm that reminds you to put down the reading at your designated sleep time. If you can’t manage to accomplish your goal regularly, then you are only setting yourself up to fail.
Review and assessment is as important to success as planning and action.
Too often we start something and then end up petering out until it is no longer something we do. It is failing to stop and review our progress that makes this happen. If you are not reviewing where you are, what is working, what isn’t working, why it is or isn’t working, how things can be improved, and whether you are you still invested in the goal, you will not be able to sustain long term change or growth.
Every good company or business does regular reviews of outcomes and processes to ensure success and so should you.
By taking the time to review progress and see how things are going you will be able to better achieve what you want to do. If you don’t work as hard seeing where you are going and what is working, you can’t ever make sure that you’ll actually get there. Don’t miss out on making things work by not looking at the process. This should be something that you do regularly to ensure your future success.