Good Habits = Success

I am sitting in my living room at 7:30 in the morning looking at my nicely decorated Christmas tree. My honey is sleeping and Fenway is waiting patiently by the front door, a sure sign she is ready to go out for a walk. I love a quiet, lazy morning with time to reflect, relax and strategize. After the walk that is!

I am not a technical person, but have been experimenting with a new app called Productive. The free version let me track 3 habits that I wanted to incorporate into my life and I had so much fun (and success) doing that, that I asked for a 1 year subscription for Christmas. So now I can track unlimited habits and am enjoying the process. This is not a review of Productive, there are a bunch of apps available to help develop good habits and increase productivity; this is just the one I stumbled upon, liked the look of and decided to check out.

When trying to reach a goal, it is important to hold yourself accountable not just for the outcome but for the small steps needed to get there. In business, these are called lead and lag measures. If we only look at the end results (lag measures); we miss out on the opportunity to make significant progress toward reaching that goal. By the time we review the lag measures, we have lost a lot of time; and if we wait to the deadline, it is too late to reach the goal.

Lead measures track activities (habits) to help you reach that big goal. For example, if your goal is to lose 20 pounds some lead measures you could track are how many minutes of exercise you do each day and how many servings of vegetables you eat. If you only track the lag measure (weight loss) it is too late to affect the outcome. Two habits I have developed to reach my goal of optimizing my health are to eat a lot of vegetables and a wide variety of vegetables.

One of my goals for 2018 was to post on this blog 6x per month. I did not reach this goal because I only tracked how many times per month I posted (lag measure). To address this, I created a new habit on my handy, dandy Productivity App to write on the blog 5 minutes per day (lead measure). This is easy to do, and once I start writing, I often spend over an hour working on a post. Spending at least 5 minutes every day writing is how I plan on developing the habit of writing. The Productive App lets me track whether I engaged in the habit every day and tells me how many days in a row I was successful. It can also bring up a monthly calendar and visually show me how often I completed each habit.

“Developing Good Habits will Lead to Success”

Lake Girl @ My Little Blue Kayak

I like to see; actually see how far along I am toward reaching my goal. Organizations use those thermometer style pictures to communicate how close they are to their goal of raising a certain amount of money. In one of my past jobs, I used that to track the percentage of staff who had completed certain mandatory training. I gave each department director their specific completion stats every month and was able to tell them if they were helping or hurting the overall number. Trust me, no one wanted to feel like they were dragging down the team 2 months in a row! Measuring progress and holding people (including ourselves) accountable works!

As 2018, draws to a close, it might be worth reviewing which goals you didn’t meet to see if developing and tracking some habits (AKA lead measures) would have helped you reach that goal. Use that knowledge as you strategize a productive 2019!

Choose Happiness!

Lake Girl