The Value Of Measuring Progress

I tend to become impatient when I'm downloading something and the progress bar stops somewhere around the 10, 20 or 30% range.

Usually, it's just a change of signal on the network but I always wish to get right inside and move the progress bar myself during those moments.

With the progress bar, I at least know where things are and what's left to reach the finish.

In most situations on goal setting or trying to achieve a desired outcome, there's usually no default progress bar for us to determine how far we've come and what's remaining to reach the goal.

Or even if we're going towars the right direction when pursuing an objective.

It's like the necessary tool that's not found on the goals toolbox. But what is the value of this tool?

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What Is Not Measured...

There could be many reasons why we're not keen on measuring our progress but I think the main reasons are lack of clarity and awareness in a sense that we may not have clear goals or objectives. Or not being aware of how important is it to measure progress and how to go about doing it.

For me, it was lack of motivation and fear of failure at the beginning. I wasn't motivated enough to see the value of measuring progress.

And then, when I started, the fear of failure hit me.

I was scared of constantly falling short of expectations, not being able to meet my goals. This somehow became a self fulfilling prophecy on many occasions and I wasn't happy about it.

The elephant in the room(why I was falling short) had to be addressed and it's through that process I found a silver lining to this uncomfortable situation.

An opportunity to do better.

....Can't Be Improved Upon

In my opinion, measuring progress is not that hard.

As long as we've pen down our goals, come up with a plan and start taking action. Incorporating a progress bar and measuring it is not a difficult task.

The thing is that many goals stop at the planning phase or are not backed by sufficient actions.

Now, suppose, there's sufficient actions towards it, then this tool of measuring progress becomes useful because there's enough data (action taken) to analyse the progress one has made so far to understand where things stand.

A sense of empowerment arises from that understanding because now you know how you're falling short on meeting your goals and the potential cause(s) of that.

What to focus and improved upon?

How off track are you on meeting your goals and ways to get back on track?

What can you do to increase the speed on moving forward?

In short, this tool is like a light that illuminates a system giving us another vantage point to see things clearly and hopefully take necessary action.

Knowing and doing are not the same thing.

Closing Thoughts

The value of measuring progress is almost priceless.

Improving upon what we're aiming to achieve reduces the cost of time and effort in doing things wrongly or being stuck somewhere along the way.

Are you measuring progress?


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