#126: Why You Need a Scorecard: The Power of Tracking Habits

The Power of Tracking: Progress Not Perfection

In this episode of Habit Masters, we dive into the importance of tracking habits to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. We'll share our own struggles with maintaining new habits and the impact of tracking on motivation and progress. Forming news habits can be tough, that's why it's so important to focus on gains rather than gaps and using positive reinforcement over self-criticism. Well share some of our best tips for effective tracking and tangible improvements to help build momentum in achieving  your goals.

Most importantly, remember to count all progress as a win. LIVE IN THE GAIN!

ACTION STEP FROM THIS EPISODE
Pick one new action you're going to start tracking today and go download our free habit tracker to help you do it.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• 00:29 The Importance of Tracking
• 01:53 Living in the Gain
• 04:56 Psychology of Motivation
• 09:26 Practical Tips for Tracking

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE

• Snag your FREE HABIT TRACKER download here
• For more info on mastering the fundamentals of habits, check out our 7 Day Habit course email us at hello@habitmasters.com if you're planning to take the course and we'll hook you up with a free code.

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Transcript

Jeff corrigan: 0:03

Welcome back to Habit Masters. I'm Jeff. I'm Sheldon. And this is the best place to help you bridge the gap between where you want to be Where you are and where you want to be. It's all about change. And these habits that we're going to talk about are going to help you do that.

Sheldon Mills: 0:19

OK, last week, habits, right? And why they make such a difference and how to get back on track when it's been a long time and you just in a funk, right? This week is kind of a next step on this. We're going to talk about tracking and the power of tracking whatever it is you want to change. Oh, my gosh, I just OK, let's just dive into it. Yeah. Last week, I reprinted off the Habit Tracker because we know the power of tracking things, right? If you track something, you focus on it, whatever you focus on, that will grow. Right. We say this all the time where your attention goes, energy flows. The truth is I printed it off. I wrote down what I was going to do every day. And in all fairness, I did do it a couple of days, but I literally didn't track it. And out of seven days, I did it twice.

Jeff corrigan: 1:10

Okay. And so, so what we discovered is it's, we know guys, it's challenging to start a new habit, even when you want to do that thing. Right. Even when you're excited about it.

Sheldon Mills: 1:21

So we're going to talk a little bit today about the power of tracking, but then also I think a little bit the psychology of, of why we don't and what gets in the way, because I found myself, okay, all jazzed up, all excited to kind of like get going again. Yes. And then after a week, twice, okay, that's not a good thing. It's not where I want to be, let's say.

Jeff corrigan: 1:45

It's not where you want to be, but it is better, what did you do the week before that?

Sheldon Mills: 1:49

Right, right. It is twice more than the week before that.

Jeff corrigan: 1:53

Today we also want to reference living in the gain, because a big part of what stops us from achieving our goals is that we live in the gap and think, oh well I only did it two times. Well that's two more times than you did it the week before. Yeah, maybe two more times than you did the month before the six months before. So once you start giving yourself props and counting everything as a win, that positive momentum does help you.

Sheldon Mills: 2:15

Yes. Cause frankly, I was, I was discouraged. Right. And I think that's natural because most of us, if we start to track something and we look back hmm. Okay. And we've, we've done this before, right? I've had, I've shared lots of my personal goals and I've gone back and looked at it and been like, Oh shoot. Out of that month, I did it five times, right? So I think it does a couple of things. One, it shows you reality, right? Yes. It actually gives you an accurate picture of what's going on and how well you're doing. But the struggle in that is that reality is hard to take sometimes. And it can be disheartening if we tell ourselves, this is important to us. This is what I'm going to do. This is where I'm going to go. But the reality, if we look in the mirror, is like, you know what? You say that, but your actions aren't exactly following that. Right? So I think it comes back to those, like Jeff was saying, those, what we tell ourself it's, it's the, is this, are we going to beat ourselves up because we missed 70 percent of it? Are we going to see the gain that that 30 percent of the days that we did do was actually great compared to the 2 percent the month before, right?

Jeff corrigan: 3:33

Living in the game. You really do have to start looking at the glass half full. And and that will, that will motivate you and inspire you to keep going. Because if you think, oh, like, pfft, I basically got an F this week, right, it's like, then it's very , demotivating, and it stops you from making progress. So, yeah. The goal is, okay, I did it twice last week. I'm going to do it at least three times this week. I'm going to do it at least four times this week, and I'm going to track it. Because what you track, what you measure, improves, right? And if you aren't tracking it, it's almost impossible to know how much improvement is happening, because you can't see, right? It's like, but if I, if I have a month tracker, and I look back at that month, And I see, okay, first week I did two, second week I did three, third week I did five, fourth week I did six days out of the seven. I see significant progress, right? My mental state has changed. And now it's becoming more of a commitment, more of a habit. Because as much as we'd like to say, I'm going to commit and then never miss, That almost never happens, right? I couldn't do it the first week. Yeah, exactly. Well, we're your example of how to build a habit, guys, because we're not good at it.

Sheldon Mills: 4:51

And we talk about this and read about this and work on this all the time. OK. I want to talk a little bit like the psychology because I think a lot of us I think it's partly human nature, but those of us who are strivers, which is probably everybody listening to the sound of my voice. We often, I think this is unconscious. We use the stick more than the carrot to motivate ourselves, right? Yes. It's like, I recognize that part of my disheartened is like, it's almost the fear of recognizing like how many gaps I've made. You know what I mean? It's almost like, is my motivation because I really want to achieve this? Or is it because I don't want to miss a day and I'll feel bad if I don't? If I don't, do you know what I mean? It's like subtle things, unconscious things. I love this quote. I changed best by feeling good, not by feeling bad. Right. And habit stick repetition is important, but this is fundamentally true habit stick more powerfully by emotion than even repetition. Right. You can start a habit and it can, you know, almost overnight if there's enough powerful emotion behind it. Right? Yeah. And we talk about this a lot. It's motivation approach versus avoid. Are we, you see somebody running, right? Yeah. Are they running away from doubt, fear, discouragement, trying to get away from pain or they're running toward the goal and happiness and joy and accomplishment and prosperity. Like from the outside, it looks almost identical, but the motivation is like fundamentally different. I'm here to say, I think most of us, we beat ourselves up way too much. And we're afraid of the gaps, like we measure ourself in the gap and not in the game, right? Yeah, we're like,

Jeff corrigan: 6:49

Oh, I was, I was going for 30 days and I only got 28, or I was going for 15. Or, you know, we, we tend to focus on what we missed rather than what we've gained. And there you go, the gap, right, is what Sheldon's talking about. And, and we need to shift that mindset to be focused on where we're winning. And that doesn't mean giving ourselves props where there isn't any, right? It's like, I didn't do it, but I wanted to.

Sheldon Mills: 7:13

I think the tracking inherently does that, right? Yes. Because if you're tracking it, it's painfully obvious where there's still room for improvement, right? You can see it. Yeah. But to not get discouraged, to not even start tracking it. to get over that hump. I think you have to celebrate every win, just like you said. I did it twice last week and I didn't even track it. I was like beating myself up for not doing it seven days. And I was beating myself up for not even tracking it, even though I literally have it sitting on my desk, right?

Jeff corrigan: 7:45

Track it right now, right? I will see. And, and there's a line we always have said on the show, progress, not perfection, right? That is the goal. Progress matters far more than perfection. And first of all, perfection is unachievable. It's impossible. So if that is your goal, and so many times it is, it's going to stop you from succeeding at all because it is chasing

Sheldon Mills: 8:08

the horizon.

Jeff corrigan: 8:09

Yeah. You're literally chasing the rainbow, the horizon, right? You're never going to get there. So you've got to measure progress. And that is where tracking is going to help you not just commit to these, like, new activities and habits that you want to do, but make them a part of your life and to see where you can keep progressing. And that's the cool part is, okay, you did it twice last week, five more days of improvement, right? It's like, great. I, I still have a lot of room to grow. I have not reached my max. And and we have so many tools guys that we've learned over the years and practiced over the years. And we've done really well with them at times and not great with them at other times. And we just want to share the experience with you and figure out. And help you guys learn as we learn, and grow as we grow, and become the person you want to be. Like, really bridge that gap between where you've been and where you want to be. And not focus so much on the gap. Because as, even if you're talking about, you know, crossing a gap physically. Like if you're crossing a bridge, the goal is to not look down. And don't focus on the gap, right? You gotta focus on how far you've come and where you're going. And that's, and that's going to make you way more successful at it.

Sheldon Mills: 9:25

Okay. One thing we're going to change this week and we started, we did it one day last week is Jeff and I at night was just going to accountability buddy, right? We are, again, we've talked about this a lot, but okay. If we want to track our accountability, we did it once last week.

Jeff corrigan: 9:42

Yeah, we did. We did accountability last week. One time we were both starting to write on a, well, what we said was going to be daily. We didn't do that. However, we did the first day, both write. And we both texted each other and said, I wrote, so we did it one time guys, one out of seven. So our goal before this next episode is to do it more times than that.

Sheldon Mills: 10:03

Yes, ideally a lot more, but even if it's just two, that's a win. That's two more, that's more than this week or last week.

Jeff corrigan: 10:10

Yeah. But therein is the exact reason you measure, because you can measure progress, you know, and you do it with finances, you do it with health, you do it with relationships. It's harder with relationships because we're not used to tracking that. But here's something that I think is super valuable that I learned in the last couple months is what you don't measure, your brain finds something else to measure against. Right? So we all struggle with comparison, but here's the deal. Comparison is real thing. And it's, it exists whether you want it to or not. We always try to say like, Oh, don't compare yourself against others. That's baloney. We're always going to compare ourselves. So rather than comparing ourselves against others, we need to give our brain something to compare against, because our brain is essentially a comparison and prediction machine. It's just looking for ways to measure our progress. It's like, how are we doing? Are we succeeding? Right? Am I going to have enough money? Am I going to have, you know, a nice place to live? Is life going to be better? Pleasurable and fun and enjoyable and all those things, right? So if it doesn't have something if you don't measure those things in your life that are most important to you Your brain is going to measure against someone else who's doing better than you and saying hey look This person is doing way better than you right at these things and then it then you are immediately in the gap So give yourself this is one of the main reasons you should be tracking progress. Like, I have little kids. We have toddlers. Sheldon has toddlers. When we want them to achieve something, like, Okay, you gotta learn how to use the bathroom. Use the potty, right? To use the term. That's a very parent friendly term. Use the potty. We give them a potty chart. Stickers, and we give them rewards, and all those things. But somewhere along the line, When we reached like 19, 18, 19, 20, and no one else is giving us that tracking method, they're not giving us the scorecard or the potty chart as it were. We stopped using it entirely. And then we wonder why we're not making significant progress anymore. And that's the reason, because we're not measuring it anymore. And the moment we start measuring it, as hard as that may be initially, to see , how much of a gap we have, it's going to help you in the long run. And it's going to give you something to work towards, and help you understand how far you've come. And if you start counting those wins, I promise you, I promise you, that momentum will pick up, and your mindset will shift into more of a positive living in the game type mentality.

Sheldon Mills: 12:39

100 percent Jeff 100 percent if you track it, you're focusing on it and whatever you focus on will grow simple as that

Jeff corrigan: 12:47

So to wrap it up, what gets measured improves and what you're focused on is where your energy goes. So measuring and tracking is going to help you focus on the things you want to focus on and help you progress in those areas. Anything else, Sheldon, you want to share? You said it. Let's do it. Okay. Progress, not perfection, folks. Thank you so much for listening. We love you guys. We hope you're growing and progressing in all the areas you want to be.. And if you liked this episode, please subscribe. Please share it with somebody, let them know, send them a link. That is the only and best way we can grow this podcast because we don't do any advertising and we're never going to, at least not in the foreseeable future. So thank you all for listening.

Sheldon Mills: 13:38

Go check your habits. Yeah. Yeah. Don't get discouraged because it's so easy to get discouraged. Yes. Everything is a win. You are winning. Count

Jeff corrigan: 13:47

it all. Count it all as a win. You are a winner. You're winning. Track it so you know it. Get the proof that you're winning. Yeah. Exactly. Right now. Okay, guys. It's time to start living your best life.