Ep. 69 - Tracking Behavior to Stay On Track

As we near the end of the first quarter, I'm reminded of how fast time passes. Hours become days, days become weeks. Without a system in place to track progress, it's easy to see how quickly we lose control of our goals.

To combat goal slide, I've started tracking my behavior around my goals. Inspired by the book, The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, I'm documenting my behavior around my daily deliverables for my business so I can: 1) keep my goals top of mind each day; 2) course-correct my behavior in real time; 3) spot patterns in my thinking that lead me off path; 4) reinforce the identity of the person I want to be moving forward (someone who loves to set stretch goals and then does the work to achieve them).

Join me as I share the details of how I'm using daily tracking to make this year different from every other year that I've attempted to achieve big goals.

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Cited in this episode:

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Episode 55: How to Help Yourself When You Feel Stuck in Life

Episode 67: Calm & Focus: How Mastery of the Fundamentals Can Break the Cycle of Procrastination with Nerijus Antanavicius

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Original music by JMW

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1:1 mindset coaching is for anyone who wants to ask more of themselves but knows their thinking is getting in the way.

If this is work you’re excited to do, sign up for my free offering (a 90-minute deep dive coaching call) so you can experience firsthand how managing your mind can bring more peace, happiness, and success into your life.

To book your free call, visit KariWatterson.com.

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Let's connect:

Website
Instagram:  @_thisonelife
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Transcript

Kari: 0:00

Welcome to The End of the Day Podcast with Kari Watterson. This is episode 69. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to bring you today's episode. I think it'll be really beneficial for those of you who may feel like you're in a goal slide. Now, what is a goal slide? A goal slide is exactly what it sounds like it's when you've set goals at the beginning of the year and time has passed and you feel like maybe you've let your goals slide. Now the great news is that we're still at the beginning of the year, sort of. This is kind of like an episode to just bring the passage of time into your awareness and then, of course, into my awareness, which is the whole reason why I'm recording this because I suddenly became aware that we are nearing the end of the first quarter. Technically, we're in the last month of the first quarter, so technically, the last third of the first quarter. We have 31 days left. However, you want to look at it, time has passed and I think this is a great time to kind of touch base and bring some tools and resources in if we need them to get back on track.

Kari: 1:37

First things first, did you set goals in 2024? If you didn't, or if you haven't yet, no worries, this is actually a great opportunity for you to take some time to reflect on how you'd like your 2024 to go Now. If you're like me, in the past I used to have goal aversion, this idea that I didn't want to set goals, because I previously let myself down so many times and became painful to set goals because, even while setting them, there was a part of me that knew I wasn't the type of person who kept her goals. So in this case, what I might recommend is just think of this definition of a goal. It's the object of a person's ambition or effort. It's an aim or a desired result. So, the way that I like to look at it is, a goal is just an object to which you want to direct your effort. So what part of your life would you like to direct effort at? You need a target so you know what to aim for, so you know where to focus your time, effort and attention. And if you're struggling with this, or maybe you've set goals but you still feel like your life is out of balance, I might recommend that you tune into episode 55, where I talk about and walk you through a wheel of life exercise, which is basically a self-assessment, a self-awareness exercise to help you see where you are in life now versus where you'd like to be in the future. Again, that's episode 55, how to help yourself when you feel stuck in life, and I will link that in the show notes.

Kari: 3:18

Even if you haven't set a goal yet, I'd love for you to continue listening to the episode. I think you're gonna find it valuable because, at the end of the day, why don't we set goals? Often it's because we don't identify as somebody who can set and achieve goals. Because if we did identify as somebody who could set and achieve goals, then we would do it. We would want to set goals so that we could get to work on achieving them right. And that's where this podcast episode comes in. What if we could become one of those people who sets and achieves goals? What if we could cultivate that skill set and that belief in ourselves? Could that be actually something that you want to direct your effort toward? Could that be motivating and inspiring for you? Sometimes I think that the goals we set aren't big enough and we're not excited to actually achieve them because they're only incrementally beyond our current reality or they're so far beyond our current reality we can't even imagine that it's possible. So there's a bunch of missing steps in between and after a while our brain just shuts down and says, well, that's not possible.

Kari: 4:27

I've been doing a lot of studying about goal setting, and one of the things that I have found most compelling, and actually most useful in my own life, is when I set goals that require a shift or a change in identity. Like that is the goal. Because if that is the goal to become somebody different, become the person who's capable of creating the results that they want then that is very exciting, because that's a transferable skill, right Suddenly. It can apply to my relationships, it can apply to what I do for a career, it can apply to how I make money, it can apply to the experiences that I let myself have in life, it can apply to imagining what I could do to help the world before I leave it, and one of the most attractive goals for me anyway, is being the type of person who can set and achieve goals.

Kari: 5:24

So in January, like many other people, I set some goals in my personal life, but mainly in my business. I feel like this year is a season where I want to primarily focus on my business. I've done a lot of inner work over the last few years to help me with emotional management and identity work in terms of how I want to be for my family and now I want to use that same growth work and apply it to growing my business, which is another way not only to help my family, but to do the work that I'd like to do in the world right. So in January, I set some goals and we're going to use that as a jumping off point because the next question becomes okay. So now I set my goals. How is it that I have goals but I don't do the work that I need to do each day to take myself closer and closer to the goals? This is the version of I know what I need to do, or I know what I want to do, but I can't seem to get myself to do it. We've talked about that in various podcast episodes, including most recently in episode 67 with my former coach, Nerijus, on the episode, Calm and Focused: How Gaining Mastery of the Fundamentals can help with procrastination. But in this particular case, for this particular episode, what I want to do is focus on the tool of tracking your behavior. Now, if you have listened to prior episodes or if you've watched any prior reels on Instagram, you'll know that.

Kari: 6:59

I've been studying the compound effect by Darren Hardy, and one of the things that he says in his intro to the book is this the bottom line is that you already know what you need to succeed. You don't need to learn anything more. If all we need to is more information. Everyone with an internet connection would live in a mansion, have abs of steel and be blissfully happy. You do not need new information. You need a new plan of action. It's time to create new behaviors and habits oriented away from sabotage and towards success. It's that simple, and here's the thing. One of the first things that Darren Hardy tells you to do when you want to change any behavior in your life is to use the power of tracking. So in the book he says write this moment.

Kari: 7:49

Pick an area of your life where you most want to be successful. Do you want more money in the bank, a trimmer waistline, the strength to compete in an Ironman event, a better relationship with your spouser, kids? Picture where you are in that area right now. Now, picture where you want to be richer, thinner, happier. You name it. The first step toward change is awareness, and if you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination. Become very conscious of every choice you make today so you can begin to make smarter choices.

Kari: 8:26

Moving forward, and to help you become aware of your choices, I want you to track every action that relates to the area of your life you want to improve. If you've decided you want to get out of debt, you're going to track every penny you pull from your pocket. If you've decided you want to lose weight, you're going to track everything you put into your mouth. If you've decided to train for an athletic event, you're going to track every step you take, every workout you do Simply carry around a small notebook, something you'll keep in your pocket or purse at all times, and a writing instrument. You're going to write it all down every day, without fail, no excuses, no exceptions. And he goes on to say doesn't sound like much, I know writing things down on a little piece of paper, but tracking my progress and missteps is one of the reasons I've accumulated the success I have.

Kari: 9:14

The process forces you to be conscious of your decisions, but, as Jim Rohn would say, what's simple to do is also simple not to do. The magic is not in the complexity of the task. The magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the compound effect. So beware of neglecting the simple things that make the big things in your life possible. The biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not. Remember that saying it will come in handy many times throughout life when faced with a difficult, tedious or tough choice. And finally, these are the last couple passages I'll read before we move on.

Kari: 9:59

So he goes on to say tracking is a simple exercise. It works because it brings moment to moment awareness to the actions you take in the area of your life you want to improve. You'll be surprised at what you'll observe about your behavior. You cannot manage or improve something until you measure it. Likewise, you can't make the most of who you are, your talents and your resources and your capabilities until you are aware of and accountable for your actions. Every professional athlete and his or her coach track each performance down to the smallest minutia. Pictures know their stats on every pitch in their repertoire. Golfers have even more metrics on their swings. Professional athletes know how to adjust their performances based on what they've tracked. They pay attention to what they record and make changes accordingly, because they know when their stats improve. They win more games and earn more in endorsement deals At any given moment.

Kari: 10:51

I want you to know exactly how well you're doing. I'm asking you to track yourself as if you're a valuable commodity, because you are. Want that idiot proof system we talked about earlier. This is it? So, regardless of whether you think you're aware of your habits or not believe me, you're not I'm asking you to start tracking. Doing so will revolutionize your life and, ultimately, your lifestyle. And then he goes on to say keep it slow and easy, don't panic. Start off with easy, breezy tempo. Track just one habit from one week. Pick the habit that's got the greatest control over you. That's where you'll start, and once you begin reaping the rewards of the compound effect, you'll naturally want to introduce this practice into other areas of your life. In other words, you'll choose to track. Okay, so I'm going to end there.

Kari: 11:39

I highly recommend this book, the Compound Effect, just because I believe it literally answers the question that most of us feel like is the reason why we're not taking the action or getting the results we want in our lives, which is like, why aren't we doing the things that we say we're going to do? And so Darren Hardy is saying let's first start by deciding what it is you want to do, deciding on the area of your life you want to improve and how you want to improve it. And then the first thing you do is to take out a notebook, carry it with you and track your behavior around the thing that you said you want to do. And so now the purpose of this podcast episode. That's what I've been doing the last couple of weeks, and I can tell you at first it was really tedious. Just like you said, what I want to do is be the person who can set and achieve goals, and so how do I track that?

Kari: 12:31

Well, for me, the way that I formulated it was I would list out what I wanted to achieve that day, based on my overall goal for the year of what I wanted, and then the tracking would be around what I'm doing, what I'm supposed to be doing, that behavior. My hope was that I would say I'd have my notebook and I would say okay, time to record podcast episode number 69 and I'd write down the time and then I would record it and then we'd move on to the next thing. And that's just not how it worked. If I was being honest and transparent in my own tracking, looking back, when I first started this exercise, I actually wasn't even doing it the way that Darren Hardy recommended in his book, the compound effect.

Kari: 13:13

My first entry was more of an end of the day recap, which is fine, but actually those are things that I have tried before. But this end of the day recap on the first day it started with me listing wins for the day, what I included or what I counted as wins, and Then I had a category where I did not keep my word to myself and that was a Specific category, because that is something that I really want to work on and that day said did not publish podcast number 68. Well, I've since published it, hooray. And now it's been a bit since trying to get this episode podcast episode number 69 up. But back on that first day it was wins where I didn't keep my word to myself. And then the next category that I had was what worked, and I wrote a description of what worked and then I wrote what I Want to. Oh, what I want to do different for tomorrow. Here's a tip make sure you can read your own writing if you want to be able to use your past entries for any type of future learning. So that was a good one. What I'd like to do different for tomorrow, including the order in which I did the things that I said I wanted to do.

Kari: 14:22

For me, one of the biggest hang-ups is if I have household chores or Around the house things that are in my line of vision, since I work from home, that tend to trip me up or, like, take me off of the identity of the person who's out achieving goals right, and that can be just a mindset thing. So if I have laundry to do and I can see it, or if I have dishes that are in the drying rack that I need to put away, like, I can definitely work on my mind and just say that's fine, they can stay there until I'm done doing the most important, most essential things for the day. My brain Tends to have a lot of chatter on that, so my brain also then says no. If I can just do these things first really quickly, then I can actually calm my brain and be free to be a ghost layer for the rest of the day. That's the way my brain likes to work.

Kari: 15:18

I have a feeling what ultimately, I am going to do is become the person that just has a very more set routine as to how she likes to keep her house as well, in In conjunction with the business goals. And for some people that's not necessary. For some people, they say this is a season and you get to decide. You can sacrifice the house for a while until you have your business running at a certain level, and what I have found over the last four years and running this business is I need to have a balance of both. So and that's not a bad problem to have if in this journey, I am adopting the identity of somebody who really learns how to have a routine or structure in place To be able to keep things running smoothly around the house as well, that's not a bad identity to be working on. At the same time, I think what that will involve is just giving myself a little bit of grace when One thing or another Takes my attention more and just putting in place, like maybe a strategy for when I see certain things sliding, I like pencil it in as a specific part of the day where I'm going to accomplish bringing things back up to the way that I can tolerate them and then move forward from there.

Kari: 16:34

In the entries that followed, I switched over more to a time tracking nature Because, remember, my goal was to monitor my behavior around doing the things that I said I was going to do. Now some people might say well, why don't you just time block? Why don't you just have it set on your Google calendar or in your paper calendar? From eight to nine, I'm going to do this, and from nine to ten, I'm going to do this and I'm going to work out at this time, and then I'm going to do this at set time. And Obviously, that would be fantastic if that was a way that worked for you, or if that was a way that you wanted to train your brain in how to get things done. And, if I'm candid, that is ultimately where I'd like to be. That is what I'd like to be able to do Block out the time and do the set things in that period of time and by the end of the day, I will have accomplished the things in the time blocks that I had set aside for them. That sounds fantastic. That's something that I have tried in the past and not been super successful.

Kari: 17:31

So this time tracking that I'm doing right now for the next several weeks, or maybe however long I need to, is to just bring more awareness around the behavior that I actually want to adopt, and I think the whole purpose of bringing awareness to the behavior is actually bringing daily, hourly, minute attention to the goal that you're trying to achieve. I think that is initially part of the whole process of doing this intentional, all-encompassing tracking around your behavior. So, for example, I have gone I don't know nine months without recording a podcast at one point in time. Now, granted, there were a lot of extenuating circumstances and reasons for that, but still had I been tracking my behavior around, recording, let's just say, podcast number I don't know, 56 through 57, I'm trying to figure out, remember which particular podcast episode where there was a significant gap. If I was doing that daily, I have a feeling I would have recorded the next episode probably within days, or at the most a couple of weeks, versus months and months and months and months, because every time I would have brought awareness to the thing that I had said I wanted to do. It would have allowed me to challenge the thoughts that were coming up for me as to why I wasn't doing it, and I probably could have brought some more clarity and actually poked some holes into my thought process that was preventing me from doing that thing much, much sooner. So the whole point is actually awareness to get you to choice faster.

Kari: 19:11

As a matter of fact, it just dawned on me that the part of the book where Darren Hardy talks about the tracking exercise is in chapter two, which is called choices, and the reason why that's so important is because, as he mentions, the life that we end up with is simply an accumulation of all the choices that we make. Those are his words, not mine, but the truth, right. He says our choices can be our best friend or our worst enemy. They can deliver us to our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away, and I think the reason why it's so important and it's at the heart of the work that I do as a coach is to help people to get to the point where they realize that everything they do or don't do is a choice, and that we want to be the ones making those choices. So, as Greg McKeown says this is one of my favorite quotes by him the ability to choose cannot be taken away, or even given away. It can only be forgotten.

Kari: 20:10

Going back to Darren Hardy, chapter two is all about becoming aware of and making choices that support the expansion of your life. So, basically, what he says is that it's not that we've been intentionally trying to make bad choices so that we don't have a great life. He says that our biggest challenge is that we've been sleepwalking through our choices. Half the time we're not even aware that we're making them. There's lots of different reasons why we do the things we do, why we operate the way we do and why we are the way we are right. There's the cultural programming and conditioning, there's societal norms, there's expectations, there are beliefs that we've not yet challenged or even given ourselves permission to challenge, and so that is an episode for another time, but for this particular episode, with the power of tracking, let's focus on the area of life that we'd like to improve or the behavior that we want to change, keeping in mind the fundamental principle of the compound effect, which is that the compound effect is always working, whether we know it or not. So, whether we're using it to our benefit or whether we're not paying attention to it, and it's just accruing without our knowledge.

Kari: 21:26

So, let's say, last year, one of your January goals was to work out more regularly in 2023. And maybe you were a gung-ho in the beginning and, let's just say, you stopped working out by mid-February or early March, which, by the way, is when a lot of people actually quit under your New Year's resolutions. So if that's the case, then what would have happened if you had tracked your behavior around working out back in February, or even back in January, or even starting in March? Right? Would you agree that you probably would have gotten yourself back on track much, much sooner?

Kari: 22:03

Because here's the thing about the daily tracking it requires you to confront yourself and your doubts and your fears and your reasons and your excuses why you're not doing the thing that you set out to do. And I think the reason why that's so important is there's only so much discomfort that you can take in facing yourself hour after hour, day after day, nightly recap after nightly recap as to why you're not doing the thing. And if you pair this process with curiosity, some grace, but also a determination to hold yourself to a higher standard, to hold yourself accountable to how you're spending your time, because how you're spending your time is going to determine the life that you're going to have. And so if you have wanted a different type of life, then you know it's not going to happen if you're not holding yourself to task to doing the things that you said you're going to do to create a different life for yourself.

Kari: 23:06

So, going back to my tracker, what I found day after day was that I was actually starting to make it even more cumbersome than necessary. So there were times when I would track almost like minute by minute, when I was supposed to be doing something, what I was doing instead, and after a while I could see that my tracker was actually becoming the reason why I wasn't doing the thing. My hope was that if I documented my thoughts why I wasn't doing something, or if I got up in the middle of doing the thing to get a cup of tea, I would come back and I would write that down. I think actually, that's all very useful. I think it's all necessary, maybe in the beginning, but when you find that your tracker is becoming the distractor, then you know that you're actually losing the point of the exercise, right?

Kari: 23:52

So after using this tracker for a couple of weeks, I've concluded that this tracker is actually a very useful tool, and I am going to continue using it for the near future, especially as I'm nurturing my ability to believe that I am the type of person that does the things that I set out to do each day. Here's what I've learned about the tracker so far. I'm using it again to document my behavior around the daily deliverables I have for my business, and I'm doing it so I can keep my goals top of mind each day, so I can course correct my behavior in real time, so I can spot patterns in my thinking that lead me off the path, and so I can reinforce the identity of the person I want to be moving forward, which is someone who loves to set stretch goals and then does the work to achieve them. That is the identity that I'm working toward. Here are a couple more insights from keeping a tracker of my behavior around my goals last couple of weeks Evening recaps or end of the day recaps, where I reflect for just a couple minutes on the day, the wins, the things I could have done better, the things I'd like to remember for tomorrow, etc.

Kari: 25:04

Those are very powerful, and they're more powerful when the next morning you read that evening recap from the night before. Also, when I avoid tracking, when I have things to still do that I haven't done, and I'm also not documenting them in the tracker, and I'm aware that I like to remind myself that I am just delaying consistency and, as we know, consistency is key to success, and so the best way that I can get myself back on track is to not judge the times when I'm avoiding the tracker is just to remind myself that that the tracker is actually a tool that I want to use to help me learn, to automate the consistency of my actions. Tracking is a feedback loop. When I get back on track in minutes versus hours or days or months, I can get a reward if I remind myself that is the purpose of the tracker. Sometimes, when we're keeping these logs or if we have a habit tracker, we're marking things off. In the beginning it feels so exciting because we remember why we're doing it, but as we, as the weeks go by and as the days go by, we forget sometimes the reason why we're doing it. Is it to check off a box, or is it a tool to help us do the things that reinforce the identity of the person we want to become? Because we're doing those things. I want to become the person who sets goals and then does the work to achieve them.

Kari: 26:37

I am a firm believer that we all require different things and different seasons of our lives, and what we need at various moments is going to be unique, depending on our own lived experience and our level of personal growth and development up to a certain point. So I know, for the last few years, I've definitely needed to learn how to turn inward and be with myself, how to be okay in my mind and body and, even when I'm not, how to bring myself back into that okayness. I suppose that's how you can call it. I do believe. Now, though, I am definitely in a season where the kindest thing for me is now to hold myself accountable to my time, hold myself accountable to the things that I said that I would like to do. In the past, being kind to myself was the act of kindness, was what I needed, and that laid the foundation for this next phase, so I think that now the next phase for me. It might feel like I'm adopting a harsher mentality, but I think it's actually just a natural progression of growth. When you can go back and build a stronger foundation for yourself, then naturally you will want to see what else you're capable of doing. I think that's where I'm at right now.

Kari: 27:51

Just recognizing this and acknowledging this and owning that this is my next phase of growth has, in and of itself, been kind of a growth process for me. I can remember back in 2020, when I was doing this emotional healing work in earnest and it was a time of the pandemic, and it was literally walking miles each day and tracking it on a habit tracker, listening to Lord Huron and really processing and sitting with so much stuff, learning how to not escape my emotions but really be with them, and that was a process that I needed to go through back then. And then there were next phases of healing, and then there were next phases of growth, and now I do believe this is the time where I'm asking myself to actually prioritize action more than thoughts and feelings, which is actually kind of new to me, but also incredibly, incredibly welcome. Where are you at in your journey? And remember, all of us have our own personal journey at our own personal pace. The only thing I would ask you is where are you and do you like where you are right now? Do you need to go back and build a stronger foundation, like I did back in 2020? Or are you at a place where maybe you've done a lot of that foundational work, you feel pretty strong within yourself, you feel like you know how to look at your thoughts and manage your emotions, or even look at your emotions and sit with them, and maybe you're stuck on the action part as well. Right, where are you and just assess that honestly. Do you want to ask more of yourself in certain areas? This is a great awareness exercise. Just to see if you were talking to your highest self, what is it that you think is going to be your next phase of growth? All right, my friends, have a fantastic week. I'll talk to you later. Bye.

Kari: 30:02

One-on-one mindset coaching isn't just for athletes or select people. It's for anyone who wants to ask more of themselves but knows their thinking is getting in the way. Uncover what's holding you back. It's often not what you think. Learn tools and concepts to challenge your thinking and regulate your emotions, so you can set goals you want and be able to do the belief work to meet them, rather than playing small and at the effect of your unchallenged beliefs in your unchallenged mind.

Kari: 30:28

It's not about following the crowd. It's about giving yourself permission to think outside the box, to find inspiration and processes that resonate with your brain so you can finally feel what it's like to live a life that feels true and meaningful for you. If this is work you're excited to do, you'll want to sign up for my free offering a 90-minute deep dive coaching call so you can experience firsthand what it would be like to work together and how mindset coaching can change your life. To book a call, email me at kari@kariwatterson. com, that's K-A-R-I, at K-A-R-I-W-A-T-T-E-R-S-O-N. com, with the subject line "book 90-minute call. At the end of the day, we have one life. How do you want to live yours? How do you want to show up, think about it, and then, let's get to work.