Discover The Power Of Priority Tracking

Making progress is satisfying and visual measures like marking an X on your calendar or checking off your to-do list provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.? Visual measurement comes in many forms from habit trackers, journals, weekly planners, even the page numbers in a book. But perhaps the best way to measure your progress is with a priority tracker.

A priority tracker is a simple way to measure whether you completed an important priority. The most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine. For example, if you meet with your team on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, each of those dates gets an X. As time rolls by, the calendar becomes a record of your priority streak.?

Countless people track their habits, but very few track their priorities, but perhaps the most famous was Benjamin Franklin. Beginning at age 20, Franklin wrote, published, politicked, invented, experimented, and humored, sometimes all at the same time. He also carried a small booklet to track thirteen personal virtues. His list included goals like "Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful" and "Avoid trifling conversation. ? At the end of each day, Franklin would open his booklet and record his progress.?

Franklin was not focused on how good or bad a particular day was or how motivated he felt about his progress. He was simply focused on showing up and keeping his streak going of improving his personality and performance. If he had a mantra, it would be "Don't break the chain." Don't break the chain of sales calls and you'll build a successful business. Don't break the chain of engaging with great clients and you'll get wealthier faster than you'd expect. Don't break the chain of creating every day and you will end up with an impressive portfolio.?

Priority tracking is powerful because it leverages several Laws of Behavior Change. It simultaneously makes a behavior obvious, attractive, and satisfying. Let's break down each one.??

Benefit #1: Priority tracking is obvious?

Recording your last action creates a trigger that can initiate your next one. Priority tracking naturally builds a series of visual cues like multiple X's on your calendar. When you look at the calendar and see your streak, you'll be reminded to act again. Research has shown that people who track their progress on goals like losing weight, quitting smoking, and lowering blood pressure are all more likely to improve than those who don't. A study of over sixteen hundred people found those who kept a daily food log lost twice as much weight as those who did not. The act of tracking a behavior can spark the urge to change it.?

Priority tracking also keeps you honest. Most of us have a distorted view of our own behavior. We think we act better than we do. Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what's really going on each day. One glance at your calendar and you immediately know how much work you have (or haven't) been putting in. When the evidence is right in front of you, you're less likely to lie to yourself.

Benefit #2: Priority tracking is attractive

The most effective form of motivation is progress: When we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated if we continue down that path. In this way, priority tracking can have a direct effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire. This can be particularly powerful on a bad day: When you're feeling down, it's easy to forget about all the progress you have already made since last week. Priority tracking provides visual proof of your hard work- a subtle reminder of how far you've come. Plus, the empty square you see each morning can motivate you to get started because you don't want to lose your progress by breaking the streak.?

Benefit #3: Priority tracking is satisfying

This is the most crucial benefit of all. Tracking can become its own form of reward. It is satisfying to cross an item off your to-do list, to complete an entry in your workout log, or to mark an X on the calendar. It feels good to watch your results grow – the size of your investment portfolio, the number of clients? your impacted – and if it feels good, then you're more likely to endure.

Priority tracking also helps keep your eye on the ball: you're focused on the process rather than the result. You're not fixated on making 7-figures, you're just trying to keep the streak alive and become the type of person who doesn't miss opportunities.?

In summary, priority tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don't want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your priority being completed. Furthermore, priority tracking provides visual proof that you are casting votes for the type of person you wish to become, which is a delightful form of immediate personal gratification.

If priority tracking is so useful, why don’t more people do it? Despite all the benefits: many people resist the idea of tracking and measuring their performance. It can feel like a burden because it forces you into two priorities: the priority of keeping a streak alive and the priority of tracking it.

Counting calories sounds like a hassle when you're already struggling to follow a diet. Writing down every sales call seems tedious when you've got work to do. It feels easier to say, "I'Il just eat less." Or, "I'll try harder." Or, "I'll remember to do it." People inevitably tell me things like, "I have a gratitude journal, but I wish I used it more." Or, "I recorded my workouts for a week, but then quit." I've been there myself. I once started a journal to track things I feel good about. I managed to do it for one week and then gave up.

The Problem

Tracking isn't for everyone, and there is no need to measure your entire life. But nearly anyone can benefit from it in some form- even if it's only temporary.?

What can we do to make tracking easier??

First, whenever possible, measurement should be automated. You'll probably be surprised by how much you're already tracking without knowing it. Your calendar tracks how many sales conversations you have each week. Your Fitbit registers how many steps you take and how long you sleep. Your habit tracker records how many hours you devote to your health. Once you know where to get the data, add a note to your calendar to review it each week or each month, which is more practical than tracking it every day.?

Second, manual tracking should be limited to your most important priorities. It is better to consistently track no more than three priorities than to sporadically track ten.

“If you have more than three priorities, you don't have any,” - Jim Collins.

Finally, record each measurement immediately after the priority occurs. The completion of the behavior is the cue to record it. This approach allows you to stack your priorities at the end of each week and each month so that you stay in a ‘Gain Mode’ mindset.???

You don't realize how valuable it is to just show up and fulfill your priorities on? your bad (or busy) days. Lost days hurt you more than successful days help you. If you start with $100, then a 50 percent gain will take you to $150. But you only need a 33 percent loss to take you back to $100. In other words, avoiding a 33 percent loss is just as valuable as achieving a 50 percent gain.?

As Charlie Munger says,

"The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily."?

This is why the "bad" workouts are often the most important one. Sluggish days and bad workouts maintain the compound gains you accrued from previous good days. Simply doing something - ten squats, five sprints, a push-up, anything really--is huge. Don't put up a zero. Don't let losses eat into your compounding.??

Furthermore, it's not always about what happens during the workout. It's about being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. It's easy to train when you feel good, but it's crucial to show up when you don't feel like it - even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity. The all-or-nothing cycle of behavior change is just one pitfall that can derail your priorities. Another potential danger- especially if you use a priority tracker- is measuring the wrong thing.??

The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it. If your success is measured by quarterly earnings, you will optimize sales, revenue, and accounting for quarterly earnings. If your success is measured by a lower number on the scale, you will optimize for a lower number on the scale, even if that means accepting narcissistic clients, discounting your offer, and working 16 hour days.??

This pitfall is evident in many areas of life. We focus on working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done. We care more about getting ten thousand steps than we do about being healthy. We teach for standardized tests instead of emphasizing learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. In short, we optimize for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior. This is based on Goodhart's Law. Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states...

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. "?

Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system. In our data-driven world, we tend to overvalue numbers and undervalue anything ephemeral, soft, and difficult to quantify. We mistakenly think the factors we can measure are the only factors that exist.?

But just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's the most important thing. And just because you can't measure something doesn't mean it's not important at all. All of this to say, it's crucial to keep priority tracking in its proper place. It can feel satisfying to record a priority and track your progress, but the measurement is not the only thing that matters.?

Furthermore, there are many ways to measure progress, and sometimes it helps to shift your focus to something entirely different. This is why non-scale victories can be effective for weight loss. The number on the scale may be stubborn, so if you focus solely on that number, your motivation will sag. But you may notice that your skin looks better or you wake up earlier or your sex drive got a boost. All of these are valid ways to track your improvement. If you're not feeling motivated by the number on the scale, perhaps it’s time to focus on a different measurement - one that gives you more signals of progress.

The Solution

The power of a 12 Week Focused Productivity Planner is the best and easiest Priority Tracking system to focus on your important priorities and track your progress. It will drive enhanced results in all areas of your life. It’s an innovation of The 12-Week Year which makes getting results easier and faster.?

I developed the 12 Week Focused-Productivity Planner over 4 years ago to help growth-minded entrepreneurs, professionals and business leaders improve their performance and results. It’s a complete system for setting your keystone goals, staying focused, staying engaged and Get More Done!

Recognizing that industry leaders don't have better ideas or strategies and that they simply execute more effectively, I developed a process to help individuals and organizations to execute better. The system it’s based on is called Periodization.?

Periodization began as an athletic training program designed to dramatically improve performance. Its principles are focus, concentration and overload on a specific skill or discipline. The 12 Week Focused-Productivity System is the first to implement this technique for business. We have developed a 12-week approach that moves beyond just training to focus on the critical factors that drive productivity and life balance.?

Periodization is a business process, and a structured approach that fundamentally changes the way leaders think and act. The result is an increased focus on the "Critical Actions" that drive a healthy and successful business and the execution of those core activities daily and weekly at a rate sufficient to reach long-term objectives. Periodization creates a sense of urgency each day to do what is necessary. Furthermore, it addresses both harvesting today's opportunities, and planting the seeds necessary to ensure continued success in the future.

No matter how you measure your progress, priority tracking with a 12-week planner offers a simple way to make your actions more satisfying. Each measurement provides a little bit of evidence that you are moving in the right direction and a brief moment of immediate pleasure for a job well done.