Whether it is goals or themes that you use in order to guide your life it is important to find a way to determine what progress are you making, and how you measure it? This is a combination of having clear themes and setting smart goals in those themes and then checking in on if you are on track or not. Sometimes you may need a coach or a mastermind group in order to stay on track. If you find this exercise challenging consider finding a support network that can help you.

When you set a goal for yourself, you are only moving in three directions: forward, backward, or not at all. You must take a step forward every single day in order to make progress, and you must have a tool to measure that progress.

This is what I suggest.

In a journal or other book either physical or digital write down the following categories:

Family/Friends

Work/Career

Finances/Money

Health/Fitness

Free Time

Develop a SMART- specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely goal for each of these categories.

For example:

Family/Friends- Spend 2 hours, 1 night a week with a friend or loved one.

Work/Career- Write one blog post, or spend 2 hours a week writing content for my future website.

Finances/Money- Learn 1 new skill every week that will allow me to make more money at my current job.

Health/Fitness- Spend 1 hour, 3 days a week working out.

Free Time- Schedule 1 4 hour fun event every month.

Then every day write down one action that you took to drive you towards your goal. I made the about example very simple and general, but as your goals get more specific you will have more baby steps that you can write down every day.

Over time this format will evolve, but this is a good start to developing a system for measuring your progress.