Goal Setting Series Part 3: Acknowledging, Tracking, and Measuring Your Goals

In the past couple of weeks, I've been posting about effectively setting goals, and have covered setting goals the ADD-friendly way, and keys to following through. Today, let's talk about what happens when you actually achieve a goal. Listen up, because this is really important:

The single biggest mistake that ADD business owners make when it comes to setting their goals is that they fail to adequately acknowledge success.

When you achieve a goal, or even just a single step in your goal, you've got to stop and acknowledge the success. Celebrate, reward yourself, or just take a moment to silently pat yourself on the back. Shifting your focus to your successes and accomplishments increases motivation and gives you something to build upon.

In addition, find a way to track the goals and steps that you complete. Have a checklist or something that you can reference to see how fare you've come, or how far you still have to go to ultimately meet your goal. The visual reminder will help keep your goal in the forefront of your business activities.

Lastly, building on the idea of acknowledging and tracking of your goal, it's helpful to measure the success of your goal once you do complete it. Check in and see if completing the goal led to (or continues to lead to) the expected result--whether it's increasing sales or spending less time in the office. When you measure the success of your completed goal, you'll pick up valuable info about what works and what doesn't work in your business.

I have just one more thing that I'd like to post about next week in the Goal Setting Series, and that's about challenging yourself with your goals. For a peak at a particular goal that I'm currently challenging myself with, have a look at the website for my new book, Odd One Out: The Maverick's Guide to Adult ADD.

Comments

[Susan Huhn]

I found this Series to be very interesting. Do you have advice for how to decide about what is a realistic goal?

[Susan Huhn]

I found this Series to be very interesting. Do you have advice for how to decide about what is a realistic goal?

[steve]

Why is that important? Is it because acknowledging your success makes you feel good, and as an add'er you act or react based on emotions? so in order to keep going forward you need to feel good about yourself and your accomplishments, when most of the time you are beating yourself up because you're not getting EVERYTHING done? and then you want to feel better so you get distracted by something that you think will make you feel better? Is that why I jump to different things and have trouble staying on track? even when i am tracking my progress and reviewing everything i've done, i still feel like there is an overwhelming amount of stuff to do.