Track your progress

Tracking your progress helps you understand how you’re doing and gives you a target to reach. This makes it easier to keep up with your momentum. Create a project sheet that records your targets and your current status. Specify key performance indicators (KPIs) that you want to achieve. If your goal is to lose weight, your KPIs will invariably be your weight, your fat percentage, and perhaps your performance during your exercise sessions (example – the distance covered in 30 minutes, how many weights you lifted, and the like). If your goal is to start a business, your KPIs may be your weekly customers, revenue and net income.

Every week, review your progress. What % of your end goal have you achieved? Is it on track against your target? Why or why not? What are the key things to do next? What is your target for the next week? Tracking makes you accountable to your goal and helps you to stay on track.

9. Celebrate what you’ve done so far

Sometimes we get discouraged with all the things that need to be done. It seems like no matter how much time we spend, it’s impossible to finish it. The amount of work overwhelms us and we opt out halfway.

Here’s the thing – Everything you’ve done so far IS an accomplishment! Many of us tend to emphasize on the last finishing task as the most important task, but really, all that you’ve done and what you’re doing now contributes toward the final product. So celebrate it. Give yourself a huge pat on the back and a big bear hug. Celebrate the process, the resting, the doing, the completion, everything. Take the opportunity to recharge and regroup. When you’re ready, continue on to with what you’re doing. You’re really doing a fantastic job.

10. Don’t force it if it’s really not working out

Sometimes, it just happens that you lose interest in the goal. It happens, and it’s normal. We change, our interests change, and we get new ideas and inspiration the whole time. Some people may feel it’s a waste of their efforts if they do something and don’t complete it, so they push themselves to go on.

Personally, I think it depends on the situation. I think whatever efforts you’ve put into the situation is already a sunk cost, and it shouldn’t factor into your decision of whether to continue doing it or not. The things that should influence your decision are (1) the benefits you will reap (2) the costs involved (future time, effort, resources that are needed). If it’s really not working out for you, then I recommend you drop it and move on to the next thing. Spending more time (and energy) on it is just a big waste. Considering you have no desire to do it anymore, you’re expending a lot of energy just to overcome that resistance! Think of it as dragging a car up a hill. For all that energy you spend battling your resistance, you can already use it constructively on something else.

It might seem like a big waste dropping all that’s done, but it’s not big of a deal. You are creatively capable of achieving a lot more than you realize. What you’ve done so far is just a small speck of what you can achieve. Trying to hold on to what you’ve done just prevents more goodness from coming your way.

I adopt the drop-and-go approach a lot with my work. For the 400 over articles you see here, there are actually about 100 half-written articles that have not seen the light of the day (yet). Some of them are 10% complete, some 30% complete, and some about half done. When I started out, I would make sure that I finish every article I start. Subsequently, it led to a lot of wasted time and effort in rewriting (and rewriting, and rewriting) whenever I tried to complete an article which I had lost inspiration for. On the other hand, when I follow my inspiration, the work is just effortless. (point #7)

You might ask: Wouldn’t all the work that went into writing the posts (halfway) go to waste? Not at all. They all add to my 10, 000 hours of experience. I learn from writing them, and this learning will come in handy for my future posts.

Give yourself the permission to drop what you’re doing if it’s not working out, and you might just find many new things coming your way straight after that. Read: Quitting To Win

Of course, don’t just start dropping every single thing you’re doing now just because you lose interest. It’s a benefits vs. costs equation. If it’s almost done (99% completion), and the benefits from pushing through that final 1% far outweigh the costs, then go ahead and get it done. It’s a judgment call that you make from weighing out the benefits and costs.