Although I've created and used tracking spreadsheets over the years, reading this post by Sebastian Marshall, helped remind me how great such tools can be for finding patterns in one's effectiveness for meeting goals and self improvement as well as providing a motivational push.
Feeling energetic and determined to focus on being more productive with creative pursuits, I created this spreadsheet which I'm sharing with you in the hopes that it may inspire you to use it, modify it, or create your own: https://goo.gl/X513Cv The goal of this spreadsheet isn't to track To Do List items, but to instead help ensure that each day one focuses on those things which help them be most successful -- the items are of course individual and can be modified to match your own life priorities.
Instructions:
- Save the spreadsheet to your Google Drive (or save it as an Excel sheet*)
- Open it and edit the categories to match your own priorities.
- For each day: put a 'y' for goals met, a 'p' for goals partially met, and otherwise leave it blank for goals you didn't work on that day.
Finally, it's important to note that it's not helpful to consider any day with less than 100% of goals met as being a failure. Our motivation, energy, health, circumstances, and priorities may change; we may have days where we tear through the list and other days 'wasted' instead. For me, this is a tool for motivating and providing insights and not for providing reasons for one to beat themselves up. Whether one is motivated by streaks of consistent activity, of seeing how sleep (or lack of) affects one's other goals, or of being motivated by the act of checking something off a list, I hope this sheet will inspire you to identify and focus on your priorities.
