We’ve all heard the quote (often mis-attributed to Dr. W. Edwards Deming) that…”you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

When working on reaching your goals (you do set SMART goals right?) you have to monitor and measure your progress so you know when you’ve achieved your goal, but you need to do more than just measuring to truly manage your goals.

I can use myself as a perfect example. In February I set a very aggressive weight loss goal for myself. I really launched in and tackled changing my eating and exercise habits to support my weight loss goal. And for 4 months I really rocked my goal. I was trending ahead of my weekly estimates and was getting much healthier.

I was not only measuring everything, but I was really incorporating those measurements into my entire being. I tracked calories, what I ate, how much I weighed, the amount I drank, how much exercise I finished. I measured everything to the N^th degree and really thought and reflected on it every day. I held my goal in mind and kept it very “bright”.

But as happens to so many of us, when things got really busy at work and at home, I slipped. I had a small accident that prevented me from working out for a few weeks. I stopped really focusing on my goal and just set myself on auto-pilot, keeping track of things, but not doing anything with the data.

The first thing to go was tracking all of my calories, fats, carbs, and protein, I was just tracking the food – barely. I still weighted myself every morning and wrote the results down, but I wasn’t plugging the numbers in my Excel spreadsheet and really watching how my weight was trending.

I knew at a glance I wasn’t really gaining any weight, but I wasn’t losing any either. That would be great – being stable – but I hadn’t reached my goal weight yet.

So I just sort of floated along on auto-pilot for a few months. I was still measuring a lot of variables, but because I wasn’t holding my goal right at the top of my conscious thoughts like I had been when I first started, I wasn’t making any solid progress.

Once I brought my goal back to the front of my thoughts – and kept it there – I started to make new progress towards it.

This is true for any goal. If you’re not pursuing the outcome, measuring your actions along the way, and focusing on the goal and keeping it big and bright in your mind you’ll eventually lose your forward progress to reaching the goal.

At best you’ll float along – making some progress in places, losing it in others – until one of three things happens:

1. you give up on your goal
2. you achieve some of your goal, but not to the level you really want
3. you redefine your goal and re-energize yourself to really achieve it!

Reaching your goals isn’t just a matter of setting them. You have to measure your progress towards them and keep the outcome held firmly in mind.

Failing to measure your progress means you have to rely on luck to reach your desired outcome. Failing to keep your goal in mind means you’re just going through the motions when you measure your progress.

The two go hand-in-hand in reaching your goals to the full extent you’ve set for them!