I used to think I was achieving something any day I go to bed feeling very exhausted after having had a busy and hectic day but reverse is the case at times.

After attending a soft-skill class organized by GemMine, an organization of gems, I learnt that tracking your progress, you have to have a goal first then you work on it.

During the class Mr. Daniel Sumah the mentor for the class stated that ‘progress tracking is following through a set of processes to achieve a goal’. That means to track your progress, you must have a goal.

Now I make sure to write the goals down, pin it to either a wall or a notice board or anywhere I could see it every time so I don’t forget them.

Setting goals of high standards also motivates you towards achieving the goal. Now, I am motivated to set goals of high standard because I believe an I-want-to-pass-out-in-flying-colors-goal is different from an I-just-want-pass-that-subject-goal it’s all about standards now.

To track my progress I make use of tools, like a journal and writing platforms like Medium and most importantly somebody to report to. Not necessarily a mentor it could be a friend or a sibling.

I used to feel somehow with the idea of attributing my success to someone but now, I think it is a great idea to have to someone to talk to whether about a particular topic or a plan you are about to embark on, or a troubleshoot even if the person doesn’t understand what you’re talking about.

The importance of doing this is to inspire you and reinforce your knowledge at times without them even saying anything, the solution could spring out on it’s own. I think it is one of the miraculous ways the brain works at times. These are also the reasons progress tracking is important.

This has actually helped me a lot, recently, I asked a friend if he had time to be my therapist for 10 minutes, I had to make some reports to him he laughed and urged me on to tell him. I then went ahead and report to him about a particular topic on SQL, at the end he confessed that to be honest, he didn’t have the littlest idea about what I was talking about and that he couldn’t possibly give me an advice on what to do, but then I realized I am much more clearer about the particular topic than I was before I told him about it and even without him saying anything or giving me a piece of an advice, I am sure that I can even teach it to someone now.

The third step to progress tracking is; mindful work. “There is a difference between working and being mindful of the work you’re doing.”, like Mr. Daniel said. When tracking your progress you must be focused, to achieve better results. I could relate to this, although I am not a regular on social medias but I get distracted easily for instance when I am trying to focus on something and then my phone rings, even if I don’t answer it, I might find it hard to concentrate again on what I was doing before.

In order to be mindful now, I avoid any type of distraction by activating silent mode on my phone before doing anything that requires my full concentration and the result has been very great. I discovered that a 30-minutes concentration on something is really more efficient than working on something for a whole day with constant distractions. No matter how much I try now, to convince myself that I have achieved the goal simply because I spent hours doing it.

After working out on a goal, I ask myself questions like; ‘What have I learnt?’. If I am able to answer it at the end of a session with an “I learnt how to loop through a list using a ‘for’ keyword” answer, I would know that yes, I have been able to achieve parts of my goal. If not, I wouldn’t judge or condemn myself, but try more to motivate myself and continue tracking my progress and I know that at the end of the day, the result is going to be more fruitful than it was before.