“What gets measured gets done. What doesn’t get measured gets missed.”
When you are trying to change your life one of the most important steps to take is to monitor and measure your progress. All change should start with some form of monitoring as this automatically interrupts your behaviour patterns. For example, if you want to change your financial situation monitor everything you earn and spend, or if you want to lose weight monitor what you eat, drink and do.
It will require some willpower but you will start to uncover and build awareness about behaviours and patterns of behaviours that you can focus on to change.
Monitoring provides you with feedback about whether you are successfully making the change happen; lets you watch your progress; keeps you accountable; increases your commitment and gives you evidence for giving yourself credit for your achievements.
Top tips for monitoring change
Decide what to monitor
You should choose to track a behaviour that you want to change. Keep it simple and focus on one behaviour at a time. Change will come from one well thought through behaviour change.
What is a behaviour? We suggest behaviour is an activity you do which if someone was watching you would know that you have done. For example, eating a piece of fruit or walking to the shop rather than driving.
Change needs to have a clear and valid reason.
It’s one thing to know what you want to change, it’s another thing to know why it’s important for you to change it. Be clear about why you want to change that behaviour.
Create a monitoring record
Create a monitoring record and capture the time of day, day of the week, what you are doing (the behaviour), the situation or context in which you are doing the behaviour and what you are feeling and thinking at the time. This could be a page in a notebook, a spreadsheet or you could use an app or website.
Start monitoring
For one week pay attention to each time you engage in the behaviour you are trying to change. The monitoring you do before you implement a change is your baseline (your starting point) and you can come back to this to see how much progress you have made over time. This information will help to motivate you, especially if things get tough.
We are more likely to change things if we monitor our behaviour because we are giving our attention to it.
Writing it down makes it more likely that you will take action and gives you something to monitor your progress against.
After one week
Look back at the baseline monitoring record you have kept after one week and ask yourself:
What are the patterns?
When does the behaviour happen?
Where does the behaviour happen?
What is going on for me at those times?
Who am I with that may be influencing my behaviour?
Once you have had a chance to consider these questions create a new monitoring record for the next week. Use your baseline information to consciously focus on changing your chosen target behaviour.
Going forward
Continue recording instances of the behaviour in the same way as before, as this makes it very clear whether you are changing your behaviour from your baseline. You can use the information you gather to make any adjustments to what you need to change in the following week.
The more often you monitor and get feedback the better so keep monitoring for as long as possible. Regularly reviewing your behaviour makes it more likely that you will make change happen.
What if the change isn’t happening for me?
If the change you want isn’t happening or is smaller than you would like, do not blame yourself! Every day is a new day, and every week is a new week, so keep trying. Changing your behaviour is not always easy so focus on making progress not perfection and it is always OK to re-plan.
Remember that change is a process and not a single event.
Best wishes
Behaviour Works aim is simple. To help make change happen in your personal, family or working life. Every week we help people across the world with their own change journey with our online training. Check us out at Behaviour Works.
Main photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash
Laptop photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
