Victory Comes One Battle at a Time

You will see what you focus on

Have you ever felt that you’re failing because things aren’t going as smoothly or quickly as you had hoped? Whether your focus is on making it through the day or you have a big goal broken into steps, understanding your progress is critical to your success. You’re achieving incremental steps, and sometimes clearing major milestones without even realizing it. Still, you’re dissatisfied. So, how do you know if you’re succeeding?

You Will Improve in the Areas You Measure.

To really understand your development, you need to have some metrics that help you to chart your progress. This is especially true when developing skills, like a foreign language or improving your presentations. Create metrics that allow you to quantify your success. Having measurable objectives will give you a clear understanding of your development. Here are a couple of examples:

I was working with a client on improving their ability to participate in meetings. As part of her annual review, Natsuko’s (not her real name) boss told her that she needed to speak up more in meetings. “You have outstanding insights into the challenges of this project,” her boss told her, “but you don’t share those ideas in meetings, and that hurts the team’s ability to grow.”

Natsuko and I set a measurable way for her to be more assertive in meetings. We started with speaking out twice in a meeting (a quantifiable goal). When she only did that once, we examined where opportunities to engage were missed. Once she identified those and practiced some techniques to interject, she was able to offer up comments three times in her next meeting. We then focused on presenting an opinion, answering two questions related to her point, and paraphrasing information (her own or rephrasing others). Soon Natsuko’s engagement surpassed even her boss’ expectations.

When I practice guitar I measure things like 1-minute chord changes (30), mistakes during a song (0), and the number of times I add a personalized embellishment (1) as ways to track my progress. Achieving these indices lets me know when I’m ready to move on to the next lesson. For you, the key is to choose some targets you can objectively mark as points of success.

The targets you’ll track need to be quantifiable rather than qualifiable. Initial success is in the achievement, not the quality of the achievement. Additionally, you need a simple feedback measure to chart your progress. Did you achieve your target, yes or no?

The problem with creating a subjective feedback measure is that it takes too much effort for those of us who aren’t behavioral scientists. What I mean by that is it takes a lot of time to build an effective feedback cycle. Subjective metrics rely on someone else making an appraisal of your efforts and deciding when it’s good enough. Why give up that control? Most will agree that it takes doing something more 10,000 times to be an expert. Your skill will improve as you repeat the task you choose to be an expert in. As you reach 100 or so completions, you will notice a dramatic improvement from your initial efforts. So stick with it and don’t give up.

My guitar playing is getting better as my chord changes get faster. Natsuko is becoming a more effective communicator as she acts more assertively in meetings. You’lll have more success too when you count the number of times you hit your objectives.

Now What?

Once you have objective metrics for measuring your progress, you need to analyze your results. Have you succeeded? What were the reasons for that? Have you had setbacks? How can you overcome those? Analysis of success will help you to replicate your achievement. Analysis of setbacks will help you to adjust your course. They say that we learn more from failure than success. I firmly believe that. When you fail, you discover alternatives through trial and error. That makes you more versatile and leads to future successes. Thomas Edison said this while inventing the lightbulb; “have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

These questions will help you to make steady progress:

7 Questions for setbacks?

* What are the problems I’m having in clearing this?

* How can I overcome those?

* Was there a specific point where I consistently hit a roadblock?

* What was that?

* Am I lacking some ability, piece of knowledge, or a skill that will make this easier and give me a clearer context of the situation?

* Did I miss an opportunity to apply the skill I’m developing?

* What could I have done to take advantage of that opportunity?

9 Questions for success

* Why was I finally able to clear this milestone?

* Is there something about the process that is duplicatable?

* What am I capable of now that I wasn’t 3 months ago? 6 months ago?

* Do I need to reassess the next phase (s) of this journey? When do I need to reassess?

* What’s something that was unexpected?

* What’s next?

* What other skills/knowledge do I need to develop?

* Who contributed to my success?

* Have I told them?

Asking and answering questions like these helps you to assess where you are and where you’re going. This analysis will give you a bird’s-eye view of your situation. That will enhance your understanding of what should follow and the resources you have at your disposal for the next challenges.

Next Steps

Now that you have evaluated where you are, it’s time to make some adjustments. You have more knowledge and experience than you did when you started. Based on that, are your strategies still viable? Is your next step still the same? Reassess before you move on. This will help you to move forward more smoothly and have greater success not just with the next part of your life’s journey but further down the road, too.

Recommit

Once you’ve reassessed, it’s time to recommit. Know that this journey is making you more skilled, more knowledgeable, and more agile. Find joy in and celebrate what you’ve achieved so far. Then ready yourself for what comes next, commit to success on the next leg of your development. You’ve made it this far, get excited about the next stage of your development.

Summary

Achieving your goals, whether it’s consecutive days getting out of bed or becoming a skilled public speaker, is a process. To ensure you’re making headway, you need to measure your success metrics in a quantifiable way. Make sure to set targets that are easy to calculate (E.g., number of times you did X). Through evaluation, you will identify patterns that are leading to your success or getting in the way of it. Then you can make the necessary corrections to get on the right track. Once you’ve evaluated your situation, raise your finger to the wind, take a deep breath and confirm that you are moving in the right direction. Then recommit to your success.

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