Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Tech Help with the New Year's Resolutions

Here is a web page with step-by-step instructions for creating an Excel document to help you track your progress toward a goal. It walks you through creating a spreadsheet to enter your data and a chart that will show your progress so far and projects whether, at your current pace, you are on track for meeting the goal. The instructions are set up for an aggregate goal, using the example of "run 250 miles this quarter." That is useful for such goals as my effort to write a 100,000-word novel by the end of February. I had to do some minor tweaking to make the format work for some of my other goals

Which brings me to the other reason this is useful. It requires setting goals with specific endpoints, time frames for completion and objective measures of progress. "Get in shape" is a wishy-washy goal. "Lose x pounds by October 31" is a solid, measurable goal. It also allows a little wiggle room. If I don't write all of my 1,786 words one day, I can still be on track by writing more the next day. The whole goal doesn't fly out the window because of one setback.

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