Measuring Progress

Spring cleaning can be really frustrating. You pull everything out of closets, cabinets, attics, and even from underneath the bed so you can dust, throw things out, and get organized. After a long, difficult, tiring day of trying to make your home a spotless retreat from the cares of the world, you end up with clothes all over the bedroom floor, pots, pans and melon ballers all over the kitchen, and general disorder everywhere you look. The counterintuitive nature of the activity makes it difficult to stay motivated. You want things clean, but every step you take moves you away from that final goal. Lack of visible progress kills too many goals before their prime. Two different situations may be the culprit. It could be that you are making a lot of progress, but don’t realize it because it’s gradual and you’re just not keeping track, or it could be that you genuinely aren’t making progress and are no closer to your goal than when you started.

With goals like losing weight, saving money, and getting the high score on an online game, it’s easy to measure progress. You can even graph it and do statistical analysis to look for trends in the data. But for goals like finding love, reaching self-actualization, and being a better person, you have to be creative. Try breaking down those goals into smaller and more specific goals. Measuring your progress then becomes less, “today I’m 12.6% in love whereas yesterday I was only 12.4% in love” and more, “I went on dates with five new people, I met a girl I really like, we went on a couple more dates, and now I’d like to have more meaningful activities and conversations to get to know her better.” So instead of a numerical value, you have a list of sequential smaller goals that you can check off along the way. As long as you’re still checking off goals, you’re making progress.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to lose weight and the scale says the diet isn’t working, you’ll rightly ask yourself the question, “Why am I starving myself and not losing weight when I COULD be eating whatever I want… and not losing weight?” Giving up is the easiest response to this question, but a better response is to ask, “What can I do differently to start making real progress toward my goal?” Wile E. Coyote understands this concept well. When he straps an ACME rocket to his back and slips on his roller skates, he’s determined to catch the Roadrunner. When that action results with him smashing into a wall painted to look like the horizon, he doesn’t give up. He grabs an anvil and gets back to work.

Balance

One time I was shaving in the shower. Somehow while I was rubbing my face to see if I missed a spot, I cut the top of my ear with the razor. The first indication of my mishap was seeing the blood on my hand. Seeing the blood caused a slight panic which coincided with getting soap in my eye. I hurriedly reached past the shower curtain for my towel. At this point I slipped, grabbed the shower curtain, pulled the shower curtain down, and fell out of the bath tub and on to the cold tile floor. There I was cold, bruised, bleeding, and eyes stinging, laying on the bathroom floor with a shower curtain on top of me. I should have had better balance.

Balance is essential to leading a whole and happy life. To achieve balance, the first step could be to divide your life into appropriate categories. You could do mind, body, and spirit. You could divide by roles you play such as employee, student, father, son, husband, ballet dancer, etc... You could also divide up by areas of responsibility that are a little more general like, work, school, family, friends, church. Think of as many categories as you need and if you ever feel unbalanced in an area not on the list, add it.

Next, you need to make sure you are dedicating the appropriate time and energy into each of these categories. Unfortunately you can't just divide up your hours awake into equal segments. Balance means making progress in each area and not necessarily devoting equal amounts or time.

The whole point of this is that you don't want to be that guy who has an amazing job and has never met a promotion he couldn't get, but has neglected his family life to the point of extinction. You don't want to be that student who has amazing grades and graduates with a stellar transcript, but has neglected his social skills to the point of never doing well in an interview. You don't want to be that guy who sure is clean shaven, but walks with a limp and has a band aid on his ear.

Cardio

An exercise that will work out your heart without making you out of breath.

1. Write down the name of someone you love. If you’re anything like me, you probably wrote “Liam Neeson”, and THAT’S GREAT, but for this exercise you need the name of someone closer to you. Maybe a friend or family member. If Liam Neeson is a friend or family member, I envy you greatly, and can you get me his autograph?

2. Write down something out of the ordinary that you can do to show that person what they mean to you. When I say “out of the ordinary” I mean something you don’t already do all the time. If you don’t usually hug the person, a hug can be enough. You don’t necessarily have to cook them the world’s largest enchilada, or do anything involving stilts.

3. Do it. Really do it. Don’t just think about it. Get it done.

4. Write your experience. How did you feel? How do you suspect they felt? Is it worth doing again?

I hope that you take the time to follow the above steps. It’s important to write down the name of the person, the action you plan to perform, and the results. It makes the whole experience so much more concrete. Instead of a vague feeling of having done something nice, you’ll have a record of exactly what you did to show your love and how it made everyone feel.