Why keeping score is important for accomplishing your goals

Have you ever noticed when you get yourself involved in a game or a friendly competition that things like the timer and the score can have a huge impact on your motivation and drive to keep going?

Regardless of whether you’re competitive or not, a timer and a score can and will change your actions.

So what if we were to apply this knowledge when it comes to accomplishing our goals?

Keeping score

I’m currently working on a big project that’s been on my mind for quite some time. The goal: to move the Podcasters’ Paradise membership site over to a new platform.

This project has a lot of moving pieces, and all of these moving pieces will have to come together at some point in order to make the move successful.

So far, here are the steps we’ve taken:

• Research platforms and compare
• Choose platform
• Engage with new platform
• Test new platform
• Identify parts that will be moved

We still have several more steps to take, but we’re making great progress. I know, because I’ve been keeping score.

Here’s how to keep score

When we first started this project I wasn’t very involved in the research portion. It sounded like one of those steps that would be a good thing to delegate. So for several weeks, I took myself out of the equation and was focused on other things.

Turns out I did it wrong.

All of the time that was sunk into researching returned platforms I knew existed, but that I hadn’t already chosen for a reason.

It was when I started having conversations with others in our space about what they use for their membership platforms that I realized the answer was right in front of us.

We talk about the power of connection and masterminds all the time — how could I have missed this?

After reflecting and realizing the way I had approached the first step in our masterplan was not something I was proud of, I gave myself a score:

• A 3 out of 10 on productivity (while I had good intentions, me delegating this step was not productive)
• A 5 out of 10 on discipline (even though I didn’t get the result I wanted as quickly as I wanted it, I didn’t give up by settling for a platform I knew wasn’t right)

I was not super proud of my scores on this first step, to say the least. But because I had a baseline for my productivity and discipline moving forward, I was excited to approach our 2nd step with a whole new energy.

When it came time to choose a platform, I was not only confident given the conversations I had had, but I was ready to crush that step with full productivity and discipline. I also realized that choosing the platform was so simple at that point, why not dive into the third step at the same time?

After reflecting on my second and third steps, I uncovered a couple of things:

• How critical it would be for me to take ownership of this project to keep things moving, and
• That the engagement piece was going to be a lot more involved than I had anticipated

I gave myself a 10 out of 10 for both productivity and discipline for the second step (choosing the platform was easy), and as I got further into the engagement piece — even though it was a lot more involved than I had anticipated — I become more and more confident about the platform we chose.

I haven’t scored myself on the engagement piece yet because I’ve realized that will continue until the project is complete; however, I was able to dive into testing recently, and I was excited to take that step on with full focus.

Unfortunately, it ended up taking me two weeks to get to this step, which is a lot longer than I wanted to wait to dive in.

However, once I did dive in, I was able to give testing my 100% focus, and I even completed the entire training course on how to use the platform!

Once completed, I gave myself a score:

• 9 out of 10 on productivity (finishing the entire training course & getting to test it out was awesome!)
• 7 out of 10 on discipline (I shouldn’t have waited that long to start testing, but once I dove in, I was on a roll!)

Looking ahead

As I continue working through this project, I can see us making massive progress in a short amount of time as long as I can keep the project moving.

By keeping score I’m able to motivate myself not only to do better on the next step than I did on the last, but also to keep my focus forward and my pace steady.

You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas. ~ Shirley Chisholm

Keeping score is easy to do, but like most things in life, it’s also easy to not do.

The Mastery Journal

That’s why we’ve built keeping score into The Mastery Journal itself.

At the end of each session there’s a space for you to give yourself a productivity score and discipline score, which is added up and averaged at the end of each day.

Then, during your 10-day Review you’re able to average your scores again to set a new standard for your next 10 days.

Always remember: the only person you should be comparing yourself to is you, yesterday.

You can use this same scale for scoring yourself on any number of skills or tasks, just like I’ve laid out above. If you’re ready to start crushing your tasks and making meaningful progress towards accomplishing your goals, then head over to TheMasteryJournal.com and grab your physical copy today!

Originally published at www.eofire.com on February 20, 2017.