In August of my Run the Year* challenge, I was 1000 miles behind. The only way I could see a route to the end was to track what I’d run, deduct it from what I still needed, and project where that left me. Miss a day, or run less than planned, and I could see exactly what it did to my target before it became a problem I couldn’t solve.

I stopped thinking of tracking as something else to do and started thinking of it as something I could rely on. It turned out it was brilliant for motivating me and the numbers in the boxes kept me accountable more effectively than most accountability buddies I’ve had.

why I don’t rely on other people.

People are unreliable. I include myself in that. An accountability buddy has their own priorities, their own bad weeks, their own reasons a message goes unanswered. And often they feel uncomfortable being challenging and accept excuses at face value. They are busy, with a life as complicated as yours, not a bad partner. The trouble with depending on someone else for consistency is that your habit becomes only as reliable as their memory, their mood, their week. A tracker doesn’t have a bad week, and it doesn’t lie.

tracking myself instead.

Running streaks are trackers by nature. My Garmin tells me what day I’m on. Early in the streak, I knew the exact number and set myself mini targets around it. I’m over 2000 days now, and mostly I just run. It wasn’t long before it became automatic, and now tracking helps me focus when I’m struggling for time or am injured (yes, I know I should be resting, that’s a conversation for another day).

I get so much from tracking that now I have a few for my business too. I have weekly and monthly versions for different tasks, so I can see what’s done, what’s still outstanding, and whether what I’m doing is working. I started with social and web stats, but the same approach works almost anywhere in a business. I use it now for content production and admin tasks. Anything that you want to do consistently can benefit from being tracked.

Not every tracker needs to be something you fill in separately. When I did 30 days of yoga, the tracking was built into the video I opened each day. It doesn’t need to be a spreadsheet. It can be a colour by numbers, a tally sheet, photos, anything visual that is quick and easy to do.

tracking isn’t obsessing.

Tracking isn’t the same as obsessing, though it’s easy to let it become obsessive. Photos are a good example, particularly for weight loss, because they need to be taken on the same day, same time, at regular intervals, or they tell you nothing useful. Daily is pointless. I learned that the hard way with my own weight. I started tracking my weight every Monday morning when I got up. My weight barely moved in the first week, but it dropped in the second. This pattern was reliable, if a little strange. Had I not stuck with it and tracked it long enough to see that pattern; I’d have given up thinking that nothing was working. It was working, just not as I’d expected. In the end I lost 23kg, and I don’t think I’d have got there without knowing that pattern was normal for me rather than a sign I’d failed.

when tracking isn’t enough.

Although I don’t find accountability partners work for me, I know they work for other people. The trick is finding the right person. Some of my clients build habits without ever using a tracker, they use me. More than one has told me they wouldn’t have done a task that week if it hadn’t been for me, not because I’d said anything in particular, but because I was somewhere in their head while they were negotiating about whether or not to bother. Knowing there’s a session coming, or a check-in is due, can be the most powerful way to get something done.

knowing what’s right for you.

There’s no single system that works for everyone and the system you build for one thing may not work for something else. That’s OK. The goal is to find the best way to keep you on track for each task. Track it, post it on social, find an accountability buddy, the choice is yours. And, if you try one and it doesn’t work, try something different. Keep testing until you find what works for you.

If you’re not sure whether you need a tracker or a person, or both, book a free introductory call.

*Run the number of miles in the year. I ran 2020 miles in 2020, this year I would need to run 2026 miles to complete it.