Goal Tracker Ideas in Bullet Journal to keep you at it

Ok! So much for planning, let’s do the doing part, shall we?

Planning is one thing but doing is another thing.

Have you ever made a great plan only to find out down the track that you are unable to keep at it? It happens to the best of us. I guess it is just the nature of this whole planning and doing thing.

When I am working on a goal, I find trackers to be useful to keep at it.

There are so many Goal Tracker Ideas for the Bullet Journal. Even if you are not using the Bullet Journal, you can definitely use the concept of these Goal Tracker Ideas to achieve your goals.

The purpose of this post is to share with you the following:

Why are Goal Trackers important?
Goal Tracker Ideas to monitor your progress
Examples of my own Goal Trackers in my Bullet Journal

And most importantly: This post is to help us set the motion from planning to actually doing.

I will also include the outcome of the Self Care Project I did in the last 6 weeks.

Why are Goal Trackers important?

Goal Trackers keep you stay Focused

Being focused on our goals means we have momentum and we are making progress.

The quickest way to losing momentum is to stop making progress. When we stop making progress, we lose momentum. If kept for long, it becomes harder to get back in the saddle.

So, to keep our momentum we need to be consistent in making progress. To make progress we need to consistently take committed actions. Goal Trackers are great reminders to take actions every day. This way, we can be sure that we do at least one step a day towards achieving our goals.

If we find ourselves falling off the track, we can get our mojo back by referring to our Goal Trackers to continue or reset

Tracking Progress keeps you Motivated

Motivation is important in achieving our goals.

The reality is, life is not always sunshine and lollipops. It is only natural that sometimes we find ourselves struggling to stay motivated. You know, life happens and when they do it can easily throw us off.

To stay motivated, we need to increase our dopamine level. Dopamine is responsible for making us feel good when we achieve something. Every time we update our Goal Trackers, we feel good. Our brain tells us we are doing good which creates the feeling of wanting to do more of what we do.

So it is really important that we set a lot of small steps instead of setting one giant list of tasks. This way, our brain will feed off of burst of dopamine from the rewarding feeling every time we complete those small steps.

According to a healthline article, “When dopamine is released in large amounts, it creates feelings of pleasure and reward, which motivates you to repeat a specific behaviour”

While we are in this topic, it is also helpful to remember that, we cannot do a Project. We can only do tasks. One task at a time if we want to be more efficient.

Goal Trackers keep you accountable

We are being accountable with our goals if we are committed to taking actions to achieve them. Having goal trackers allows us to do just that.

Goal Trackers also help us impose self -discipline. Tracking our actions means we do what we said we would do which is such an important aspect in achieving goals.

Goal Tracker Ideas

I have mentioned in my Goal Setting Post, that my main goals for 2021 focus on: Personal, Family and Home and Passion (this blog).

Keeping those goals in mind, I picked 3 focus to work on from those Goal Categories. Gratitude (for personal), Finance (for family and home) and Blog Content (for passion). This is just for Jan to March 2021. Depending on how much I completed, these focus might change.

I have broken down my goals into Quarterly Projects. Quarterly projects are then broken down into Monthly Plans. Monthly Plans are turned into Weekly Actions, and Weekly actions are broken further into daily tasks.

I also assign different focus every quarter in each category to make sure I maintain balance in all areas. That being said, balance is not always achievable so I am happy to complete at least one project from each category.

I know it sounds a bit over the top but that is the system that works for me. And it has been for a long time. The only difference now is that, I am more intentional with my goals.

The main concept is Setting a Goal and breaking it down. After setting my goals, I then create projects related to those goals. The projects are then broken down into Monthly Plans so I know what specific actions I need to take to accomplish my goals.

Even though the monthly plans are already broken down, often the actions steps are still not specific enough, so it is hard to complete. Thus, breaking them further until they become a single action step is the best way to go. These single action step collection then becomes the daily tasks spread out through the week.

If you are interested in Goals and Personal Productivity please check out these related posts.

Long term and Short Term Goals

I always have a Goal Tracker Page in my Bujo for short term and long term goals. Sometimes Goals change but most of the time they stay the same unless a goal totally lost its meaning.

This page is really helpful especially when setting up Quarterly goals because it helps me look ahead and see the bigger picture. That way I can easily adjust the action steps if need be.

Blog Post Tracker

I am really loving this blogging business and I am committed to working hard to keep this passion alive. What I appreciate about it is: I get to share with you my experiences and lessons I learned while creating an intentional lifestyle.

I am really excited where this passion brings me in the next five years.

For this year, one of the things I would like to focus on growing this blog is Creating High-Value Content. So, to make myself accountable and stay focus, I created this Tracker for publishing a post weekly.

For 2020, my goal was to publish 18 posts by the end of December. I started in September. I managed to publish 16 posts. Not bad hey?

My goal for 2021 for Content it to publish 50 posts. There are 52 weeks in 2021 but I am leaving out the two weeks because I am planning to take 2- weeks break in December 2021, in the hope of making the next Christmas a little bit more intentional.

Sleep Tracker

I shared Self-Care Tips in my previous post and started a 6-week Self-care Project. I meant to update you halfway through but I thought it would be better to finish the 6 weeks so I can give you more insights.

My hope for that Project is to commit for a full 6 weeks initially to establish a good habit and hopefully continue beyond 6 weeks. In hindsight, I should have called it a 6 weeks Challenge.😁. Sleeping before 2 am was a challenge for me.

But you know what I enjoyed it and the Sleep Tracker has done a huge job to keep me motivated.

My take away from Self-care Project: Sleep

I realised that my present commitments won’t make it possible to sleep before 12 midnights and there are a few reasons why:

Between 12 am and 2 am are the times where my brain is in full power. These are the hours where the creative part of my brain works well. I suspect, it is because, during this time, I feel fulfilled knowing I have done my best for the day as a Household manager, an employee, a Mummy, a friend and a wife.
I still stay in bed with Kuya and M until they fall asleep every single night, then when they are in bed, I spend time with R, which can stretch up to 12 midnight.
Bedtime with kids and time with R alone is something I am not ready to trade yet with earlier bedtime for me.
I tracked 39 nights. Eighteen nights before 1 a.m sleep and 21 nights after 1 a.m sleep.

Conclusion: My present situation won’t allow me (yet) to sleep before 1 a.m. So, I will continue to track my sleep until the habit of sleeping before 1 am is established. Then after that, I will aim to push it back to before 12 a.m. Moving forward I am going to continue to track my sleep time, and while doing that, I am going to start a new Self-Care Project.

Savings Trackers

Home Deposit Tracker

Every year I create a Home Deposit savings tracker to make sure we have enough deposit when we finally decided to buy a place of our own. At the moment we are happy where we live and we just keep savings until we are ready to buy.

“Pay me back” trackers

So, it just happened. I had to buy a laptop and a phone in December. I paid cash for both of them so I need to replenish our Peace of Mind Fund. (our family account that I top up every pay for expenses like these).

In my future posts, I would be happy to share how I manage our finances, that allows us to buy “Wants” items guilt-free. Well, except for the phone, I felt a little bit guilty for a few days because I could have bought a less expensive phone.

Special Occasions Fund

With the same concept as the Peace of Mind, we have another account that we top up every time we get paid. This account is reserved for expenses for Christmas, Birthday celebrations and Anniversaries.

Note: The ‘pay me back’ trackers might change as I go because I like it to change the value of each square.

Other Bullet Journal Trackers

Weekly Tracker

The way I use a Weekly Spread can also be considered a tracker in a sense that all the events, projects, gratitude, tasks and menu plans are recorded in this spread.

Bill Tracker

I pay our bills as soon as I receive the bill/statements. I don’t wait for the due date so this Bill tracker is really just to track every year how much we spend on each Bill Category.

Purchase Log

Purchase Log is also another form of a tracker. I use this to track our purchases especially the big tickets ones. This is really good because I can see at a glance what we have bought in a particular year.

Yearly Highlights Tracker

This is a page which is pretty much a yearly timeline in bullet forms. Unfortunately, I am unable to share a photo as it is a little bit too personal.

I have a record of yearly highlights from 2007 up to 2020 and just keep adding information to it every year. It is like looking at life at a glance. Looking at this page helps me remember the major events that happened in a particular year. This is also something R and I look at during our year-end goal setting session.

Where to go from Here?

I hope that those trackers gave you enough ideas you can use to tread your own path.

Just a gentle reminder: If you are just starting with the Bullet Journal method or even with the tracking concept, Please start slowly. Try one tracker at a time. Tracking too many is a perfect recipe for frustrations.

We can do this my lovelies.

Much love,

Goal Tracker Ideas in Bullet Journal to keep you at it