"In the business world we have a term that says the employee will do what the boss inspects not what he expects. It’s the same way in parent-child relations. The child will do what you inspect not what you expect."
~ Dr. Henry Brandt
A principle of management and of life: "What gets measured is what gets done."
Old management maxim
"Consider yourself as if you were a child - and then apply what you know as an adult."
"No matter the level of responsibility in life that you are at, constantly drawing attention to what matters increases the velocity and the likelihood of your actually creating in your life what matters most to you. It is one of the great 'secrets' that lead to happiness."
- The BuddhaKahuna
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CONTENTS
Why?
The steelworker hard hats and the gold stars
Navigating to a destination
Simple "getting" formula - no miracles, no secrets
Don't get confused with the psychological abstractions
The most highly productive activity of all?
So, use these forms
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WHY?
Although it may seem elementary or even childish, it is tremendously effective to monitor (track) what you do.
The "breakfast of champions" is feedback, which is then digested immediately to create a correction/improvement in what it takes to be successful in any doing.
Monitoring/tracking something is a form of building feedback into one's daily routine.
In psychology and in life, vagueness and lack of clarity breed directionlessness and a randomizing waste of life's energies. Doing the opposite is what it takes to create a life that is full of what you want.
Monitoring and tracking lead to "seeing" and therefore psychologically to "correcting". Your brain, devoid of the storied obstacles you create, will naturally draw you to an objective you set for yourself.
THE STEELWORKER HARD HATS AND THE GOLD STARS
One of the great motivational successes in business gave another motivational speech after the work day was over at the construction site for a huge building in San Francisco. Afterwards, the steelworkers didn't seem to want to leave. It seems they wanted to get their "gold stars" for the day for what they did and they hadn't got them yet.
We all are motivated by such things, no matter how tough (or weak) we think we are.
(My recollection is that this has something to do with Marshal Thurber, who I took a workshop from many years ago.)
NAVIGATING TO A DESTINATION
This is the equivalent of the navigating system in an airplane, which, like humans, is frequently off course.
The quicker the feedback and the quicker the correction of course, the more efficient the trip is. Wandering way off course before pulling back to being on course wastes a huge amount of time. Clearly the shortest distance between two points is a straight line - and we must get as close as reasonably practical to that straight line. If the flight crew figures out the path from Los Angeles to Honolulu and then sets the automatic pilot on the course, it will correct back on course thousands of times on the way. We humans are the same, though not quite as efficient (but, then, we are the ones who are smart enough to set the course, so we are smarter than the computer).
If you don't do this you will languish. If you do this, you will do better. If you do this as a regular practice, you will save mountains of effort and you will get mountains more of what you want. And if you've set your course to go to the Island of Happiness, your life will be far beyond what you would ordinarily even think was possible. (Learn what the producers and reducers of happiness are, so you aim you aim your life properly.)
Of course, to monitor or track something we've got to have some way of comparing it with where we've been and where we want to go. So, as with setting goal setting, we have to have a specific measure.
And, yes, we can use subjective measures if we define them well enough. We could use "on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you?" and that would be ok, but we could improve on it by having a group of items that are correlated to happiness but which are measurable. You'll have to see the happiness section to complete on this.
SIMPLE "GETTING" FORMULA - NO MIRACLES, NO SECRET
All of life is simply noting where one is now and where one wants to be and deciding what has the biggest payoff for the effort and determining how to get there:
A --> --> --> B
(Start) Doing, monitoring, correcting Destination)
Basically, the "law" is "to go from A to B one does actions" and "to get there quicker and more efficiently, one must direct the actions more toward the goal". There is no miracle that will create it for you.
DON'T GET CONFUSED
Fancy psychological abstractions and trying to figure out why one won't follow through on things often results in a vague quagmire of "defeats" - as in what happens with almost all New Year's resolutions. The simple fact is that regardless of how you feel physically or emotionally you have to take actions to get where you want. Everything else is a distraction or what is called an "excuse" - a "reason why not". My parents raised me wrong...I'm afraid...something is wrong with me... and a special prize for "the big one": "I just can't, I'm not capable".
If you don't do the actions necessary, you don't get the result.
If you do the actions necessary, you are likely to get the result - and prosper overall.
That's it.
Except that there is a psychological tool that we should acknowledge here. That any celebration and/or acknowledgement of even any small achievement is the fuel that runs the emotional animal buried inside the human - no matter how evolved.
Recording how we do relative to some measuring tool that is objective is also very effective because there is no BS to hide behind, no vagueness to escape through.
This is the "black and white" test - and a great way to run a life.
THE MOST HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE TOOL OF ALL?
A person who spends 5 to 10 minutes a day looking at and monitoring and recording how one is doing will be doing what is the most productive use of his/her time of anything that can be done, as it is the gateway to success in all of the areas of life.
Skip this, and your life will only be a fraction of what it could have been otherwise.
SO, USE THESE MONITORING FORMS
Life Management Monitoring Forms - Such as the Overall Life Test, Measuring The Effects of Doing the LifeMastery Process Program, Rating Of Where I Am In Each Area Of My Life.
Of course, it applies to financial management, so you'd link from the Financial page on the site to the books and website resources pointed to.
Note that virtually no success is achievable without monitoring and comparison to help us correct course, whether it is based on being a singer, an athlete, a businessperson, or anyone successful in any area.
