Review your progress. Let's say you've been doing the work making things happen and you're feeling a bit lost. It could be because you're not tracking your progress. That changes now. When I first started down the online business route, I didn't even consider making time to look back and review my progress. After all, I was all about moving forward.

When I got to where I wanted, that's when I would take a break and look at how far I've come. This was a huge mistake, because even in those early days, I had a lot to learn simply from my own actions and results, or lack of. In addition, by not pausing to reflect on my past successes, I was unknowingly undermining my own inner motivation. So not only could I learn from my successes and failures, I could look at the sheer amount of Moxie, I was demonstrating by even attempting to make a business from doodling animals, and that would have done a lot of good for my self esteem. Now, no matter how much or how Little I think I've achieved over a course of a week or a month, I make time to review my progress. I urge you to do the same no matter how far along in your creative pursuits you are.

Here are a few ways to structure progress reviews. One, focus on valuable metrics, not vanity metrics. Looking at the numbers, whether it's sales or followers or email subscribers is valuable, yes. But it's not the only thing you should be paying attention to. In fact, I usually put it at the bottom of my priority list on progress reports. Why?

Well, for a long time, I found looking at the numbers more depressing than motivating or informative. It would make me see how short I fell off my bold expectations and put me off doing another progress review anytime soon. This is why I recommend getting very clear on your micro goals and reviewing your progress in terms of them. For example, if my push goal is to finish a book, one of my micro goals is to you Write 500 words a day. I can track word count every day and review that. Sure.

But I can also recognize the fact that I managed to an average of five days per week where I made an effort to write some words, even shorter 500. This tells me quite a lot for my progress goal, I can celebrate that fact. And I know I'm not having a problem in sitting down to write that because I'm not hitting the full word count. Maybe I add a second writing session in three days a week for the next period of time before my next review. to focus on quality, not quantity. Another way to look at my word count writing goal is in terms of quality of my writing experience.

I might consider how I felt when I was writing, no matter what your creative work is, I believe in using your sense of enjoyment as a real metric, not just focusing on numbers as a measure of progress. Ask yourself some questions like you might ask a loved one. Was this an enjoyable one? If your day? If not, what could you do to make it more enjoyable next time? Did you have more fun when you wrote in a certain cafe, or were you more effective and happy when you were writing alone.

Again, these could show you variables to play with next time. Three, get a review date in your calendar. When you decide to schedule your review is of course up to you. I have experimented with multiple review periods, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, you name it. At different times. These have all worked, so I encourage you to experiment to.

One thing to consider is how extensive you make your review, which will greatly depend on one your tolerance for this and to how often you decide to review. For example, a daily review might simply consist of did I get my number one task done today? Did I learn anything? And what's my task for tomorrow? alternatively, a monthly review might take into account multiple areas of your creative goals. Even your life as a whole.

My monthly reviews usually mean taking a look at each of my life areas, for example, workplace relationships, health. And I go back through my journal and any relevant spreadsheets, as well as my Asana, Kansa or Google calendar to see what I managed to get done. This takes a little while, but I put it in my calendar for a Sunday afternoon near the end of the month, and make sure not to miss it. I actually find it a great way to wrap up the month and go into the new month with a renewed focus and Claire's like action steps. Decide what kind of review schedule you'd like to start with. I'd recommend weekly for now, but you know, you either way, get it in your calendar to download your social media tracker from the resources and start using it to keep an eye on the prize