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5 Most Important Things to Track for a Successful Year

January 28, 2018 By Narkis 27 Comments

Having things to track is not the issue, any Pinterest search will lead you to hundreds of ideas. But some specific tracking is not only important, it’s vital. These are my most important things to track on your calendar, planner or even a phone app.

financial Tracking

The first thing you should start doing if you’re not already!! 

I think I’m was the most money-aware child ever – My mom is a financial coach. 

Her life story is amazing. She paid off her debt with two young kids and then helped her sister do the same. All while planing for a better future, saving, having a retirement account, traveling and living well generally. 

After doing so, she learned to coach and started working with small businesses and families. She helped so many already, paying off so much debt and plan a better future. 

Her system works every time. Without tracking your income, regular expenses and “surprise” expenses you won’t be able to get ahead. 

Recently I helped a friend to plan out her next year’s financial situation.

I took her planner and started marking: 

  • Paychecks. 
  • Rent date & amount
  • Bills due dates and amounts
  • Health insurance payment
  • Credit card debt payment amounts
  • Specific budgeting from each paycheck for groceries. 
  • Taxes (for self-employed)
  • Add whatever expenses you have during the month. 
  • What you’re expected to have left at the end of every month

That visual tracking helps to see what you’re spending that you shouldn’t. 

It also helps create a bigger plan for the year. Knowing a year in advance what will be your income and expenses changes the way you look at money. 

Look at the amount you’re supposed to save by the end of the year – can you make it bigger by budgeting better? I’m sure you can, we all can! 

Seeing that amount you’ll have 12 months from now will motivate you to be a smarter spender.

Tasks Tracking

This is the place to start having plans. Work plans, home plans, family plans. Everything. If you plan on purging your closet during the weekend, go ahead and write it! 

Writing tasks makes us accountable. We see it every day and it becomes a real “to do” and not just some fantasy on all the things we’ll accomplish during the weekend. 

Although I consider myself very organized, I still have some cluttered spaces in my home. Also, my closet. You don’t end up each week with your entire closet on your bed? Just me? Ok then… 

Specifying when I plan on accomplishing my tasks really helps me in doing so. 

My tasks: 

  • Organizing project 
  • Weekly cleaning routines 
  • Blog posts to publish 
  • Online classes to watch 
  • Book pages read
I find that I forget about things I wanted to do when I don’t write them down. 

So many times I started packing and forgot that I didn’t do laundry on time and now I don’t the right clothes. And I said to myself a week before don’t forget to do the laundry. 

Life gets in the way! You can’t remember each little task you have to do.
Write it down the minute it comes to your head and better yet – set a time for it. 

That way you ensure you’ll do it. 

Food Tracking 

There are so many reasons you should be tracking what you plan on eating each week and month. 

  • Staying healthy
    When I don’t plan in advance what I’ll eat this week, I eat a lot of bad food or a lot of nothing.
    I find myself with cravings but no idea what to actually eat.
    In order to stay healthy, I recommend doing some research and consider meal prepping. 
  • Stop wasting and throwing away food
    It took me so long to stop throwing away food every week.
    I hated myself whenever I found rotten strawberries in the back of my fridge 
  • Successful trip to the grocery store

Things to Track: 

  • Healthy meals 
  • Unhealthy meals 
  • Drinking water – how much each day
  • Recipes I’ll make each week 
  • Grocery shopping dates
These are things that I track, that are important to me, but add your own lifestyle. For example, drinking water with lemon, trying plant based/paleo/your diet recipes (mark each time).

If you stay honest with yourself, tracking your food will reveal each month if you really made better choices. 
When I started writing down what I was eating I discovered I wasn’t as healthy as I had thought.
Even if you think this won’t do anything to change your health, give it a chance for one month. 

Workouts Tracking

If you’re not working out, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t track it. I know, it sounds ridiculous. 

But any physical movement is important to all of us: 

  • Better mood
    I know eating chocolate sounds better than lifting weights for your mood. But it’s really not. Physical activity helps you feel happier for longer. Exercise helps with stress, anxiety and more. Read more here. 
  • Better productivity 
    Getting your energy out will actually help you gain more energy. Read more here. 
  • Health Health Health!
    Regular physical activity helps to prevent heart diseases, high blood pressure and so much more. Read more here. 

Some will even say that working out once a day is not enough for someone who works sitting down. 
As someone who all of her life was super active not only in the gym, but at my jobs too – I missed moving! 
So now I try to work standing up. If it works out I even put music and try to move while I work on the computer. 

Track your movement: 

because it is so important for other aspects of our lives besides looking good. 

  • Workouts – leg day, abs, hands, etc. 
  • Working while standing – how many hours 
  • Other physical activities – Cooking, cleaning, etc. 
  • If you have kids – it counts as moving (a lot) 😉 

It’s time to get up and stand up while reading this. Tracking your movement will help you see the bigger picture when it comes to your health. It helps me know how healthy I really am, like with food tracking. 

Work-Related Tracking

The final of things to track is really a no-brainer.
If you want a successful year in your job, you should track your assignments, progress, and new skills to learn. 

Being self-employed demands a ton of self-discipline and being on top of things.
If I didn’t have everything written down, I would not be able to make any progress. 

When I have a graphic design project, I write in my calendar the deadline, and for myself I add the date I actually want to finish it. 

As someone who provides service, clients will give you a deadline, but will have things they want changed 99% of the times. That’s why I will finish beforehand and then will have time to correct. 

But even for any type employee, 

there are things to track to help you get better and get ahead:

  • Meetings
  • Assignments Deadlines 
  • New skills to learn 
    (If working in retail – you should watch sales videos and lessons)
  • Tasks
Having everything in front of you at the beginning of each work dat of you makes sure you won’t forget a thing. Which is important to your boss, and even more important if you’re your own boss.  
health goals tracking

Start the year off right with being purposely organized with your plans and tasks. Download this free calendar and start tracking! 

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Organizing

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Marjie Mare

    February 2, 2018 at 4:13 pm

    Tracking helps me with my daily task. I must say, I forgot to add tracking my movement which I think is important. I will add that. Thanks for sharing those 5 important things to track for a successful year.

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 2, 2018 at 4:17 pm

      Thank you for your comment 🙂 I hope tracking your movement will help you with staying healthy.
      -Narkis

      Reply
  2. kate Werthmann

    February 2, 2018 at 8:13 pm

    this is a genius list! I will def be bookmarking this one to refer back to!

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 2, 2018 at 8:23 pm

      Thank you so much! 🙂 I hope it will help you.
      – Narkis

      Reply
  3. Sylvie Anne Hanes

    February 3, 2018 at 6:35 am

    I learned about bullet journals a few months ago and started using one for myself. What an amazing tool and I agree that tracking makes us totally accountable for our actions (or shows our inactions!).

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 3, 2018 at 9:16 am

      Definitely, being accountable is so important for achieving our goals.
      – Narkis

      Reply
  4. Kweni

    February 3, 2018 at 7:40 am

    I agree with you. I do all of those tracking you mentioned except the food and workout bit. I think I should start living a healthier lifestyle.

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 3, 2018 at 9:18 am

      I’m glad I could help, I hope that tracking those things will help you start making healthier choices! Eventually it all ties in together, the more we put into our health, the more successful we are. Good luck 🙂
      – Narkis

      Reply
  5. Danielle

    February 3, 2018 at 7:57 pm

    These are great tips! I’ll definitely have to apply some of these to my bullet journal.

    Reply
  6. Easter Babe

    February 4, 2018 at 1:49 am

    These are some great ideas! I actually just purchased a large calendar book to keep track of my personal things. I find that my work calendar helps me to stay on track so I thought a separate one for personal would be great too.

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 5, 2018 at 1:06 pm

      Thank you 🙂
      I love the large calendar where you have a ton of space to track lol.
      A personal calendar is very important, our personal life should come first.
      – Narkis

      Reply
  7. Iféoluwa

    February 4, 2018 at 6:34 pm

    This is such a great idea! Tracking helps you stay in touch with everything you are doing. It’s kinda like a to do list but for different categories.

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 5, 2018 at 1:08 pm

      Thank you 🙂 Tracking my health has helped me gain a better perspective. I hope you find it useful as well.
      – Narkis

      Reply
  8. Stephanie

    February 4, 2018 at 6:34 pm

    I am the same way, I have to have a way to track everything. I have a day planner for the schedule and use Quicken for budgeting. It helps so much to make sure to have a way to track everything.

    Reply
  9. April

    February 4, 2018 at 9:54 pm

    I really need to be more organized and get my life together this year. These are all great tips!

    April | http://www.thebluehydrangeas.com

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 5, 2018 at 1:11 pm

      Thank you 🙂 I hope you’ll use these tips to be more organized this year.
      – Narkis

      Reply
  10. Gabbie Sanchez

    February 5, 2018 at 8:11 am

    I try my best to keep up with my planner, and you have definitely inspired me to become more committed to it. To actually look at it before starting my day. Thanks so much for the tips 🙂 will be adding “tracking my movements” to it now.

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 5, 2018 at 1:12 pm

      Thank you, I’m so glad I inspired you and that you found something new to track!
      – Narkis

      Reply
  11. ejnosillA/RedefiningHERstory

    February 5, 2018 at 11:54 am

    This is such a wealth of information that I can actually incorporate in my life! I am really struggling to organize all aspects of my life and I loved this blog post! So useful!!!

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 5, 2018 at 1:14 pm

      Thank you! I hope you’ll start tracking soon and see a true change in your life!
      Being organized is so important to achieve your goals.
      – Narkis

      Reply
  12. Kristyn

    February 5, 2018 at 5:18 pm

    This is wonderful tips. I will use some of these tips towards my bullet journal.

    Reply
  13. David Elliott

    February 5, 2018 at 11:42 pm

    Those are five great things to track for sure. I really need to do better with at least three of those. I could definitely do better financial tracking. And then calorie counting and exercise tracking. All would be so beneficial.

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 7, 2018 at 5:36 pm

      Tracking is the easy part, it’s only difficult when we don’t accomplish the actual difficult part 😉 Once you’ll start tracking you will feel more obligated to have better financial and health decisions.
      – Narkis

      Reply
  14. Alexandra Nicole

    February 7, 2018 at 11:49 am

    I am tracking the workout tracking! I love this post and the printables! I just had a baby and am trying to get my shape back!

    Reply
    • Narkis

      February 7, 2018 at 5:33 pm

      Congratulations! It’s easy to just start and see where it takes you! Good luck! 🙂
      – Narkis

      Reply
  15. Simone

    October 7, 2018 at 11:07 pm

    Do you track everything on one calendar or have a calendar for each function?

    Reply
    • Narkis

      October 15, 2018 at 11:35 am

      Hey Simone, I try to use separate ones, but I actually created a new (free) daily planner where you can track everything!
      https://placing-stars.com/free-2019-printable-calendar/

      Reply

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Hey there! I’m Narkis. I love organizing, creating a warm home, and traveling! I would love to share with you my favorite tips & hacks for a beautiful, organized life!
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