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
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
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
Start the year off right with being purposely organized with your plans and tasks. Download this free calendar and start tracking!
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.
Thank you for your comment 🙂 I hope tracking your movement will help you with staying healthy.
-Narkis
this is a genius list! I will def be bookmarking this one to refer back to!
Thank you so much! 🙂 I hope it will help you.
– Narkis
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!).
Definitely, being accountable is so important for achieving our goals.
– Narkis
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.
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
These are great tips! I’ll definitely have to apply some of these to my bullet journal.
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.
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
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.
Thank you 🙂 Tracking my health has helped me gain a better perspective. I hope you find it useful as well.
– Narkis
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.
I really need to be more organized and get my life together this year. These are all great tips!
April | http://www.thebluehydrangeas.com
Thank you 🙂 I hope you’ll use these tips to be more organized this year.
– Narkis
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.
Thank you, I’m so glad I inspired you and that you found something new to track!
– Narkis
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!!!
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
This is wonderful tips. I will use some of these tips towards my bullet journal.
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.
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
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!
Congratulations! It’s easy to just start and see where it takes you! Good luck! 🙂
– Narkis
Do you track everything on one calendar or have a calendar for each function?
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/