Show Notes:
Ever feel like your motivation is a rollercoaster? You’re on fire one day, but the next, it’s hard to stay on track. This episode is the third in our consistency series, where we’ll explore two powerful tools to help you stay motivated and achieve your goals: tracking your progress and finding accountability. As John Maxwell reminds us, success isn’t an accident—it’s the result of intentional, consistent actions.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- The Power of Tracking: Why the simple act of tracking your progress is a game-changer for motivation and momentum.
- Tools for Consistency: Discover different methods for tracking, from habit tracker apps and digital journals to a simple pen-and-paper checklist.
- The Accountability Advantage: How having a partner or group can keep you on track, even on the days you don’t feel like it.
- Celebrate Your Wins: Learn how acknowledging and celebrating your progress creates a positive feedback loop that reinforces good habits.
- Feedback for Improvement: Why tracking gives you valuable insights, allowing you to make adjustments and improve your approach over time.
Resources Mentioned:
- nickmaizy.com: Check the website for new updates and resources.
Your Next Step
- Choose a Tracking Method: Find a simple way to track your progress in one area of your life that’s important to you.
- Find an Accountability Partner: Ask a friend or join a group to provide encouragement and help you stay on track with your goals.
Episode Transcript
Well, hello, my friend, and welcome. Welcome to episode 12 of the Claim your day podcast today. Today’s not just episode 12 is also the third episode in a series built for you to help you develop consistency in your life so that you can claim your day, make the most of your days. Because let’s. Let’s just face it, you know, our day or our life is only built on the days that we live.
If you’re not claiming it. Your day, you know, doing the best that you can, being intentional with your actions and your behaviors, if you’re not doing these things, then. Then your life’s not going to go how you want it to go. It’s just. It just can’t. It’s not going to happen randomly. You know, it’s like as John Maxwell says, sometimes you’re never going to ask someone that’s been successful and has achieved their goals how you ended up how you became successful.
And they just said, I don’t know. I just landed here. I don’t know how it happened. It was miraculous. Like, okay, no, what you’re going to do is you’re going to hear all the things that they did, how they were intentional so that they could guide their life to go where they wanted to go so they could achieve their goals. So that’s what I want for you. That’s why this podcast is here, and that’s definitely why we’re doing a little bit of a deep dive into a series all about consistency.
And so that continues today. If you missed the previous two episodes, just feel free to check them out wherever you’re listening to this one, your podcast platform, or by the time this episode comes out, hopefully I’ll have my website updated to be able to access all the podcast episodes. But you definitely can listen to it on the. On my website. My website’s nickmazy.com so I’m gonna try to get that updated and redesigned a little bit so it’s a little bit better for you.
But you can just go to nickmaizy.com there’ll be a link for the podcast, and you can listen right on there if that. That works for you or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, enough of the intro, y’all. Let’s go ahead and dive in. So we’re talking about consistency. So one of the things that I want you to think about with consistency is what gets measured, gets improved.
There’s an old saying, it’s about like that. And so today, what we’re talking about is tracking your progress, and that’s going to help you to be able to stay accountable. Because if you’re not staying accountable, then you’re probably not on track, and then you’re probably not being consistent. You know, in fact, one area interesting that I do a lot of tracking in is my behaviors for this podcast.
You know, something that I need to make sure that I’m tracking, how I’m creating episodes, gathering material, creating episodes, you know, recording, preparing for them, recording, processing, editing, producing all that stuff and then getting them scheduled for release. You know, a lot of that, I have to develop a lot of consistent behaviors around all that stuff to be able to make it happen. And so what I do is I track when and how I’m doing certain things so that I know this is how I’m going to be consistent, you know, and this is how I’m going to be able to achieve these goals.
You know, another area that I do some tracking in is when I’m. When I’m coming up and getting ready for a Spartan race. And that’s an area that I don’t train with the same intensity and regularity and tracking throughout the whole year. I just don’t. I still try to exercise, shame, to say a little bit. I probably took about two. What was that? Yeah, a full two months off of really getting my exercise in.
I’ve gotten back on it, but after that last Spartan beast, I was just cooked for a little bit. So I took a little bit of a break. But as we’re getting closer to the season, I’ll begin to track when I’m exercising. And for me, it’s just one of those things that I don’t go into a ton of detail. But if I just look down at my week and I’ve checked this, checked this, checked this day, what it does is it helps me to stay consistent with it because I want to keep that string of staying on track with how often and how I’m exercising.
It’s the same thing for behaviors that I need to do for this podcast. And it can be the same thing for you when you track certain behaviors that you want for your goals, your values, your priorities. Don’t just do what I’m doing for my own reasons. Now, if you want to train for Spartan races, great. Then maybe you replicate some of that stuff. Or if you want to do your own podcast, awesome.
I wish you the best in it, and maybe it makes sense for you to track in that, but track the behaviors that you want to improve for your consistency in your life. Another really neat thing about this is if you’ve ever struggled with being motivated. If you’re waiting for that motivation to hit you and you’ve ever struggled with it, you’ve got that goal, you know what you want, but it’s just hard to stay motivated.
Well, that’s another way that the kind of tracking your progress, you know, and tracking what you’re doing, you’re tracking your behaviors and your progress can really help you to stay motivated, you know, because it helps you to be consistent with that consistency. Like I mentioned in the last episode, you know, that can really help you with your. Your momentum. And when you got that momentum, then. Then it really helps you with being motivated as well.
So today we’re just gonna explore a little bit of some different things that might be able to help you with being able to track your progress, track your behaviors, just help you to stay accountable, just so that you can, you know, begin to develop that consistency, and so it can serve you in your life. One. One area, one thing that can kind of help you is nowadays there’s all these little apps for everything.
There’s an app for that, you know, and so, you know, maybe a habit tracker is something that would help you. There’s a whole bunch of free ones out there. I’ve used a handful of them. For me personally, it depends on what I’m doing. Which kind of habit tracker would really make the most sense. So I’m not gonna go through and start recommending habit trackers. They all just about have a.
There’s so many of them out there that have a free version that you can just, you know, download the free version on your phone and see if. See if it’s what works for you, you know, some are a little bit better built. Like, if you want to add, like, I want to drink so many glasses of water in a day, you know, some are a little bit better built for that.
Some are a little bit better built if you want to read so many pages or if you want to exercise so many times a week. Some are built better for stopping a habit, but there’s all different kinds of little habit trackers, and finding one that works for you is. Is what’s really best. Some of my habits, I like keeping track of my phone, and some of them, it’s actually better for me if I just have.
In my little weekly planner, I’m putting a check mark next to what I’m doing. It depends on it. Another way to help you kind of track what you’re doing and to track your progress and stay on top of it is by journaling, is by just writing down at the end of the day or the beginning of the day, you know, just reflecting, hey, what went well? What area could I improve on?
Did I do this habit, how’s it going? And that way you can identify some patterns. And a big part, a big part of this, I can’t stress it enough, is if you’re doing this, if you’re using this little technique, you know, to help you with some developing that consistency, if you’re using it journaling, make sure that you’re celebrating your wins in that it’s not just a bunch of fluff, woo, woo to make you feel good.
It’s actually very good on a mindset and psychology basis to help you to reinforce the behavior that you’re doing by focusing on the benefit of it. And a good way to do that is to celebrate your wins. Because then celebrating your wins helps you to create that belief in yourself that you can do it and it’s worth it. And when you are rock solid and you believe you can do it and it’s worth it, that’s when you’re going to get to that next level of consistency and really, really be able to just own it and take full advantage of it and experience the benefits of developing those habits and then that consistency.
And just like the habit trackers, there’s habit trackers that are papers you can write out and there’s also apps for habit trackers, there’s journals that you can just write out and then there’s apps for your journals too. So finding that medium that works best for you, there’s just too many options nowadays. Don’t confuse yourself with having to do all of them, but feel free to explore some of the different options out there, find what works for you and then use it and stay consistent with your method.
And that’s going to help you to actually develop the habits around your tracking. That’s going to definitely help you to be consistent. So as I mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of what gets measured gets improved. You know, when you’re measuring what you’re doing and the progress that you’re making, you know that’s going to help you to continue to improve in that. But also some of the ways that are going to help you with consistency or accountability is, you know, if you have an accountability partner, is there somebody else that you trust that’s either working on some area of life that’s similar to where you’re going to try to improve?
You know, is there a partner that you could, or just a good friend say, hey, would you check? Would you just ask me every week how I’m doing on this? You know, it could even just be a quick text message you might get on a phone call. You know, developing that accountability partner, because that’s so important. Sometimes it’s easier to slack on ourselves than it is to really drop the ball when you have somebody else that’s going to check in with you.
That’s like a lot of times when you have somebody that’s helping you to train, you’re working with a fitness trainer, a personal trainer. When you’re working with them, sometimes people, they’re more likely to show up at the gym just because their trainer is going to be there, rather than showing up just for themselves. You’re paying them, too, but it doesn’t really matter. Why? The simple fact that their presence and they’re paying this person to help them train keeps them accountable with their own behaviors and their own training and their own exercise.
It’s kind of like, well, who cares from a psychological reason why it’s working? It’s working. You know, there’s a lot of value in that. There’s also a lot of value for accountability in developing a group. You know, it might be a support group, might be joining an online group for this or that, or a local running group or club. Anything. Anything where you have a group of people that you can kind of encourage each other, you can share some motivation.
That definitely adds to the accountability, too. Whether it’s a group, a person, whether it’s paid or free, whether it’s online or in person, virtual, it does not matter. You know, there’s so much value in finding these different areas or different systems that can help you to be accountable once again. Find what works for you. Be willing to try a few different ones out. It might be virtual, might be in person, it might be this or that, or a group or an individual might be paid free.
When those. When those values, when those values for your life and your priorities, when they’re so important to you that you’re going to do anything to be able to honor them and live by them, that’s when you’re going to see the results. And it might be trying something that makes you feel a little uncomfortable. Maybe it’s a running club and you’re going to be a little bit uncomfortable initially, maybe that’s okay.
If it’s important to you, then you need to try some different things to see what works well for you so that you can be successful in that area. When you track your progress, you know, it really, really can help you to see that your efforts are paying off. Because a lot of times especially we’re talking about consistency but a lot of times any sort of progress you’re going to make in your life, the results are not going to come all at once, instantaneously.
Never. Nope, not at all. But when you’re tracking it, when you’re tracking it, then sometimes you can see that progress and it can really help you with your motivation. Especially on those days when you don’t feel like it, then you can look back and you see what you’ve been tracking. Like, hey, you either have that self accountability of you know, I’ve stayed on track for so many weeks, I don’t want to break the cycle or hey, I’ve done some journaling and I’m actually making progress.
This feels good. I want to keep it up. And that might help you on those days when you just don’t feel like it. Because there will be those days when you don’t feel like it and develop that consistency and that discipline. It doesn’t matter on those days that you feel like doing that habit or you feel like doing what you need to do in that area of your life, those days will come and that’s great.
Take advantage of them when you feel like it. But you know what, it’s those days when you don’t feel like it that are so, so important. And with some of these, you know, if you’re tracking your progress, you’re tracking your behaviors, you know, that’s helping you to stay accountable, then it’s really, really valuable on those days that will come and they will come when you do not feel like acting how you’re doing, what you’re supposed to be doing so that you can live that life you want.
Tracking your progress is also going to help you to stay on track. It’s going to help you to stay on track. It’s going to help you feel that motivation when you don’t feel like it. But then it’s also just going to help you stay on track over time so that you are getting super committed and consistent with making that progress towards your goals. Now another big piece because it adds right into this.
It adds right into this. But we can’t brush it off as it’s going to help you to celebrate your wins. You can’t. Like if you’re just going to grind day in and day out with your head down, you know, and just grinding away. That, that, that cannot be good. Sometimes. I’m gonna tell you across the board, it’s always not good. But, you know, celebrate those wins when they come your way.
When you’re putting forth that effort and you’re making some progress and you’re doing it, you’re doing it, you’re being consistent, you better celebrate some of those wins. And when you’re tracking your progress that you’re gonna be making, you can set some of those milestones. Hey, I’ve got my, my mile splits. I’m running a mile in six minutes now or eight minutes, whatever. That’s really fast for me. I’m not a fast runner, y’all.
Or my weight is this. Or I’ve been able to exercise and push this much weight on my bench press or my squat, whatever it is, or I’ve read so many books this year. When you’re tracking your progress, it’s going to help you to celebrate those wins along the way. And that is a major positive reinforcement of that behavior. And so it begins this positive feedback loop of you.
So you’re tracking something, you’ve developed some of these areas and consistency, and you’re tracking your progress and you see these wins, and then you’re going to get that reinforcement for that behavior. It’s going to help you to be even more consistent. More consistent. So just a quick little recap, kind of, if you will, you know, choose some sort of method to track your progress. Choose a method to track your progress.
Find someone or a group or partner to help you to maintain that accountability, to help you to be accountable. And then I want you to do this. So just pick some way. We’ve rattled off a few, but if you need to listen to the podcast episode, go for it. But pick a way to track your progress that you’re making in one of the life areas important to you for your values and your priorities.
You know, track your progress you’re making in that area. It’s going to help you to be consistent, but you’re going to track that progress and then find a partner or group out there that’s going to offer you a little bit of support and some additional encouragement and some additional accountability. All right, Just. Can you do those two things this week? It’s not too big, it’s not too much, but you definitely can do it.
Because let me go ahead and tell you, especially as I get a little bit older in my life, I’m seeing so much the power of consistency, especially when I’m talking about my exercise and my health, I used to be able to get off the wagon and not just kind of forget about my health for a while. And then when I wanted to get back into it, boom, I could jump right back into it.
But now, especially as I’m getting a little bit older, the more consistent I am in my exercise and my health, the far, far better it is. It takes me longer to bounce back if I don’t. So I want you to just think about this. It’ll pay dividends for your consistency and for you to be able to really, you know, claim your day. For you to be able to live that life that you want, it’s so important to track that progress and stay accountable.
It’ll help you with your motivation. It’ll also help you to get some feedback for what you’re doing along the way. If you need to make adjustments, it’ll help you to maintain that consistency and to be able to achieve your goals. And that’s what I want for you, my friend. I want you to achieve your goals, live your best life, make it what you want to be. That’s what it’s about.
All right, here’s to you, my friend. Make sure you check out nickmazy.com so you can listen to the podcast there. I’m also going to have a Life Drift quiz available for you where you can kind of see, hey, where are you on track with, you know, being intentional or drifting? I’m going to tell you, no one’s perfect, especially not me. And so when I take that quiz myself, it’s just a good reminder for me to make some of the adjustments that I can make.
Sometimes seeing a score attached to it actually kind of is a good wake up call for myself too. So make sure you check that out NickMazy.com. Subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any of them or just still the beginning toward this consistency series. If you missed any other first ones, go ahead and check them out, but otherwise can’t wait to talk to you again in the next episode.
Take care my friend.