What I Didn't Know About My Goal

Last night, I noted that I didn't know how many times I had blogged about Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This morning, I decided to find out. I searched my blog for posts that included the word "hunchback" and counted the results. In total, not including last night or the blog post in which I mentioned the movie but didn't blog about it (FYI, this blog post doesn't count, either), I had blogged about The Hunchback of Notre Dame exactly twelve times. That was the goal I had set for myself. That was the number I was trying to hit. By the time I blogged about the movie for the thirteenth time last night, I had reached my goal over a year prior to that, but I didn't know it. I had no idea how close I was to reaching my goal, and I certainly didn't know that I already had.

I suppose that's part of the reason why good goals should be measurable and why we should keep good track of them. If we're not tracking our goals, then we have no idea how close we are to completing our goals, how much progress we're making, or even whether we're making progress at all. For all I knew, I could have been several blog posts away from completing that particular goal. I knew I had blogged about The Hunchback of Notre Dame several times, but apart from that, I had no idea where I stood in relation to my goal. That's less than ideal. It's helpful to keep tabs on our goals so we can track our progress, so I would suggest that, if you make a goal, find some way to keep track of it. That information is valuable. Without it, you could plateau, regress,  or even achieve the goal and not even know it.