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Congratulations on designing your Best Year Ever! That’s an important step. Now it’s
time to turn your goals into reality by acting on your aspirations. That’s why you need a
progress-tracking system. It will motivate you to continually act on your goals like
nothing else.
Regularly reviewing your goals, celebrating your wins, and adjusting your strategy will
keep you fired up and focused. It’s the key to taking incremental action all year long.
Come December, all that incremental progress really can add up to your best year ever!
But if you don’t track your progress, the likelihood of achieving your most important
goals is drastically reduced.
Fortunately, you can create your own progress-monitoring system in a matter of min-
utes. It just needs to include three key components.
1. Clear, Actionable Goals: Luckily, you already have these! That’s why we invest so
much effort into making your goals SMARTER during the 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever
course. A SMARTER goal lends itself to decisive action.
3. A Regular Review Time: What gets scheduled gets done. That means you need
dedicated time on your calendar to review your goals and decide on your next steps
each week. Wherever you manage your schedule, block an hourlong weekly appoint-
ment for goal review. Then stick to that consistently. Treat it with the same respect you
would any other commitment—maybe even more. Remember, this is a commitment to
yourself and to your highest priorities. So hold that time sacred.
That’s all it takes! Those three simple components are all you need to create a high-
powered progress-monitoring system.
Now let’s review the seven simple steps you can take to implement this system using
Evernote.
▶ To make this easy, download the free Evernote goals template on the Weekly Achieve-
ment Tracker bonus page. Once you have downloaded the file, just double-click on it to
open it in Evernote. Now move the note into the notebook you are using for your goals.
You will have to do this for each goal detail note you want to create.
▶ Enter “00. 2018 Goals” in the Evernote note Title field. The double zeros will keep this
summary right at the top once you’ve created individual notes with the rest of your goals.
▶ Now type one goal per line. (Make sure it’s SMARTER. I explain how in 5 Days to Your
Best Year Ever.)
▶ Insert a To-do box (⇧⌘T on the Mac or Ctrl-Shift-C on Windows) before each goal.
▶ We’ve given you two goal templates: Habit Goals and Achievement Goals
• Indicate the quarter in which you’ll focus on the goal. Note, I suggest no more than
three goals per quarter.
• As the year goes on, you’ll use the Progress Reports section to keep track of key
measurements or major milestones.
• Again, replace the template label with the goal number ( 02. in this case).
• Write your habit goal followed by how often you’ll complete it, at what time, and for
how long.
• You’ve got spaces for Quarter, Key Motivations, Reward, Activation Trigger, and Next
Actions, but instead of the Progress Reports, you have a Streak Tracker. This is setup
to track a daily goal for an entire quarter.
• You can customize this to match the duration and frequency of your habit goals.
▶ Sort the Goal Detail Notes in numerical order by selecting View > Sort by: Title. (This is
why you included the number in the Title field.)
▶ Paste the link into the blank field of the dialog box. Click OK.
▶ Place your cursor in Evernote’s search field, in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
Type tag:2018 tag:goals. (Don’t include the period at the end.)
▶ This is the tricky part: Make sure your cursor is still in the search field, and the end of the
text string you typed earlier (directly after the word, “goals”).
▶ Now click once with your mouse. This should display all your saved searches.
▶ Use your mouse to highlight 2018 Goals. Now click and drag it to the Shortcuts sidebar
on the left of the screen. Position the shortcut where you want it to appear and then
release the mouse button.
I suggest you review your Goal Summary daily and that you review and update your
individual goal notes weekly. I do mine in my Weekly Review. The key to achieving
your goals is to review your goal list on a regular basis. All you have to do is click on
the Shortcut you drug onto Shortcuts Sidebar.