For Desired Results In Life: Measure Backward, Not Forward!

We often measure our progress by looking forward. We set goals. We plan milestones for our progress. Basically, we try to predict the future to some degree. There is an opposite and more useful approach: measure backward, not forward. Goal progress shouldn’t be measured by where you aren’t yet; it should be measured by where you are now compared to where you used to be. It is easy to set huge goals and then be hard on yourself for being so far away from achieving them. Setting goals is not about beating yourself up for not reaching them. A goal is something to strive for: Something to work towards. When you realize how far you have come, you will realize that you are closer than you thought.
How to Measure Your Goals? The future is important. The future holds the rest of your life, but right now is also important and so are the things you did yesterday and last year. Without the progress you’ve made in the past, you wouldn’t be where you are today. However, measuring backward can call attention to these invisible patterns by making you aware of what you are actually doing. Measuring backward forces you to take notice of your recent actions. You can’t live in a fairy tale world of hopes and dreams. You have to look at the feedback of what has recently happened in your life and then base your decisions and improvements on those pieces of data. The good news is that you can now base your decisions off of what you’re actually doing, not off of what you project your future self to be doing.
Setting achievable goals and measuring backward: There is a right way and a wrong way to set goals and to measure your progress. Simply put, your ideals should be used only as a way of illuminating your specific, measurable, tangible goals. If you use your ideal as your goal, you have set yourself up for disappointment. Use your ideal vision of a bigger and better future to set goals you can actually achieve. Then, when you measure your progress, the key to staying positive, inspired, and motivated is to look backward to your starting point and measure from there to where you are now to see all the growth and improvements you have made. If you measure forward, toward your ideal, you’ll be disheartened by how far you have left to go, because, ultimately, the ideal is a constantly moving target and not achievable anyway. Here are four benefits of measuring backward instead of forward:
1. A sense of accomplishment: You gain a real sense of accomplishment that keeps you in the positive zone and appreciating your actual achievements and improvements rather than perpetually striving for unachievable perfection.
2. A new way of viewing your past: You acquire the ability to look at your past achievements through a new lens and appreciate the real progress you made and goals you achieved. Past progress that may have seemed disappointing to you when you were measuring forward instead of backward is now transformed in your mind so you can see your achievements more clearly, giving you renewed confidence now.
3. Increased confidence: This renewed confidence from knowing that you made progress in the past has you staying positive and optimistic that you can do it again in the future and achieve even bigger goals, especially now that you know how to measure properly going forward.
4. Strategy for setting goals: You have a new understanding of the purpose of your ideals and how to use them to illuminate your path and set achievable goals. Your ideals can keep growing and getting even more exciting and motivating, allowing you to set even bigger goals in the future.
(The author is a teacher at Govt High School Brakpora Anantnag. Views are his own)
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