Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

3. Know Exactly How Far You Have Left to Go

Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress—if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don’t know how well you are doing, you can’t adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently—weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

It’s just not possible to stay motivated without feedback. No one is comfortable operating in a vacuum. Fundamentally, this is a result of the way our brains are wired. We subconsciously tune in to the presence of a discrepancy between where we are now and where we want to be. When your brain detects a discrepancy, it reacts by throwing resources at it: attention, effort, deeper processing of information, ...