FMQ 508 An Important Question Why and How Often do you check your progress

In this short yet powerful Five-Minute Quickie episode, we're diving into a question that could seriously supercharge your personal development journey:
"How often do you check your progress—and why?"

Cloughie explores the sweet spot between over-checking (hello, obsession and lost motivation!) and under-checking (hello, complacency and drifting off-course). Whether it's your personal goals, weight, mindset, career, or even podcast stats, finding your ideal review rhythm is the key to staying on track, boosting motivation, and making real progress.

You’ll learn:

• Why too much checking can destroy momentum

• Why not checking enough can cost you time and energy

• The hidden fears behind your review habits (fear of failure or fear of success?)

• A simple mindset shift to help you course-correct without self-judgment

• How to schedule reviews that actually work for you

👉 This is your wake-up call to review with intention, stay aligned with your goals, and grow with purpose.

Please share:

https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/fmq-508-an-important-question-why-and-how-often-do-you-check-your-progress

Got a fear of failure or success story to share? Want help turning it around? Email me at:
[email protected]

And remember, this is all about learning to use your skills, energy, and focus to move forward with confidence.

Oh! And the video link is here: https://youtu.be/rvFN6OWH2zw

Shine Brightly 🌟

Paul

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Music Credits

Music by Wataboi, DreamHeaven, ccjmusic, and others from Pixabay.

And the transcript WARNING if you're a lover of the written word this may make you frustrated, or angry - you have been warned - is it an 'ism

 

Hey, 5 Minute Muse and I've got a question for you.

 

I always ask, when we're setting our goals, we're thinking of our week, setting out our day. I always ask, how often do you review? Or do you review? Do you review what you've done? How far you've come? But I want to take this 5 Minute Muse just a little bit deeper. Just something to think about.

 

Because I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do review. Do you? I'm sorry about that.

 

But think about it. Do you check and review your progress? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Yearly? Maybe never. You see, and it depends what it is, obviously.

 

Could be a project. It could be your weight. It could be, if you do a podcast or a video and all this stuff.

 

You know, how many likes, how many downloads, whatever it is. We set our targets, how close we are to the goal. Or we have a goal, we have targets and the review is where are we? Where are we from where we were to where we're going? Let's just take a snapshot so we know what we're doing.

 

Now, if you do it too often, say you did it daily. Some people, when they're checking things like likes, downloads, might do it hourly. What a waste of time.

 

It might not be a waste of time. That's me. But it is a waste of time.

 

You see, if you're checking things too often, then you become obsessed. It's like OCD. You become obsessed by just looking and looking and looking.

 

But what you're doing, you're looking, but you're not doing anything about it anyway. And you're not seeing results because you can't see results in a little snapshot. Because when you were there, now you're here and no time has passed.

 

You haven't been able to see the progress. And what happens when you can't see progress? Oh, my motivation goes down. Oh, I'm going to have to keep checking.

 

But I'm still not doing it. What I'm not doing, I'm not even doing anymore because my motivation has really dropped. Because it's just too much.

 

You're wasting time. You're wasting effort. Because what you're checking for, your progress, you're not seeing anyway.

 

But what about when you check too little? Say it was monthly, quarterly, yearly, maybe never. But you do, you go back and go, okay, it's been five or six weeks. Let me just have a check on that thing.

 

And it could be your weight, your health, could be your downloads, could be your likes. It could be where you are in a project. Could be in your profit and loss.

 

That's a big one. You look at your profit and loss or something like that, but you haven't done it for maybe six weeks. And you look at it and you go, oh, shit.

 

I'm off course. I thought I was doing so much better because I just thought I was. I was doing, well, I thought I was doing the right things.

 

Was I? Well, maybe not. Maybe you were. But the thing is, if you're off course, how do you get back on course? Well, you could try, but you've wasted time because you got bloody complacent.

 

That's what happens. You get complacent. And when you get complacent because you forgot your goal, you forgot where you were headed, you forgot your aim, and therefore you didn't put in the right effort.

 

Because you can put in effort. You can do all the urgent stuff. But were you doing the important stuff? You thought you were by doing all the urgent stuff.

 

But you're off bloody target. And when you're off target by 1%, you get that over six weeks. Shit, you're a long way out.

 

And then you've got to try to come a long way back. And then again, we lose motivation because we've got, oh, this is difficult. This is hard.

 

And then we start berating ourselves. What a dick I was. Why didn't I do it more? Now, these are things that happen.

 

But one question I think we could ask ourselves, and this is where the muse comes in. This is where the muse comes in. What the fuck are you frightened about? Is it that success? Or is it that failure? Just think, what am I frightened about? Why am I checking too much? Or why aren't I checking? I know people are checking because they don't want to see failure.

 

Because they think they've got a success. I see people check so often because they're really frightened of not being a success. And what's that fear doing to you? Wasting time, wasting effort.

 

And it's really about, what do I want? Where am I headed? What's my next step? What's my smallest step I can do? And how can I realistically check my progress? Sometimes you have to do it at the end of the day. Did I get as far as I wanted? Because maybe you just wasted the bloody day. And you have to get back on target tonight.

 

Important. Maybe it's a project where you have to leave it to the end of the week. And then you reassess.

 

I know when I used to be in business, we used to have an assessment on a Thursday. Not the Friday, Friday afternoon. Because it's too bloody late to finish off the week with a high.

 

But if you checked on the Thursday morning, where were we? Did we get everything we want to do? No, we didn't. Got to do it tonight and tomorrow because I want to get back on target. It's a little thing to do.

 

But maybe you look at these steps you're taking, your milestones. And start to get ready, do the best checks you can. And once you do that, you schedule them in.

 

You check your progress in the most appropriate time. And then you can make the changes you need to get better. I hope that helps.

 

But it is an interesting question, isn't it? What are you frightened of? Success or failure? Get that batted out the door. Once you understand that, you can work on it. And if you want, I'll even do this on a longer podcast.

 

Fear of success, fear of failure. But if it is something like that, send me an email. It's feedback, that's what it is.

 

It's feedback at personaldevelopmentunplugged.com. Give me a little bit of the scenario, the things that you're frightened of. And let's see if we can come up with a real good process to get your unconscious mind to make more appropriate steps. So you use your skills, your energy in the right direction, which creates more confidence in your competence, because you are competent and your motivation goes out the route in such a brilliant way.

 

Have a think. This was a five-minute quickie, taking about eight minutes. But hey, have fun.

 

Share this bloody thing as far as you can, if you would. And subscribe, follow, do whatever. I'll see you next time.

 

It's time to fly. Warning, you are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul Clough. It's time to fly now.

 

Be brave, my friend. Personal Development Unplugged.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.

Personal development [self improvement] [self development] [NLP] [Hypnosis]