The progress map | See where your plan is going
“Know thyself,” the English translation for the Greek “gnothi seauton,” is the famous inscription in the pronaos of the Delhi temple. An inscription that stands to remind generations of the importance of self-awareness and understanding of the human behavior, morals and thought.
We probably all know how important that is, but do we actually do something about it? There are some of us who are working on it, but the vast majority of people simply hold the thought in the back of their minds, without taking any action to put it into practice. Not good.
One other important piece of wisdom is the one saying that history has a way of repeating itself. Those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them; which is what humankind constantly does. History is not a straight line going from a beginning to an end, it loops and swirls, eventually finding its way back to places its been before. The funny thing is that most of us tend to make the same mistake in our personal history as well. We repeat past mistakes and errors, we arrive at the “wrong” destination and then we wonder what went wrong along the way; but we rarely bother to make a “map” to remember us of our past mistakes and their results.
All of the above means that we (the humankind as a whole) don’t really know ourselves or the results of our habits and actions, which leads to lives lived in repeat mode. A life in repeat mode is a life in which one individual constantly repeats a certain period of one’s past, until the end comes and breaks the cycle.
Kind of sad, but that’s what most of us do. Not something to be proud of.
However, there are solutions to that problem. And in this article I’m going to share one such solution with you. It’s something that you’re not going to find anyplace else, as it is an “invention” of mine. I hope it will prove useful, or at least interesting.
1. The progress map
The idea is really simple. As you can see in the image below, there is a starting dot and five destinations (you can add as many as you like). The map.
The “star” dot is the desired destination, while the other four are alternatives. The alternatives may be good too, or they may be bad - depends on what you want to map, but ideally you should include the most likely possibilities.
If you want to build a profitable company, you’ll assign that destination to the star dot. The “1″ dot could represent bankruptcy, “2″ could represent the selling of the company, “3″ could represent abandoning the project, etc. Every week, map your progress according to what happened and where you are headed to.
1.1. The ideal route
The ideal route to be followed is the shortest distance between any two points - a straight line. If you would go straight to the star dot, it would be ideal.
But for most of us, heading straight there is simply impossible. We have curves along the way, curves which may take us to a destination that we don’t want.
2. The route
What would life be without hardships? Not much fun, really. This is how a more realistic map looks like.
Note that in this map the intended destination has not been reached.
3. The meat on the bone
That drawing with dots and lines doesn’t really mean much. It can’t serve you as a map of your plan’s history because it doesn’t have any actual info on it; it is only the bone. What needs to be added is the info for each of the lines.
You can see that exemplified in the image below. You could assign each line a number and write the number’s specific meaning on another piece of paper, or you could write down the meaning directly on each line (I chose the first option because I didn’t have enough space).
For example, let’s say that this is one’s path in building a profitable company. “I” could be the initial enthusiasm that we all have when first starting on a path; if doesn’t last for long. “II” could be his start of a partnership. “III” could be a complete loss of enthusiasm because of that partnership. “IV” could mean a regain of motivation because he broke that partnership… You should get the idea by now; write the cause and the effect.
And that’s pretty much it! Simple, fun, really easy to do. Works just like a real map on which you note your progress using a GPS, only this time you represent the positioning system.
Keep in mind that this is a “beta” concept, not 100% complete. It’s just the core idea and can be improved. If you have any ideas that you think might improve the concept, please share them in the comments!
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