Bimonthly Progress Analysis

Every entrepreneur and generally speaking, everyone who has a job or is working in a project, should perform a periodic pause where he or she analyzes the events and progress of this lapse of time. In a couple articles of An Entrepreneur Blog, we have written about the importance of taking every once in a while a pause to relax, maybe do some yoga and recharge energy. Today we complement this idea with a pause to analyze the events.

In the tittle of this article we propose a bimonthly analysis. So that there is no confusion, when we say bimonthly we mean every two months. We have proposed this schedule, as 2 months is not a short time, but not that long, where we can make progress and propose changes. However it’s up to you if you want to use other periodicity, such as every 15 days, 1 month, 3 months or 6 months. Whichever you choose the important thing is to keep up with the periodicity.

Now that you’ve selected the periodicity you’ll be using for this exercise, I’m going to show you how to do it. This exercise has several objectives, but there are 2 main goals, which I will explain next. The first objective is to make a conscious break where we analyze with a cold mind and heart the events of the last 60 days (or your selected periodicity). What happened? What went right and what went wrong? What might we have done in a different way to accomplish what we couldn’t make a reality? When making these questions and answering them, try to be as neutral as possible, leaving apart any emotion.

The second part of the exercise is to propose what you want to achieve in the next 60 days (or your selected periodicity). At this moment you know what you were able to accomplish and what you didn’t conquer. So based on this, set your new goals. However, try to be realistic on what is possible in this span of time. I always think we should push ourselves, but always being realistic. When setting the new goals we will probably set forward again, some of the ones from the previous period we were unable to accomplish. This is fine, as long as you see there is some advancement in these goals.

This is a very enriching exercise that I highly recommend. The idea isn’t to criticize us just to accomplish the exercise. Instead, the objective is to keep track of what we have been able to accomplish, and of what has taken longer than what we originally thought.

For this exercise to be successful, we have to keep the frequency we proposed. A simple tip to accomplish this, is to set apart time in our physical or digital calendar. For example, you might say you’ll accomplish this task the first Friday of every odd month, from 7:00 am to 8:00 am, a time where you usually don’t have any appointment.

This exercise should be fun and constructive, not stressful. Also, if you’re working with other people, you can make this exercise on your own and with the other people.

Image taken from Flickr.com