Running your own business can feel a little like being on a treadmill. You get up every day with a long list of things you could work on to improve your business. Then you get interrupted a dozen times and end up knocking very few things off your list. 

Uncertainty about “am I doing enough” and “am I doing the right things” can be a substantial source of stress and even burnout for business owners. How do I rest? How do I stop with so much left undone?

The truth is it’s tough to see progress on big goals in short time increments. When you are trying to accomplish something BIG, how far can you get in a day or even a week?

Four Ways to know you are making progress:

1. Look back six months or more and try to remember the problems you were facing then. Would you rather have today’s problems or your six months ago problems? If you’d rather have today’s problems then you are making progress!
2. Are the problems you are solving today different from the problems you had on your to-do list six months ago? If you are solving different problems, then you are making progress. 
3. Take a look at the tools you are using to track your business — are your tools giving you a better idea of what’s going on? Do you feel like you have better information to support your decisions? If so, progress!
4. When you look at today’s problems, are they in areas you were working actively in six to twelve months ago, or have you pushed into solving problems that you were ignoring or ignorant of before? If you are working in new territory, that’s progress. 

This is one of those things where it helps to have a squad—folks on the outside of your situation who can see the progress over time and help you celebrate.

Now, how do you know if you are making enough progress? Let’s talk about that on Thursday.