In this day in age, we have lots of ways to record how we’ve changed over time. These records show how much you’ve changed, and how fast. Out of everything we record, though, there's one thing we don’t track closely enough: personal growth. Personal development is extremely beneficial. A lot of people search for articles, books, videos, and panels on improving personal skills. If you are consuming so much information, you should also be using the information.

When you're trying to stay committed to your personal growth journey, it helps to document the progress you have made along the way. Try these ideas for tracking your personal growth development:

Keep a calendar. Every day you perform the change you’re working on, mark it on your calendar with a sticker, symbol, or abbreviation. With this method you can see your consistency, when you miss a date, or how long you go without doing something. This can be on your daily calendar, or you can use a personal calendar set aside for tracking your personal growth.

 Test yourself. Challenge yourself to examine how your progress is going. Pick an environment that allows you to utilize the skills you’ve been working on, and place yourself in a setting providing the opportunity to test your personal growth. You don’t need to do anything extreme; for example, if you're trying to improve your conversational skills, you can try chatting with a co-worker.

Vlog it. Vlogging is a good idea for tracking a certain change over a short fixed-period of time—approximately a couple days, a month, or weeks. With videos, you can literally record yourself going through a change by talking about your progress, including the good and difficult parts of your journey. Bonus: you can create a collection once you are finished vlogging your series!

Make a special journal. Write down how you’ve been improving, and use the space to organize the feedback/analysis you've been receiving. Examples of questions to ask yourself: What did I do? What can I try to increase growth? What changes can I make? How do I feel about my execution of [personal growth skill here]? Unlike a personal diary entry, these entries are meant to be more objective than writing about your feelings. 

Meditate on it. At the beginning of the day, think of how you would like to grow in your personal journey. Set a goal for what you would like to feel or experience for the day. Make a small note of it, and keep it where you can read the note later. At the end of the day, think about if you accomplished what you would have liked for the day, and write on the note how the day went. Save the paper in a jar. At the end of the week, read over the papers to look back on how your personal growth was for the week. To go a step further, keep the weekly notes and write a recap month note. Then, keep the monthly notes, and read them at the end of the year to gauge how your year of personal growth went. If you have favorite notes, keep those as reminders for yourself!

These are a few methods to help track your personal growth. Even if you are not tracking your development every day, it is a good idea to find a schedule or system that works best for you. Have fun seeing your growth flourish!