When the topic of personal goal setting comes up, the first thing that comes to anyone’s mind is to write down your goals. It’s a great suggestion-writing down your goals, because well, you have a better chance of achieving them when you see them written down almost everyday.

However, I’ve thought of how that helps in the long run and I can’t say for sure if it helps much. Yes, you see that you wrote down some goals you plan to achieve this year in your Notes app but is seeing them almost everyday helping to take you closer to achieving them? I think not.

This is why the use of a project management tool can come in handy. Your goals can be broken down into different projects you plan to have finished before the end of the year, you can put in place certain metrics you plan to track, you can always know how well you’re doing by taking a single look in the right place for a graphical representation of your progress, and so many other perks. You can boost your chances of success by being organized, focused, and accountable by employing a project management tool.

Project management tools, containing features like task lists, calendars, Gantt charts, and collaboration features, can assist you in properly managing personal projects, just as they would manage professional projects at work.

The goal here is to develop a disciplined and strategic approach to personal goal planning and tracking that can your boost productivity, enhance time management, and lead to increased success in reaching your personal objectives.

In this article, I will be writing about how setting your personal goals and tracking them with project management tools is beneficial to you.

How can project management tools help your personal goal setting and tracking?

With its many important features, project management tools can do a lot for setting your personal goals and tracking your progress. Here’s how project management tools are beneficial to your personal goal setting and tracking:

1. It helps keep your goals organized

Writing down your goals in your Notes app, for example, does little to nothing in helping to organize what you have to do, and sometimes, it can even overwhelm you. Incorporating a project management tool helps arrange your goals in a way that doesn’t overwhelm you and makes sure you are aware of everything in your purview.

2. It helps you adapt to changes easily

Let’s say you planned to apply to at least 10 different places for an internship everyday for a month, and then you now have more responsibilities and you need to create time for them. Using a project management tool helps you make that change by updating and changing the deadlines of your tasks. It aids your flexibility to your changing circumstances which is the only constant when trying to achieve a goal.

3. It helps you to prioritize your tasks in order of importance

A good project management tool helps you to outline your tasks/projects in order of importance in order to give you a clearer picture of what you need to do and when it is relevant. A tool like Drogo has a personal focus feature that lets you state what your focus for that week is and plug in the tasks that are relevant. This does a lot for your focus and overall productivity.

4. It helps you to track your progress more easily

A study carried out by Wrike found that people who use a project management tool are 2.5 times more likely to successfully achieve their goals. That’s compelling information, if you ask me.

Putting your goals in a Notes app or just plain writing them down in a book, cannot help to accurately measure your progress. A good project management tool like Drogo, will always make sure you are greeted with a chart of how well or how badly you are doing with a goal you have set for yourself. Let’s say you planned to have learnt a skill and you have broken down that one goal into at least 2 tasks a day, and you are lagging, you wouldn’t have to do much to know how behind you are in achieving your goals and where you need to step up.

5. It preserves your motivation and makes being accountable easier

I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking, “for motivation I can just set reminders on my phone for me to get things done, I don’t need a whole tool for that”. Well, you do. Using a project management tool for your personal goals can help you preserve your motivation by making it easier for you to collaborate with others who might have great ideas for you to achieve your goals or people who are able to act as accountability partners to keep your spirit alive.

Edwin A. Locke developed the goal-setting theory in 1968. According to his hypothesis, when people commit to another person, they are more likely to achieve their goals. An American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) study then found that these people are 65% more likely to achieve their goals when they commit to another person. So, it can make a big difference in staying motivated and achieving your goals if you have someone to share your progress with, who can offer encouragement and support. A great tool facilitates this.

6. It makes collaboration a walk in the park

This is almost an extension of the benefit of preserving your motivation that project management tools provide but let me show you how different this is.

Let’s say, you and a group of other individuals plan to build an app in the span of 3 months. Imagine, you had to do everything through an app like WhatsApp where you state the responsibilities everyone has only for the message to get swallowed up by other messages in the group chat or worse, your team members get distracted.

When you use a project management tool you will find that collaborating isn’t such a burden or stressful activity because everything communication is done right there on the app, which increases your chances of actually achieving your goals.

7. Your projects are more likely to succeed

The most significant benefit of using a project management tool is that it makes you more likely to achieve your goals. When you’re always on track; organized, meeting deadlines, collaborating and finishing tasks, you are bound to reap success and feel accomplished. All that might even push you to want to achieve more.

Conclusion

I recommend incorporating a project management tool into setting your personal goals and trying to achieve them. As I have stated, using a project management tool keeps you organized, can reduce the sense of overwhelm you get when you have a lot to do, will make collaborating with other people as driven as you are a walk in the park, and keep you motivated and thirsty for more success. Try out a tool like Drogo today and see how it reflects in your personal goals and your success in terms of achieving them.