The following is a great piece I found and wanted to share. It makes great sense and I hope you enjoy it.
The science of measuring progress towards personal goals
Firstly, I found a couple of studies that found that improvements in well-being, satisfaction and happiness can come from making progress towards your personal goals.
The caveat here is that your goals need to be in line with your inner needs and motives. If you’re committed to a goal for external reasons such as pleasing your boss or your parents, you won’t see the same emotional improvements when you make progress.
I think we can take this as general guidance when it comes to setting goals: even if we don’t set goals specifically to achieve those emotional improvements, we can still try to focus on the goals that we’re motivated to achieve intrinsically, rather than what we think others expect of us.
read more: http://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-measure-progress-in-your-personal-goals-daily-weekly-and-monthly