Wall Chart - starting to track progress
In yesterday’s post I mentioned at the end that I was going to make a wall chart to track my progress toward my 3,000 bike miles goal.
Adrian Finch (an aspiring 5,000 mile hero) asked if I use My Cycling Log, bikejournal or CycleSmart to keep track of my progress, and my reply was that I prefer pen and paper. This preference stems from my experience working as a Lean consultant in various manufacturing firms. One of the pillars of Lean is to make change visible. And one of the main techniques for this is called Visual Management:
“In visual management, simple visual tools are used to identify the target state, and any deviance is met with corrective action”
Now the computer tools that Adrian asked about will do that. But systems that reside inside the beige box are somehow disconnected from the user. My experience is that they tend not to be as efficient (in terms of time - boot up / find programme / open file, etc), nor as effective as more simple, paper or whiteboard based systems.
The ability to engage, share, and show-and-tell with big poster-sized systems means that they’re far more effective than the slicker, more ‘professional’ looking computer alternatives.
So here are a couple of pictures of what I’m putting together for my triathlon training this year. Firstly, I’m going to use my home office’s white board (two sheets of 55×80cm glass from Ikea - far cheaper than Nobo boards, and blends in with the scenery) :
This gives an overall picture of the size I have to play with. It needs more adding to it, like
- Goals spelt out, with my A, B & C races in a time line.
- A weekly schedule + a single goal for the week
- Running & swimming charts
- Food & nutrition?
- Friends / things that’ll potentially derail training & need scheduling in.
The cycling graph’s already there, and includes:
- The year broken down into fortnights
- Fortnightly target & progress (left hand side)
- Cumulative miles (right hand side)
- Cumulative target line.
With this, I colour in the fortnight’s bar chart (using a yellow highlighter pen) after each ride, building up to give the fortnight’s total. I then mark an ‘X’ for the cumulative total at the end of each fortnight, joining the ‘Xs’ up as I go. So I have control during each two weeks, and can see progress toward my overall goal.
I love this idea… very visual, very obvious.
I have one small suggestion, which may be a little late.
I know you did the math and divided the year up into fortnights, and your chart has a great visual cue for if you are on your fortnight pace goal or not. But I noticed that your Y axis only goes to 150miles. Which is only 20% more than your average goal. If you get behind you may have to/want to ride more than 20% extra one fortnight, and then you’ll run out of vertical room.
Now maybe you made this choice on purpose, because you didn’t want to get into the habit early in the year of “expecting” to be able to make up milage later in the year… which certainly sounds like good time/disiciplen management. (A topic that it sounds like you are far more of an expert at than I am.) But you also probably recognize that it will be much easier to ride 125 miles in the summer than in the winter…. heck, I’m sure you can throw down 250 miles in a fortnight in the middle of summer.
Anyway, I’m sure you’ll figure out a solution if you ever have to cross this bridge.
Like I said, as much as I love all things computer, I think this is a great solution to visualize your progress. Keep us posted!
Yep - I agree that in the summer the miles just don’t seem as long! I opted for the 0-150 scale just to make it easier to fill in - if I do more than 150, I just write in the total at the top of the bar, and the data’s captured on the cumulative line.
One thing I *did* mess up was having the cumulative and fortnightly data together on the same chart. When you do this sort of graph with Excel, you can change the line colours & formats so that you can still see the line in front of the bars. My original idea was to do the graph on the whiteboard, but then I realised that I’d not see the cumulative information. That’s why it’s paper, and why the bar chart is coloured in with a yellow highlighter pen.
Karl - you asked about the torture 10,000 bike ride. I added some info to my blog so you could learn more about it. It’s in August if you need a vacation…
Thanks for the suggestions about training with a cold. I’ve definitely got to step up my hand washing routine, especially considering I’ve got my hands all over desks in lecture halls. Good luck with your goals :o)
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