Continual Improvement Journaling

A couple years ago I read a tennis book that recommended using a journal to rate yourself after each match on how much incremental improvement you made while playing. (Unfortunately I don't remember the book.) It suggested rating yourself on a scale of 1 for low to 5 for high in how much incremental improvement you made in the areas of technique, tactics, mental/emotional, and adjustments. It also asks what you did well and what you could improve. The idea behind this is that we usually don’t drastically improve our games. It’s more a process of continual improvement, often with the quality of our play declining a bit because we’re trying to change things. (This is a common occurrence when people take lessons.)

After doing this for about two years I can say that keeping this journal has been helpful. For one thing, I’ve noticed trends that help me know what to work on, such as I’m not tossing the ball forward enough when serving or I’m hitting overheads long. It’s also been helpful seeing progress as my self-ratings in the categories have increased over time. It probably sounds like bragging but I have to think more about what needs to be improved because I’m making fewer errors or clusters of mistakes in one area.

I think this diary could be used to evaluate how we perform in other areas of our life. Obviously the categories we would use to rate ourselves would be different but the general concept would be the same: the level of incremental improvement. For instance, my job involved making ten or more stewardship presentations a year to customers. (I used the past tense because I’m retired.) If I were to use this self-rating method I would have evaluated how much my technique improved (pacing, variation of my voice, etc.) as well as the design of my slides (layout, simplicity, clarity, etc.) and so on.