Visualizing your Risk Momentum
By: Michael Ruminer
Tags: Risk Momentum, Time Management, Risk Management, Bullet Journaling

The risk factors in not achieving a goal are not easily defined and even if defined are not easily quantified. In the end for short terms goals the best thing you can do is measure how well you have achieved action toward that goal. For long term goals, well, what are they a bunch of short term goals. I say that last sentence as I laugh maniacally because it is so terribly simplistic and likewise wrong but it still it has some truth. In this post I am going to discuss a simple chart designed to be used in a bullet journal for visualizing “Risk Momentum” on a short term, weekly, goal. Don’t let the simplicity of the chart fool you. It is complex in what it surfaces and how to populate it. The first part of this series is a post titled “Time Management — Bullet Journaling: Weekly Chronodex”.

Image 1. Risk Momentum Chart

The Risk Momentum Chart (Image 1) is simple in design but carries a lot of nuance. The basic principle is that each day has a block made up of 4 quadrants and each quadrant can be either be colored green or red. Red represents insufficient expected progress toward the goal in order to achieve it by the end of the week and green means just the opposite. The more red you accumulate the less likely you are to meet the goal. Sounds simple. It is. But what it is surfacing is that if the goal will only take 4 hours to achieve and by the end of day 3 you have all red i.e. not worked on it at all, the likelihood you will give that needed time in the next two days is small. You have high risk momentum. What if it is part green and part read? Here is where is gets tricky. This chart is entirely subjective. Subjective not only in progress but also in what progress means. Let me give an example.

Image 1 shows a weekly goal of 2 blog posts. On Monday I outlined the first post. I gave myself 3 out of 4 green for that day. Maybe I would have given myself 4 out of 4 green if I had outlined both posts or started writing the longer of the two. Unless I feel way ahead of the curve a 3 out of 4 green is about as good as I can hope for on a Monday. Tuesday I did no work on it. All red. Wednesday I wrote and published the first longer post. I felt pretty good about it and I feel like that is about as much as I would expect for that single day toward this goal so it got an all green indicator.

The example is simpler than life usually is. Let’s add some complexity. The risk evaluation can’t be done in isolation. If I knew on Wednesday when I wrote the one post that I was out of town on Thursday then for the same effort I would have only given myself 1 or 2 green. The risk of not meeting the goal is higher and I needed to have done more today to mitigate the risk. I must evaluate the risk mitigation for the day not only by evaluating the work done that day on the goal but relative to what other days I can reasonably expect to apply effort. The “momentum” part is that I must also evaluate the risk mitigation for Wednesday by how much green or red momentum I have prior to Wednesday. If Monday and Tuesday were all red then Wednesday with the same effort would be less green than what I evaluated in the example (2 or 3 out of 4 would be green). I must not consider the results of Wednesday in isolation. It is very valuable and drives mindfulness of the risk while presenting it in a simple view anyone could understand even if not a simple evaluation technique.

In the end… the more red you see the more risk you have accumulated that the goal will not be met. Be brutally honest every day. Take into account momentum and forthcoming needed efforts for this and other obligations and assign a risk mitigation to that Risk Momentum chart for the day.