WORK IN PROGRESS ...
What do I track? progress toward dreams and aspirations down to daily effort toward that. There are several intermediate levels, each with their own tracking mechanism:
[1] Dreams and Aspirations - this is a vision statement that I write at the beginning of the year in GHDR February 2 kickoff so I can refer back to it. There can be several. This is often expressed as a "state of being" rather than a concrete objective
[2] Strategic Horizons - This is the set of 'compass directions' that I can explore since they seem to lead to [1] as far as I can guess. This is a dynamic list that changes with each monthly report in the GHDR as I eliminate or discover them. It's presumed that reaching the horizon will mean I have also fulfilled something in [1].
[3] Strategic Waypoint - This is a halfway point between where I am now and a path that I can visualize. It's like looking ahead and seeing the most likely place I can reach given what I know. It's a guess, and assessed in terms of what it might help with the overall expedition toward the horizons.
[4] Strategic Projects - These are more targeted specifications of what project would have to do to make "meaningful progress" toward one of the Strategic Horizons. I use my standard set of Project Scoping rules to outline them, but they don't include specific steps because there may be several options or emergent opportunities that I can take this onto to get a two-for-one win. This exists as a folder, usually, with some text-based journals or an autocalculating timesheet. This is where digital assets, reports, documentation, and references live too.
[5] Concrete Tasks - These are the actual things that I have to do that create a 'concrete deliverable' as I define it in The Concrete Goals Tracker. There must be a result from each task that is shareable, tangible, and testable. Such a task may add progress to several strategic projects in [4] at the same time. These are stored in [6] below which are also linked to their home context in the PKMS, which can be a project, prototype, or memo in the beginning phases.
[6] Daily Effort Continuity - Many tasks take more than a single work period, and to remember what I was working on I keep a running stream-of-consciousness log throughout the day so I can remember what I did. This is the anchoring document of my day, the scratchpad and thinking space. I will refine and copy/paste stuff from here into various other spaces. This is a special file in the PKMS.
[7] Monthly Assessment - This is the GHDR monthly report where I review [1-5] from my various logs, and see if I've made any progress. Then I write how I feel about it, note any key decisions and shifts I want to make, and move onward. I assess my emotional state also to ensure that I am taking care of myself. This goes into my PKMS. Presumably [8] is the successful realization of the end destination, which might be a surprise in the way that an explorer in the age of sailing ships thinks they arrived in China but instead ended up finding a different country altogether. Or discovering that the land they hit is the land they started from. Or that their perspective has been changed by the voyage and they no longer need to find Shangri-La for the reason they thought they did. The only thing that is certain is that they set the best course they could with the best understanding and technology they had, and the adventure happened. In a way, the current GHDR system is my deconstruction of "The Journey is the Reward", taking my personal quirks into account.