Timelines

Walking into our dreams usually doesn't happen overnight.  It may take months or even years. While we are putting the pieces of our dream together it can be easy to lose sight of  key accomplishments and the progress that we have made over time.  One simple visual strategy I use to remind myself of how far I have progressed is a timeline.

Timelines are easy to draw.  There are a number of different types of timelines but they all start with a line across the bottom of a page covering the time period you are interested in.  Here are two that I have found useful:

An event timeline shows milestones, challenges and accomplishments over a time period. You can also add key influences and relationships if they are relevant.  This is a strategy to use when you want to reflect of how you got to where you are.  It is also good for uncovering themes in your story and patterns that tend to repeat themselves.  

A behaviour over time graph plots one or more measures that you are interested in tracking over a time period. The growth curve we looked at in Understanding Patterns: Growth is an example of a behaviour over time graph.  This is a strategy to use when you want to measure what has changed or how well you are doing (maybe against goals that you have set). You may also add key events to this graph to explore relationships between actions you have taken and the response of the measure.

The first use of a time series plot (as well as line, bar and pie charts) dates back to William Playfair (1759-1823),  a Scottish engineer and political economist.  The timeline below dates back to 1786.

Like your personal vision, it is good to reflect on your timelines from time to time and update them as you gain additional understanding.