Use the “thermometer Chart” to Track Your Work Goals
For productivity, there are plenty of visual aids you can use for an extra boost, from hand-painted clocks to visualization boards. If you’re looking for something new to try, a thermometer chart might be just what you need to visualize your goals and track your progress.
The thermometer chart sounds like this: it’s a graph showing your progress in the form of a thermometer that fills up until you reach a certain temperature that represents your goal. For example, if you have a goal of $10,000 in sales per month, your thermometer will show the dollar amount where the temperature would be on a real old-school thermometer. You keep filling it in until you reach (or exceed) your goal, which gives you a visual indication of where you are.
Make a digital thermometer chart
According to Trump Excel, if you want to do it digitally and share it with your colleagues via email, it’s not hard to do. Make two columns in Excel. The one on the left will be your target dates, so if you’re setting your target a month ahead, divide it by four weeks by entering the date of each Monday in this column. In the right column, write a goal for each week. If the goal is $10,000 in sales per month, each date must be a multiple of $2,500. Skip the row and create two more rows: % Achieved and Target % where Target % will always be 100% and your achieved percentage will be updated weekly to show how far you are towards reaching it.
Click the Insert tab, then click the Insert Column or Bar Chart button. You want a 2D clustered column, and once you have it, click the Design tab, then Switch Row/Column . Right-click the second column, tap Format Data Series, and select Secondary Axis in the panel that opens to align the bars on the chart. You’ll have two overlapping vertical axes with different values, so right-click the one on the left and choose “Format Axis” ; when the corresponding panel appears, change the maximum value of the border to 1 and the minimum value of the border to 0. Then simply remove the axis on the right, right-click on the remaining bar in the chart, and click “Format Data Series” again. On the panel, adjust it so that there is no fill, and the border line is solid and has the color corresponding to the stripe. From there, clean everything up by removing the chart title, any gridlines or axis markers, and the legend. See how it starts to look like a thermometer?
From there, right-click on the vertical axis on the left and click Format Axis , then use the panel that appears to set the main serif type as “inside” using the drop-down menu provided. Select the outline of the chart, right-click on it and select “Format Chart Area” before formatting it like before with no fill, but be sure to get rid of the border line as well. Finally, on the Insert tab, paste in the circle shape and fill it with the same color as the panel. Align it to the bottom so it looks like a thermometer.
Or you can just buy one
This, you see, is difficult. If you love Excel projects, good for you! If not, join a club – and buy one to place in your workplace.
Thermometer charts are so popular that there are many variations. Here are some of them that I like:
- A 48-by-12-inch ($19.49) dry-erase option with red and black markers included so you can paint with the fill color as you move towards your goal. It’s big enough for everyone to see if you hang it in an accessible place, so it’s great for keeping the whole team in the loop.
- Wall-mounted version with a nylon band that you pull to indicate a target increase ($29.97). 46″ by 12″, this one is big too, but that pull tape gives it that extra sophistication.
- Five paper posters that you can color in with a marker ($15.99). While they cannot be reused like the other options, they are cheaper and can be saved for reference when you want to use the thermometer method again.