Many tools use the first sentence or first line of the commit message as a summary, and the format you've chosen is very wordy. These tools often have a limited amount of space, and brevity (along with clarity) in general is good for commit messages.
For example, with a long prefix and only 32 characters to show the summary, progress on three tasks that all ask to add something might look like this:
- PROGRESS : User Story 125: Addin ...
- PROGRESS : User Story 125: Addin ...
- PROGRESS : User Story 125: Addin ...
Compare that to a more concise form that uses an abbreviation for the story, and omits "PROGRESS : ":
- #125: Adding basic style to widg
- #125: Adding tests for new style
- #125: Adding fix for documentati
Admittedly that's a somewhat contrived example. The point being that with your format, the unique part of your message -- the interesting part -- is far to the right of the message.
Just like with code, you should optimize for clarity. Unless you really, really need "PROGRESS" and "User Story", I recommend omitting them in favor of something more concise. "PROGRESS" in particular seems absolutely useless -- aren't all changes progress? You could still use "DONE" for the final step, and assume if you don't have "DONE" then it must be "PROGRESS".
For extra reading, here are some good articles:
