A Simple Approach to Goal Setting

An effective template for figuring out and tracking your goals.

I have always struggled with structuring and creating my goals. Some people say to have one goal at a time, but I find it impossible to pick just one. Some say to have personal and career goals, but I don’t find this dichotomy particularly appealing either. I have seen some people advocate for anywhere from 5 to 12 categories to have goals for — from love and relationships to spiritual life and finances. But 12 is way too many to keep track of every single day.

So I created a hybrid: 3 goal categories, broken down into annual, monthly, and weekly goals, all laid out in a simple table. Each month I create a new table. This gives me the chance to write up my weekly goals for the month, but also to review my big annual goals to see if they still line up with what I want to achieve.

Setting up your table

The three categories are:

Love

This can include a romantic relationship, dating life, friends, family, pets, and more. Anything that you consider to encompass ‘love’.

For me, this includes things such as my relationship with my fiancee, seeing my friends, and talking to my family regularly.

Growth

Again, this is can be whatever you think fits.

For me, it’s my academic studies — finishing my thesis, and also my fitness and sports goals.

Purpose

This is whatever you feel you were brought here to do. This is how you can carry out and fulfill this purpose.

For me, it’s starting my business and writing.

These categories are split into:

1 Year Goals

What do you want to achieve within the next year in each of the three categories? Outline 1–3 goals for each of the three categories.

This Month Goals

What do you need to achieve this month to be on track for your annual goals? Is there anything else you want to accomplish this month?

Weekly Goals

What do you need to do each week of the current month to be on track for your monthly and therefore your annual goals?

So, your goal table might end up looking something like this:

Of course, you can have more than one goal per category. But try to keep it to a maximum of 3. More than 3 will become overwhelming and there will be too much to do each month. This is likely to set you up for stress and an inability to reach your targets.

I then take my weekly goals and put them into my weekly plans. Every Sunday night I review my previous week and plan for the week ahead. I go back to my goal table and figure out what I need to accomplish this week to be on track for each of my goals. I then schedule each goal in, giving it a specific day and rough time to achieve it.

For example, this week a goal was to complete 4 gym sessions. As I was trying to fit them into my schedule, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough time to get all 4 in. Luckily I had about an hour of free time right then and was able to fit one session in to ensure I could reach my 4 sessions for the week.

Without putting your tasks into a specific time block, there’s a good chance they won’t get done. Weeks go by quickly, and before you know it you’re doing your next weekly review and your task list remains undone.

The cool thing with this method is that the categories are very malleable — you can include what is meaningful to you in each of the three categories. This is unlike other goal-setting templates that are more specific — e.g. ‘finances’ or ‘significant other’ are pretty specific and might not resonate with you, therefore making the goals in these categories irrelevant and/or unmotivating.

Instead, this method allows you to identify what is relevant to you in regard to ‘love’, ‘growth’, and ‘purpose’, which will be highly variable between people. This will make goal setting more meaningful for you.

Writing down your goals is a simple but highly effective way to identify what is important to you and to work towards it. You are much more likely to improve and experience success when actively striving for specific results.

This goal setting template is a very simple but effective approach to creating and tracking your goals, and provides a way to discern what needs to be done each week in order to be on track for your more long-term goals.