July 23, 2020

A Free Goal Setting and Planning Worksheet

A printable PDF for you to track your goals.

TLDR: Download the PDF here.

I’ve always been interested in helping people both achieve their goals and building the habits and techniques that make it easier to achieve them.

I tend to use a general process for setting and achieving my goals.

  • Identifying target goals.
  • Reflecting on the current state of my goals (e.g. I want to stop smoking, currently I smoke 5 cigarettes daily which is down from 10 daily six months ago).
  • Making a list of potential barriers to succeeding and how to overcome them (coping planning).
  • Listing out any resources (books, information, time) I need to succeed and how to get them.
  • Thinking about any habits that might help with achieving my goal(s).
  • Reviewing my progress at regular intervals.
  • Planning a path from where I am now to a point where I achieve my goal(s).
  • Tracking random ideas related to my goal(s) that might be relevant at a later point.

I built a website to track and plan out personal goals - I'll put up a post on it someday. Right now, the the site is here.

However, long before that site was built, I was using pen and paper to plan out our goals. As a developer, I was keen on building the app straight away, but it’s better to start off small before you commit to building a fully functioning web site and application. Don’t run before you can walk!

A free goal/planning worksheet

So, using that pen and paper, I sketched out what the different components of achieving a goal looked like. It eventually turned into a PDF worksheet that I’re releasing today for free. It has some examples present for each part of the process - if you want a version without the examples or a different format (maybe a printed version?), get in touch!

Download the PDF here.