How to set goals
This is the method, in order, with the parts most guides leave out: how many to set, what the first week looks like, and what you do on the week it goes wrong.
To set a goal, write the outcome as a sentence someone else could verify, give it a date, cut the list to no more than three, then write the first action and the exact time it happens this week. Finish by booking a weekly review and deciding in advance what you will do if you miss. The writing takes twenty minutes. The review is what makes the twenty minutes worth anything.
Start from the end, then work backwards
Begin with the state of the world you want and the date it is true by. Not the activity, the result. "Three client calls a week" is an activity that may or may not be the right one; "eight new clients by the end of June" is a result you can steer towards by any route that works.
Then work backwards in one step. What has to be true a month before the deadline for the goal to still be live? That intermediate marker is the thing you will actually check against, because a June deadline tells you nothing useful in February.
Decide what happens on a bad week
Write this down when you set the goal, not when it happens. Most abandonment happens in the week after a miss, when the goal quietly reclassifies itself in your head from "in progress" to "failed", and nothing in the plan contradicts that.
A rule as crude as "one missed week is normal, two in a row means the plan changes" is enough. The value is not in the rule, it is in having decided it while you were calm.
How to do it
- 1
Write the outcome in one sentence
State what will be true, not what you will do. The test: could someone else look at the world in six months and tell you whether it happened? If not, it is still too vague.
- 2
Put a date on it
A real date, not "this year". The date is what turns the goal into something with a rate attached, which is how you find out whether it is possible.
- 3
Cut the list to three
Rank everything you wrote and keep the top three. The rest go on a separate list for the next quarter. A goal you are not working on this quarter is not a goal, it is a candidate.
- 4
Find the weekly rate
Divide the outcome by the weeks available. Eight clients in twenty weeks is roughly one every two and a half weeks. If the resulting number looks absurd, you have learned something now rather than in month four.
- 5
Name the first action and when it happens
One action, with a day and a time, inside the next seven days. If it does not fit in a single calendar block, it is still too big to be a first action.
- 6
Book the review and write the miss rule
Ten minutes, same time every week, in the calendar. In the same sitting, write down what you will do if you miss a week. Both of these take two minutes and they are the two steps that decide whether any of the others mattered.
Common questions
What people ask about how to set goals.
How long should a goal take?
A quarter is the usual sweet spot. Shorter than six weeks and it is a project rather than a goal; longer than a year and the weekly rate becomes too small to notice, which is how a goal goes quiet without ever being dropped.
Should goals be hard or achievable?
Hard enough that you are not certain, achievable enough that the weekly rate is not absurd. The arithmetic in step four settles this better than any rule of thumb: if the required weekly action is one you would not plausibly do, the goal is wrong rather than ambitious.
What is the difference between a goal and a habit?
A goal has an end state and a date. A habit is a repeated action with no finish line. Goals often need a habit to deliver them, and habits are often the better choice when the real aim is to keep doing something rather than to arrive somewhere.
Do written goals work better than unwritten ones?
Writing them down at least makes them reviewable, which is the mechanism this whole method depends on. An unwritten goal cannot be checked against later, so it tends to drift into whatever you did anyway.
Keep reading
Goal setting worksheet
Nine prompts, in order, designed to be answered on one side of paper. It takes about thirty minutes and the last two prompts are the ones that matter most.
SMART goals
The best known goal framework there is, and a genuinely useful one, as long as you know which part of the problem it solves and which part it leaves to you.
Letter to your future self
The hard part is not the idea, it is the blank page. Here is what is worth writing down, and what you will wish you had included when you read it back.
About the author
Drew D’Agostino, founder of Crystal.
Drew founded Crystal, the AI coach that understands you, used by millions of people to understand themselves and the people around them. He is the author of Predicting Personality, a book on reading other people through personality science to improve communication and business relationships.
Crystal is the AI coach that understands you.
It starts from who you are, then helps you decide where you are going and build the daily habits to get there.