“More,” “better” and “someday” are not goals. They’re moods.
You know roughly what you want. Fitter. Further on with the business. More time at home. But nothing with an edge on it, nothing with a date, and nothing that would tell you at the end of March whether you were closer or further away. So the year passes and the answer is neither.
The answer
Say the number and the date. That’s the whole trick.
Name the thing, put a number on it, give it a date. Read twenty-four books this year.Friday afternoons off by June. The planner holds the target and counts what you have done against it.
Then tie it to a role — as a parent, as a builder — and it stops being a line on a list and starts being something you are doing on purpose.
“Add goal read 24 books this year”
It’s on the board with a target, and the bar starts at zero.
Life Planning › Goals › + Add
Same result, if you’d rather type it.
Three goals on the free plan. The pages are all there from the start.
What the research found
Across 35 years of research, specific and challenging goals consistently beat “do your best.”
Specific goals work through four routes: they hold your attention, they mobilize effort, they keep you going longer, and they push you to find better ways. A goal you can measure is a goal you can hit.
The same goal means two different things depending on who’s setting it.
Take Friday afternoons off by June is a diary change. As a dad, take Friday afternoons off by June is a decision about the kind of father you are.
Same words. Same date. Completely different weight — and the second one survives a bad week, because you are not letting a calendar down, you are letting someone down.
As a dadFriday afternoons off by June
As a builderfinish the sloop by the spring launch
As a learnertwenty-four books this year
For years my goals were whatever the business needed next. I hit most of them. I could not have told you why any of them mattered, only that they were on the list and the list was mine.
The ones I remember are the ones I picked as a father, not as an owner.
— Dave Rees, Founder. From boatbuilder, to business owner, to Founder.
How it works
A goal takes about a minute to set.
Say it with a number and a date.Read twenty-four books this year. The target is the bit most people skip and it is the bit that makes it real.
Tie it to a role.One tap. It is what makes reaching it feel like anything.
Let your days do the counting.Finish an A-priority task connected to a goal and the bar moves on its own.
