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Love or hate New Year’s resolutions, personal goal setting is the way to go. The idea of “resolutions” has never been as interesting to me as goals, challenges, adventures, and lists of epic proportions. My annual “end of the year musing and scheming” has arrived. And I’m excited to take a day or two to reflect on 2023 and do a year-end review with my goal tracking spreadsheet. Before I get carried away with planning for next year.
So today I’m sharing my updated for 2024 personal goal setting template and goal setting framework. I’ve been doing this annually for the last 15 years. 2023 has seen some evening out from the un-plannable wildcard last few years. But even though life has been unimaginably different the last few years, I’m still looking at my goals, just with more flexibility and maybe a darker sense of humor?
I’ve been asked for a bit of the process behind my personal goals planning. So I’ve shared an example of my goal setting template – freshly updated for 2024!
2024 Goal Tracking Spreadsheet:
My goal setting spreadsheet is a bit more detailed than the worksheet. I like it for tracking goals, listing next action steps, and doing a monthly review of my progress. The spreadsheet also has some automatic formatting for doing SMART goals with using a “red, yellow, green” style completion.
And just like the last few years, here’s my Excel/Google Sheets version of the goal tracking spreadsheet. You can have the template for a “Pay what you want” price. After years of giving this template away, the resources it takes to deliver the template are no longer free. Here’s to experimenting in 2024!
After downloading the Excel spreadsheet, you can open or upload it to use in Google Spreadsheets (or just use in Excel or Open Office).
Free Goal Setting Worksheet:
Guess what? You don’t have to use a spreadsheet for goal setting. If you’re more of a paper and writing kinda person, a printable worksheet might be more your style. Here is a printable goal setting worksheet to get started with personal goals. The worksheet is a printable pdf! You can download and print the pdf format here.
Goal Setting Framework:
Here’s the best way I have found to set goals. My goal setting process has evolved over the years, so here’s how I try to set effective goals each year.
1. Make it an event!
For a few years, I combined my annual goal setting time with a last minute close-to-home post-Christmas getaway. However you decide to do it, set aside a few hours. Get out of your usual space and routine and get thinking with your goal setting template.
2. Recap the year
To start, I like to ask myself a few questions:
- What went great this year? What are you proud of? What’s really “working” in your life right now? What are you grateful for? What parts of your life are giving you contentment? Look at last year’s goals to remind yourself, your calendar, Instagram – whatever is going to jog your memory. My list includes all kinds of things – like big goals (started freelancing again!), some stats (biked, ran, hiked 1,690 miles!!), more vague things (got healthier).
- What didn’t I accomplish this year, that I had wanted to? What’s “not working”? Is there anything you need closure on? The point of this step isn’t to be hard on yourself. Consider what didn’t happen, think about why it didn’t happen (because you didn’t focus on it? because you tried and failed? because you changed your mind about wanting it?), and then move on. For example: I didn’t blog as frequently as I wanted to, and I didn’t go on a big international trip etc.
- What do I want to happen 2024? What do you want to be celebrating next year at this time? This one is all about possibilities. What ideas and projects and can you just not stop thinking about?
3. Accountability
I used to like the idea of posting all of my goals for the world to see for accountability. But some are also more personal goals. So while I’ll mention a few here on my blog, I keep a Google Doc with all my goals. Whatever your system is, share it with someone (start with your BFF!) for things you want help in staying accountable for.
4. The BIG picture: Life Goals
Some of my yearly goals tie into other lists – like in the past, my 30 Before 30 list. And some were new goals, bigger goals, smaller goals, major milestones, BHAGs (big hairy audacious goal), etc.
After reading The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte a few years ago, I added in thinking about how I want to feel. She calls them core desired feelings. And not just how you want to feel, but what you can do in specific areas of your life to get those 3-5 “core” feelings that drive you. It sounds a little hokey, but adding this in definitely gets you thinking up more ideas of what you really want for the year. And not just writing down ambitious goals that seem like what you should do. What are your bigger life goals and what are you doing on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily basis to work towards them? These are important questions to find out your overarching goal.
5. Pick a theme or word for the year
I’ve seen some people have a theme for their year or a one word description, which I’ve done some years. Other years, I’ve selected a quote. One year was “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do” — Rumi. This quote really covered the different areas of my life from work to personal to fitness. And I added it to my chalkboard wall in my home to remind myself all year. Another year, was all about being PRESENT. Maybe we can just pretend our 2020 word was PANDEMIC. And for 2021 and 2022 I didn’t pick a word at all!
6. Use a template! Goal tracking spreadsheet, a notebook etc.
Each year, I use my own template for goal setting. You can download my template or make your own, but the important thing is to keep track of your progress. The best goal tracking tool, is the one you’ll actually use!
7. Areas of life for goal setting
I like to break out my goals into broad categories. In previous years, I’ve done really specific categories (eg. job, fitness, learning, money, family, blog etc). Then, the last few years I went a little wider with the general themes. For example: Health (Fitness/Service/Spiritual), Wealth (Job/Income/Blog/Financial goals), Happiness (Travel/Local/Home/Relationships/Learning). More recently, I’ve expanded on “Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, by including a few more memory jogging categories to inspire ideas.
Types of Personal Goals Examples:
Wealth: Livelihood & Lifestyle – career, fashion, home, influence, money, possessions, resources, professional development, style etc.
Health: Body, Wellness, & Spirituality – fitness, food, mental health, relaxation, self-care, sensuality, soul, spirituality, personal development etc.
Happiness: Creativity, Home, Learning, Local, Relationships, Service, & Travel – art, causes, community, education, family, friendship, gifts, hobbies, home life, music, romance, travel, volunteering etc.
8. Action Plans: “Do what by when?”
Just like typical goals, I try to follow the Getting Things Done (GTD) method to my year-end personal planning. What makes a good goal? Effective goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Or said in regular speak:
I will… {do what?} {by when} and the {next action step} is. With a {monthly/quarterly review area} and {final review}.
Example: I will put $500 per month in my IRA for $6000 total 2024 contribution by April 15 2025 (tax time). Next step: Look at my budget and set up an automatic transfer money from my savings account to my IRA account.
Example: I will list my place on AirBnB by July 1. And try to rent my place for the dates of planning a next big trip. Next step: look at current studio listings in Portland for ideas and make notes.
Example: I will take a cooking class in 2024. Next step: Look at online cooking class options.
Example: I will focus on fitness each month and moving my body every day. It doesn’t have to be the same every day or month. For January, I will commit to the 30 Days of Yoga challenge and February I will commit to spinning at home – doing at least one 20 minute spin class 2-3x a week. Next step: track yoga classes on my kitchen chalkboard wall.
SMART Goals
While “SMART” goals are often thought of as business goals or career goals, it’s a useful tool for setting goals for just yourself too. It can feel like next level goal setting, but smart goal setting is actually pretty basic! If you’re looking for a simple SMART Goals template instead, check out my other spreadsheet here. SMART goals stands for:
- Specific – What, why, where, how?
- Measurable – What metric(s) will you use?
- Attainable/Achievable – Do you have the resources and time to accomplish it?
- Realistic – Is it relevant and realistic that you can accomplish now?
- Timely – By when? and the silent T – Tracking monthly goals or weekly goals.
Annual Goals > Monthly Goals > Weekly Goals > Daily Goals
While I love having annual goals, they often break down nicely into monthly goals. You can’t do everything at once. So I’ve found it useful to tackle some of my “annual goals” in different months. In this way, you have the best chance at actually meeting your goals. And from monthly goals, it becomes obvious very quickly if your goal can realistically be broken down into weekly goals and even daily goals. This is a great way to find potential problems with your goals.
I used to only do a quarterly review of where I’m at on my goals. However, I found that it was way too easy to have three months go by and forget about my “priorities”. So now one of the easiest ways is via Google Calendar (my calendar app of choice), and set a recurring calendar appointment for the last Sunday of every month. This way, I actually look at my goals on a monthly basis to make sure I’m making small steps toward an important goal. Then I can gauge where I’m at or if a specific goal needs adjusting. Happy planning and I wish you a marvelous new year and your best year yet!
Have you used a goal tracking spreadsheet or template before?
This goal tracking spreadsheet post was originally published back in 2011, and has been updated for 2024.
