A Walk Through My Goal Sheet

So first, the intent of this goal sheet is to hold you accountable to doing the daily tasks that contribute to your larger goals.  That is why the first exercise is to determine your theme and points of emphasis for the sheet.  After doing that you can then fill in the daily goals that map toward that intention.

The sheet itself is a point scoring system that helps hold you accountable to taking action on a daily basis. It does so by having you set your target number of points that you want to earn in each category over the course of the week.  A really important part of this concept is to set reasonable expectations, or else you won’t take the goal sheet as seriously. The sheet should serve as your baseline, what you expect to accomplish at minimum in any given week.  For example, I try to read before bed every night, but I set my goal to be three times a week because I know at a minimum that is how often I want to be held accountable to be reading before bed.

When writing your goals, it is important to phrase them in a binary way. Using that same example, instead of having the goal be written as “read for 30 minutes”, I have it written as “read a book three times a week before bed.”  That way, when it comes to report on my performance, I have a clear yes or no answer about whether or not I earned the points. In this same example, having a strict definition means I can’t convince myself that I should earn points for reading an article on Facebook before bed, which is exactly the purpose.

Lastly, keeping track of your points on a weekly basis helps you compare between weeks and observe your improvement. If you feel like your baseline needs to be bumped up or down, you can implement that change at the beginning of any week, making your goal sheet realistic for your circumstances.