Experiments

Goal coachThe right question
depends where you are.

Advice about goals is usually given as though a goal were one thing, and it is not — it is four or five quite different situations wearing the same word. A goal that has not started needs the opposite of what a goal at eighty per cent needs, and a stalled goal needs something different again from one that is merely slow.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

Name the goal.

Everything is worked out in this page and saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Share this
✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Be honest about the last time you touched it

It is the field that most changes the stage, and the one people round down.

2
Answer the three questions out loud

Aloud or written. Thinking about them silently produces the answer you already had.

3
Do the one thing

Each stage has one intervention that works and several that do not. The others are listed so you can stop trying them.

So the question here is not "how is it going" but "where is it". The three questions you get are the ones a decent coach would actually ask at your stage, and the single action at the end is the intervention that fits that stage rather than a general one.

The stage is worked out from progress against time elapsed and from how recently you touched it. Both matter: forty per cent done is excellent in week two and a crisis in week eleven.

✦ The limit

An answer is not a record.

This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

Questions

Goal coach, answered.

Because the interventions contradict each other. A goal that has not started needs you to do the work badly and immediately; a goal at 85 per cent needs you to stop improving things and write a list. Applying the wrong one is why general goal advice so often does nothing.
From progress against time elapsed, plus how recently you touched it. Both are necessary: 40 per cent done is excellent in week two and a crisis in week eleven, and anything untouched for a fortnight is stalled regardless of the numbers.
Because each stage has a characteristic wrong move that feels productive. Planning more when you have not started, trying harder when you are behind, polishing when you are nearly done — all three are extremely common and all three make it worse.
No, and no model either. It is a set of stage-appropriate questions with the rules printed beside them. A good coach would do considerably more; what this does is stop you answering the wrong question.
Fortnightly on anything live. It takes two minutes and its main job is catching the transition into 'stalled' while that is still a fortnight rather than a season.

Keep the answer.
And the record of doing it.

Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

Start for free