✦
Experiments

Goal planning templateOne goal, thought through
before it starts costing you.

A goal that has only been stated has not been planned. The gap between the two is small and specific: a plan names the measure, the obstacles you can already see, and the first action, and a statement names none of those. That is why most goals fail in the first fortnight rather than at the deadline — there was never a first move, only an intention.

Free, no sign-up. Saves in your browser, downloads as a PDF or a spreadsheet, and imports into EvyOS in one click.

The goal

What will get in the way

Decide the response now, while it is cheap and you are calm.

ObstacleWhen it happens, I will

The checkpoints

CheckpointByDone

The first three moves

Small enough that the first one could be done today.

Next actionByDone

The conditions

Everything you type is saved in this browser only. Fill in a row or two and the download and import options will have something to work with.

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✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
State the outcome

In the past tense, as though describing it after the fact. Vagueness survives the future tense and dies in the past one.

2
Name the obstacles now

The two or three you can already see, with what you will do when each arrives. Deciding in advance is most of the value.

3
Write the first action

Something you could do in the next hour. If there isn't one, the goal is still a wish.

This template is one goal at a time, on purpose. It walks the four things that make the difference and then stops, because a planning document longer than the plan is a way of avoiding the plan.

The obstacles section is the one people skip. It is also the one that predicts most failures, because the thing that stops you is almost never a surprise.

✦ The limit

A plan is not a record.

This page holds what you intend. It cannot tell you what you did, because nothing on it knows whether the checkpoint on the fourteenth happened, whether the habit ran for nine days or two, or which goal has quietly not moved since March. That is the honest limit of every template, printed or otherwise, 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 this sheet across and the goals, checkpoints and habits arrive as real records with their dates — then progress comes from what you tick off rather than from you remembering to come back and update a slider.

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✦ Questions

Goal planning template, answered.

It covers the same ground and then adds the parts SMART leaves out. Specific, measurable and time-bound are here as the outcome, the measure and the date. Obstacles and first actions are not in SMART at all, and they are the two sections that most often decide whether anything happens.
Because planning is per-goal and the depth is the point. If you want several side by side at a shallower level, use the goal tracker; this is what you fill in for the one that matters.
The predictable ones. Not "losing motivation" but the specific circumstance — the week work goes sideways, the evening you are too tired, the month the money is tight — with the response you will use written down before you are in it.
Three ways: it stays in this browser, you can download it as a PDF or a spreadsheet, and you can send it into EvyOS where the goal, the checkpoints and the first actions become real records with dates.
Twenty minutes. If it is taking an hour you are writing an essay rather than a plan, and the goal is probably still too vague to plan.

Keep the plan.
And the record of doing it.

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

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