✦
Experiments

Yearly goal trackerA year, on one page,
in quarters you can feel.

The problem with an annual goal is not ambition, it is resolution. Twelve months is a single undifferentiated block, so there is no moment inside it where you are visibly behind, and therefore no moment where you correct. People do not abandon annual goals in a decision; they abandon them by never having a reason to look.

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

The year

The four quarters

ThemeWhich means saying no to
Q1 · Jan–Mar
Q2 · Apr–Jun
Q3 · Jul–Sep
Q4 · Oct–Dec

The goals

Tied to a quarter, so the year has edges rather than one distant deadline.

GoalQuarterHow you will knowByProgress
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%

The twelve-month grid

One row per goal, one mark per month it genuinely moved.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecDone0/120/120/120/120/12

The year, closed out

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.

Share this
✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Give each quarter a theme

One word or one phrase. It decides what gets said no to, which is most of what a theme is for.

2
Two goals a quarter

Eight goals a year is a lot. Most people who write twelve finish three.

3
Mark the grid monthly

Twelve marks a goal for the whole year. Small enough that it actually happens.

This tracker cuts the year into four quarters with a theme each, which is enough structure to make any given month either on plan or not. The month grid underneath is deliberately coarse — one mark per month per goal — because a year-scale record that demands daily maintenance stops being maintained in March.

Set the year, name the quarters, then keep the grid honest. It saves in this browser as you go.

✦ 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.

Start free →Everything else
✦ Questions

Yearly goal tracker, answered.

Six to eight if they are spread across quarters, and fewer if two of them are large. The failure mode is not laziness, it is arithmetic: eight simultaneous goals divide one person's discretionary week into slices too thin to produce anything.
Because a month is too short for most goals that are worth a year, and a year is too long to feel. A quarter is the unit where you can still be meaningfully behind in week four and do something about it.
No, and the empty cells are the point. A goal with two marks by June is telling you something a progress bar you dragged yourself never would.
Yes. The quarter rows are labelled with months for convenience, but nothing depends on them — rename the themes and start wherever your year starts.
Every goal, with its quarter recorded and its target date set, plus the whole sheet as a note. The month grid stays here, because in the app the equivalent is the actual activity record rather than a mark you make about yourself.

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.

Start for free →