Goal Setting Worksheet

Goal Setting Worksheet Steps

Use one worksheet for each major goal.

Step 1: State your goal- specific, challenging, attainable

Step 2: List every single reason you want to reach the goal. What are the benefits?

Step 3: List every obstacle between you and your goal. Why haven't you already achieved it?

Step 4: What is the "primary constraint," the main barrier, keeping your from your goal? (If you remove it, you'll be automatically closer to achieving it!)

Step 5: The Cost: List every sacrifice you need to make to reach the goal.

Step 6: What information, skills or help do you need to reach the goal?

Step 7: Who can help you get the info, skills etc that you need to achieve the goal?

Step 8: List every step, in order, that you will need to take to reach the goal

Step 9: What are the three primary steps you need to take if you are to achieve this goal?

Step 10: What habits will you need to form to achieve your goal?
Think of these different time spans:
Daily...
Weekly...
Monthly...
Annually...

Step 11: How committed are you, really, to achieving this goal regardless of the difficulty?

Step 12: What’s the one thing you can do right now, today, before you do anything else, to begin to move toward the fulfillment of your goal?

If you do it now, you are going to make it!

Ten Great Goal Setting Questions

1. What is your greatest strength/uniqueness as a person?
2. What is the most significant barrier holding you back?
3. What three things, if you did them, would make your life a success?
4. What would you die for?
5. Describe your perfect life.
6. What is your primary loyalty?
7. What are you looking forward to over the next several months and years?
8. What three things are you grateful for?
9. Do you like yourself right now? (If not, what needs to change?)
10. What are you passionate about?

A few more Goal Setting Questions:
Are you missing anything in your life that's important to you?
What do you want to be doing ten years from now?
What do I want to be remembered for by family and friends?
How much money is truly enough? What will I do with the excess funds I accumulate?

Here's an outstanding question I heard from one of my mentors, Bobb Biehl:

What 3 things can you do in the next 3 months that will make a 50% difference in the key areas of your life?

This is one of the highest leverage questions I've found. Three months is long enough to do something significant but short enough to keep it in my face! I always have three 3-month goals on the go, and whenever one is completed, I add another.

Give it a try. Anchor these quarterly goals in your annual and longer term goals, but identify some targets to get done in 90 days. You will be surprised how this length of goal setting keeps you moving!

The first step of effective goal setting is to Define Your Destination.

 One option is to formulate a one or two line epitaph for your tombstone as a way of beginning this step. But there is another thing you can do.

Write a eulogy summarizing the kinds of things you would like said about you when you are dead and gone.

 A leadership course I took required me to write a couple of such eulogies- one as if from a family member, one as if from a work colleague, and one as if from a life long friend. It was a lot of work, but something significant happened to me: I realized that if the things I wanted said of me were going to be accurate, I needed to make some changes! In other words, the path I was following would not bring me to my desired destination.

Deciding what you want said about you and writing it out will give you some focus for the present. The hard work required to Define Your Destination is well worth it!

For a great goal setting template, click here!