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Turning Your Future Into Goals

This picks up where a written picture of your future leaves off. A picture is not a plan. A plan is a small number of named things, in an order, with actual days attached to them. If you have already written about the future you want, have it next to you — if not, you can still do this, you will just be pulling the goals out of your head rather than off the page.

Work down the page. Expect this to take around an hour, and expect to revise. Rough and written beats perfect and imagined.

One goal at a time: The last section takes a single goal apart in five steps. Do it for your top goal now. Come back and run it again for the next one when you are ready — doing all eight in one sitting turns a useful exercise into a chore you abandon halfway.

Name the whole thing

Give your plan a title. It can be plain — "My next three years" is fine — or it can be something only you would understand. A name makes it a thing you can refer to rather than a vague intention.

What are you calling this plan?
e.g. e.g. Getting my footing back
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In a sentence or two, what is this plan about?
e.g. What you are aiming at, in the shortest form you can manage.

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List your goals

Break the plan into six to eight goals. Eight tends to work better than six — it forces you past the obvious ones. Keep each summary short enough to remember without reading it.

Goals can come from any part of your life

  • Something about your health or your body
  • Something about your work, study, or whatever fills your days
  • Something about the people around you
  • Something about how you spend the time that is yours
  • Something about how your home or money runs
  • Something about who you want to be rather than what you want to do

Your goals

Row 1

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Row 2

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Row 3

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Row 4

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Row 5

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Row 6

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Row 7

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Row 8

  • Goal: ____________________
  • Why it belongs on this list: ____________________

Put them in order

Rank them. Number one is the goal that matters most, not the one that is easiest or most urgent. You can re-order this later — in fact you probably will.

Ranked

1

  • Goal: ____________________

2

  • Goal: ____________________

3

  • Goal: ____________________

4

  • Goal: ____________________

5

  • Goal: ____________________

6

  • Goal: ____________________

7

  • Goal: ____________________

8

  • Goal: ____________________

Take one goal apart

Write your number one goal below, then work through the five sections that follow. Save this page, or copy the sections, so you can run the same five for each of your other goals later.

Which goal are you taking apart here?
e.g. Write it as you ranked it.
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1. Why this one

Worth asking honestly

  • Do you actually believe this matters, or does it just sound like it should?
  • Would you feel guilty or ashamed if you did not do it — and whose voice is that?
  • Are you doing it for yourself or for someone else? Either can be fine. Knowing which is the point.
  • Is it something your current situation is demanding, rather than something you chose?
  • Is any part of it enjoyable, or is it all obligation?
  • Is it connected to something you have wanted for a long time?

Your reasons for wanting this
e.g. A minute or two of honest writing. Contradictions are allowed.

______________________________________________
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How much of this goal is genuinely yours?
Rate from 1 (Mostly someone else's) to 5 (Entirely mine): ____

2. What changes if it happens

Follow it outward — small goals sit underneath bigger ones

  • How would getting there change how you see yourself?
  • What else in your life would shift as a result?
  • How would the people close to you be affected?
  • Is any part of you nervous about succeeding — because of what it would then ask of you?
  • Is there anyone beyond your immediate circle who would be better off?

What reaching this goal would change, for you and around you
e.g. Go past the obvious first answer.

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3. The actual steps

This is where plans usually fall apart, because they stay abstract. Write down specific things you would do in a specific week. Name the day, the time, and the place. "Exercise more" is not a step. "Walk for twenty minutes after lunch on Tuesday and Thursday" is.

Concrete daily or weekly actions

Row 1

  • What you will do: ____________________
  • When and where: ____________________
  • How often: ____________________

Row 2

  • What you will do: ____________________
  • When and where: ____________________
  • How often: ____________________

Row 3

  • What you will do: ____________________
  • When and where: ____________________
  • How often: ____________________

Row 4

  • What you will do: ____________________
  • When and where: ____________________
  • How often: ____________________

4. What could get in the way

Obstacles are easier to handle when you have already named them. Some will be practical — money, time, energy, access. Some will be you: the way you tend to quietly sabotage things you want. And some will be other people, because change in one person is often unsettling to the people around them, so include who might struggle with this and how you would talk to them about it.

Obstacles and what you would do about them

Row 1

  • What could get in the way: ____________________
  • What you would do if it did: ____________________

Row 2

  • What could get in the way: ____________________
  • What you would do if it did: ____________________

Row 3

  • What could get in the way: ____________________
  • What you would do if it did: ____________________

Row 4

  • What could get in the way: ____________________
  • What you would do if it did: ____________________

5. How you will know it is moving

Set your own markers

  • When would you like to have reached this? A date you might revise beats no date at all.
  • What would count as evidence that you are moving, even a little?
  • How often will you actually look?
  • What would have to be measurably different for you to feel satisfied with your progress?
  • How will you avoid both pushing so hard you crash and going so easy you lose interest?

Your markers of progress
e.g. These are yours. It does not matter what anyone else would count as progress.

______________________________________________
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Date of your first check-in
e.g. MM/DD/YYYY
______________________________________________

From here

People often lose more time re-examining their goals than pursuing them. Am I doing the right thing? Did I pick correctly? That loop feels productive and is not. Once the goals are set, the useful work is in the weekly steps. Imperfect goals you actually run will teach you more than perfect goals you keep polishing, so set aside ten or twenty minutes every week or two to look at how it is going — then run this whole exercise again in six or twelve months, when your situation has moved.

  • [ ] I have picked a regular day to review this

Sticking to a plan is half of making one: The plan you keep revising is not safer than the plan you start. Most of what you need to know about whether this goal is right will only show up once you are a few weeks into doing it — which means the fastest way to get a better plan is to run this one.

Go deeper

Ready for more? These lessons pick up where this worksheet leaves off.

  • Executive Function, from The Neurodivergent Brain. Why the ADHD brain runs on interest not importance, why autistic set-shifting is costly, plus time blindness & task initiation.
  • Systems, Habits, and Self-Compassion, from The Adult ADHD Course. How to make self-compassion the engine that keeps your habits and systems running.
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