How to Achieve Your Goals Using a Goal Planner (Free Goal Setting Worksheet)

Are you struggling with achieving your goals? Do you have some goals that you carry over year after year after year and are wondering how you can finally achieve them? Maybe a goal-setting worksheet is what you need. Or maybe even a simple but effective goal planner that you’ll actually use.

Let’s start first with how to go about setting achievable goals.

One of the reasons you may be struggling with reaching your goals is because they’re lofty and you haven’t broken them all the way down into something your mind can manage.

If you take smart steps to achieve your goals, you’ll find the answer to the age-old question, how do you achieve your dreams?

How to Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals

If you studied any aspect of business then you’re familiar with the term SMART goals. The letters mean settings goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-specific and are a roadmap to achieving your goals and dreams.

Let’s take a look at each of these things.

Specific Goals

Losing weight is a goal many people have or if not losing weight then it’s achieving a level of fitness they’re not currently at, at least. So let’s go with this theme for our goal setting. In and of itself, losing weight isn’t a smart goal. It’s way too broad and general. Walking around saying yeah, I want to lose weight, without having a plan to actually lose the weight probably isn’t going to work.

Setting a smart goal in the weight loss category has a much better chance of achievement so let’s set one now. I want to lose 30lbs. That’s a very specific goal. Or, I want to be able to do 100 pushups. That’s a specific goal. I want to wear a size 2 or I want to run a 10k. These are all more specific goals. But they’re not smart goals yet. Let’s go to the next step.

Measurable Goals

Going with the specific goals we just set, let’s make them measurable. I want to lose 30 lbs is already a measurable goal. So is I want to wear a size 2. They accurately measure the amount of weight you want to lose and the size you want to be. The others however still need some help.

I want to be able to do 100 pushups in 10 minutes.

I want to run a 10k in 30 minutes.

These are now measurable goals that we can track. You can now start to use a goal tracker to help you achieve your goals. But we can still make them smarter.

Achievable Goals

Is your goal attainable? Can you actually achieve your goal? Here an example would be that you want to lose 30lbs when you already weigh 120lbs and you’re over 5′. Or you want to run a 10k in 5 minutes. Keep things at an achievable level when it comes to goal setting.

Realistic Goals

This goes hand in hand with achievable goals. You want to take a look at your current reality and make sure you’re actually able to achieve the goal with how your life is currently set up. If you have some illness that will prevent you from achieving your goal of running a 10k in 30 minutes, then this is not a realistic goal.

The R can also stand for relevant. Will your current life/business situation be conducive to your goal of losing weight? If not, can you change it to facilitate your goal? If you go to school full time and then work 6 hours at your evening job, will you have the time to train for your 10k? Your goal must be realistic to your current life or you must be able to change something so you can achieve this goal. Perhaps you are now going to get up 45 minutes earlier to train in the mornings?

The Time Factor

The last measure of a smart goal is the time factor. How long will you work at achieving your goal? At what point will you celebrate your success or realize that you missed your goal and may need to change your strategy?

The time needs to be realistic as well. You’re not going to lose 30 lbs in two weeks. Give yourself enough time to achieve your goals.

So now we have our smart goals:

I want to lose 30 lbs in 90 days.

I want to be able to run a 10k in 30 minutes by the time 90 days is up.

Now that you’ve set a smart goal, how will you achieve it? Your goal must be broken down into bite-sized pieces that you can work on every month, every week, every day. Continuing with our goal of 30 lbs in 90 days, how can we break this up?

Break Up Your Goal by Month

Once you have your overarching goals written down, you’ll want to break them down into the steps you will take to achieve them. It’s easier to do so by starting with the big chunks first. Take your goal and split it into tasks that divide evenly over the time period you have given yourself to achieve the goal.

If you’re losing 30 lbs in 90 days, then your goal is to lose 10 lbs every month.

If you have a goal of reading 52 books in 52 weeks, then you know you’ll need 4 new books every month.

If you have a goal of increasing your income from 10k to 20k in 6 months, then you need to make an additional $1,666 every month.

Or if it means you will need to find a new job, then you can break this down into the monthly things you will do to get a new job. In month 1 I will start a 3-month certificate/course/licensing program etc. In month 2, I will refresh my resume and my linked in page. In month 3, I will send out X amount of resumes. In month 4, I will tap into my network to find a job. In month 5, I will give notice to my old job. In month 6, I leave!

Break It Down Further – Weekly Tasks

Now that you know what needs to get done each month, what can you do each week to achieve the monthly task? What will you do in week 1? What needs to happen for you to take the next step? A habit tracker will help us to get really focused here, more on this below.

For our 30lb goal, we’ve broken it down to 10 lbs a month. This means each week, we’ll need to lose 2.5 lbs. Here’s where we start to plan our meals and our exercise activity. We calculate how many calories we’ll need to intake and expend each week to meet our goals. Here are some weekly bullet journal spreads to help you break down your tasks.

If you’re an entrepreneur intending on increasing your income by the 10k, then here’s where we break down the $1,666 into $416 every week. What does that mean for your business? Does it mean you will need to book two additional clients each week? Does it mean you need to sell 8 more items every week? What steps will you take to achieve these mini-goals?

Getting Really Granular – Daily Tasks

Now, we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of things. Here’s where we are documenting the exact step we’re taking each day to achieve our goals. What does that mean for you? Does it mean meal planning and prepping on a Sunday for your lunch for the week? Does it mean hitting the gym 4 times per week? 5 times?

Does it mean spending an extra hour marketing your services? If you’re an online entrepreneur, does it mean tackling Facebook on Mondays, Pinterest on Tuesdays, and your email list on Wednesdays to see where you can ramp up sales? Maybe you’re reaching out to a new influencer to push sales or employing a new method you’ve yet to try and you’re setting aside one hour every single day to master it.

Whatever it means for you, breaking it up into daily tasks makes it easier to achieve your goals. It’s so easy to set a goal with a 90-day time limit and then push it to the back of our minds thinking 90 days is a long time. Then 70 days in we panic when we realize we’re about to miss our goal.

This way we take small steps to achieve our goal and before we know it, we’ve knocked it out of the park.

How a Goal Planner or Habit Tracker Will Help

Tracking your goals on paper links back to my thoughts on journaling. Things that are written down are achieved. Sure, you could just write this all down in a simple notebook, but planners are created with goal-setting in mind and have the prompts and tools that help to keep you focused and motivated.

I love the Self Journal because it’s broken down exactly as outlined above, into monthly, weekly and daily tasks. The monthly outlook is fantastic for writing in your synopsis and seeing it all from a bird’s eye view. The weekly pages help you to track things like how many times you exercised for the week, how many times you went live on Facebook or whatever weekly tasks you set above to achieve your goals. The daily pages have wonderful prompts and spaces for you to jot down everything you need to accomplish each day. It also has a space for gratitude journaling and I am big on that.

I love that the monthly spread isn’t dated so you can write in whatever month you’re currently at. It gives you a good bird’s eye view so you know what you have coming up and what you can accommodate in your schedule.

The weekly pages habit tracker feature is my fave. I can instantly see if I slacked off for that week in tasks that count towards my monthly goals so I can take action.

And the daily page with the timeline keeps me super accountable and on task. This is the actual goal-setting worksheet that will keep you accountable and push you in the direction of your dreams.

I think I’m going to get this wall calendar as well. It is all of 4′ wide! Talk about keeping the fire under your ass. I love calendars that are right in front of me and I already have a whiteboard monthly calendar which I LOVE but still want this one. I think it will be super awesome at looking back and seeing what happened throughout the year while helping me to plan.

I am a physical paper type of person and rely very heavily on my bullet journals and goal planners to see everything in front of me. I know there are apps that help with all of this but I am much more successful when I write it all down and have a visual. Click here to get a Self Journal or wall calendar.

Printable Goals Planner

Another great option is to purchase a digital product that you can print and get started on right away. One of the reasons I love printable planners is that you can print pages that you use often over and over again. Here’s the link to a printable planner I’m working through that’s chockfull of instructions, prompts, motivational quotes and mindset work that I’m very big on.

I’ve also created a free downloadable worksheet that you can print and track your goals with! Get it below and let’s take action steps in knocking out our goals.

Did you find these tips helpful? What does your goal-setting and achieving process look like? Please share with me in the comments and I would love it if you shared this post if you found it helpful!

More law of attraction reading:

• What is Manifesting
• The Difference Between Manifesting and the Law of Attraction
• Law of Attraction FAQs
• How to Use the 5×55 Manifesting Ritual
• How to Manifest Something in a Week
• How to Create a Manifesting Ritual
• 28 Day Gratitude Challenge
• 30-Day Happiness Challenge
• How to Recognize Signs from the Universe
• Visualization Exercises for Manifestation

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