How to Set, Track, and Achieve Your Goals
I’ve been tracking my quarterly goals for nearly two years.
I’ve achieved stunning success on some of my goals. On others, I’ve failed miserably. I’ve found that success is less important than you’d think, and failure isn’t as bad as you’d imagine.
What matters is having a framework to set the right goals, a system to track them, and space to reflect on them. When you can do this consistently, quarter after quarter, you’ll find yourself moving in the right direction.
Every quarter won’t bring progress, but your general path will be up and to the right. Without a system, your path might be flat, it might be up, it might be down, but you’ll have no idea. You won’t be able to do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t. You’ll miss out on long term progress, and—at the very least—it’ll take you much longer to make the same progress.
Over the course of about 640 days, I’ve built a system that’s moving me up and to the right.
It’s simple—which is why I’ve been able to stick with it.
It’s easy to understand—which is why you’ll be able to implement it.
It’s effective—which is why it will work for you.
The framework I’ve built is broken into three parts—set, track, and reflect.
I’ll explain each section in detail below, and by the end of this article, you’ll be able to apply the framework to achieve your quarterly goals.
⚠️ Caution ⚠️
This is a long article. I recommend reading one section at a time, digesting, implementing, then moving on to the next section.
If you need help, have questions, or want to work with me as a coaching client, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you.
Alright, it’s time to achieve some goals. Here we go.
📝 Set
Before you can achieve your goals, you have to set them. When you set your goals, I want you to take a long view. I don’t want you to think about next week, next month, or next quarter. I want you to think about the person you want to be a decade from now.
In setting your goals, you’ll be laying the foundation for the habits that build your future self.
In order to know what you need to do today, you need to know who you want to be tomorrow. I suggest starting with some introspection. I began my goal setting by writing a ten year plan. I covered categories from fitness to finances to philanthropy.
Once I figured out where I wanted to be in ten years, it was easy to work backwards and determine what I needed to do today.
Working backwards is important because there are usually multiple steps between where you are and where you want to be. If you want to be a millionaire, your goal shouldn’t be “make a million dollars.” That’s useless.
You should work backwards and lay out goals that look something like this:
Find a job where I make 20% more money
Save that 20% raise
Track my expenses
Reduce my expenses
Invest 30% of my monthly income
This is obviously simplified, but you see my point. Once you have a big goal for the future, you can break it down into small, actionable steps. Those small, actionable steps become your quarterly goals.
While I suggest writing a ten year plan, it’s not necessary for getting started with quarterly goal setting.
What is necessary is identifying at least one longer term goal you’d like to work toward. This goal could be related to fitness, money, relationships, career—basically anything you want. I’ll give you a few examples:
I’d like to sign a book deal with a publisher in the next year.
I want to weigh 180 lbs and be less than 15% body fat by Christmas.
I’d like to be a millionaire by age 30.
Okay, now we’ve got some goals to work on. This is a great starting place.
Input & Output Metrics
When you think about setting goals, it’s important to know the difference between input metrics and output metrics.
Output metrics are big picture outcomes which are not entirely within your control. They are the long term goals I listed in the bullets above.
Input metrics are actions within your control. They are smaller and more actionable than output metrics, and, when combined, they contribute to the accomplishment of output metrics. Input metrics are actions you can complete on a daily or weekly basis.
Let me give you some examples. If we look at the output metric above—I want to weigh 180 lbs and be less than 15% body fat—we can easily identify a few input metrics. Let’s assume you’re starting at 200 lbs and 20% body fat. Your input metrics might be:
Complete 3 high intensity interval training workouts per week
Walk 20 miles per week
Eat between 1,700 and 2,000 calories per day
Eat three or fewer servings of dessert per week
What makes these input metrics?
✅ They are entirely within your control.
You want to be responsible for your outcomes. If your goals require action from somebody else, they will be harder to achieve.
✅ They are specific actions.
Goals are easier to stick to when they’re specific. You want to know exactly what action you need to take.
✅ You can easily measure them.
This is important for tracking, which we’ll discuss later.
✅ Success is binary.
You either hit your input metrics or you didn’t. This becomes very important later when we talk about reflection.
When you’re setting quarterly goals, you want them to be input metrics. To find the right input metrics, start with your big picture goals—your output metrics. Then work backwards to determine the specific actions you can control and will contribute to your desired output metric.
Setting your quarterly goals involves trial and error. Sometimes you’ll select input metrics you think will move you in the right direction, and after a quarter of hitting those metrics, you find the opposite.
That’s okay. When this happens, you reflect and adjust.
You’ll get better at identifying the right input metrics with practice. The important thing to remember is that you’re successful when you hit your input metrics, regardless of whether or not they were the right input metrics. If you controlled what you could control, that’s a success. If those actions didn’t lead you where you’d hoped, that’s a data point.
You take that data point, adjust your input metrics, and get back to work.
Don’t be discouraged if at the end of your first quarter, you don’t feel closer to achieving your output metrics than you did at the beginning. As I mentioned before, output metrics are, at least partially, outside your control. Part of the goal setting process is finding the input metrics that get you closer to your output metrics. And by finding the input metrics that aren’t working, you’re actually closer than you were before. Now you know what not to work on, which is often as valuable as knowing what you should work on.
Now that you understand input metrics, output metrics, and selecting the right quarterly goals, let’s talk about scale.
Start small to grow big
A common mistake people make on their goal setting journey is to start too big. This is true for losing weight, saving money, starting a newsletter, learning an instrument—pretty much any new endeavor you attempt.
In the beginning, you’re really excited. You’re going to be a new person. You know exactly what you need to do.
In all your excitement, you create a list of things you’ll do to become that new person. In your elevated state of euphoria, your goals appear easy to accomplish.
🏃🏻♂️ You’ll run every day.
🥗 You’ll only eat salads.
🍩 You won’t eat dessert.
🏋🏻♀️ You’ll do a daily ab workout.
By the end of the first week, you’ll have shin splints, you’ll be sick of salad, you’ll be craving cookies, and your abs will be so sore you won’t be able to roll over in bed.
And then what will happen? You’ll quit.
You’ll quickly realize your aspirations exceeded your abilities. And in a devastating mushroom cloud of regret, you’ll be back to the same old you.
It’s easy to imagine all the habits you can build when you’re excited, but you need to remember that excitement will fade. You shouldn’t set goals with your best self in mind. Instead you should set them while thinking of you at your worst.
Think of yourself after a night of terrible sleep. Remember the weeks you barely had time to eat, let alone make a salad. Keep in mind how much you love cookies.
Then set a goal you think you can achieve. Start so small it almost seems like a joke. Write down an action you know you can complete, even on your worst days. Something like this:
Eat one salad per week
Walk one mile per day
If you start with less than you think you can achieve, then achieving it should be a breeze. And at the beginning of a goal setting journey, sometimes the best gift you can give yourself is the confidence of a goal consistently checked off the list.
Habit stacking
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear explains a concept called habit stacking.
Habit stacking is when completing one good habit acts as a cue to begin your next good habit. In keeping with our example from above, your daily one mile walk might lead into a 10 minute stretching routine. Or it might prompt you to drink a bottle of water. Or it might entice you to do some push-ups.
Once you’ve built one good habit, adding the next habit is much easier. You can string them together into a chain of positive action.
But you need to start the chain, and the best way to start is with something super easy. So pick the smallest, easiest, least intimidating input metric you can think of, and start there. It will be the beginning of a beautiful chain reaction.
Keystone habits
Similar to habit stacking, Charles Duhigg explains the idea of keystone habits in his book The Power of Habit.
Keystone habits are related to habit stacking in that they lead to more good habits. A keystone habit is a single habit that makes you more likely to take additional positive actions during your day.
For some people it’s exercise—a morning walk, run, swim, or Crossfit class. For others it’s getting eight hours of sleep. For you it might be starting your day with a 10 minute meditation. Whatever the habit is, it sets you up for success in the rest of your day.
You’ll notice on days where you check off your keystone habit, you’ll check off other good habits too. On days you skip the walk, the good nights sleep, the morning meditation, you’ll be less productive in other areas as well.
So what’s the significance here?
Well, I want you to start small. And by understanding habit stacking and keystone habits, you’ll understand that starting small is the best way to grow big. If you want to transform into a person who is fit and wealthy and personable and popular, start with one tiny habit.
Start by being the person who starts her day with a walk. Or become the man who meditates every morning. Begin by building one little habit, and you’ll set yourself up for success. Start with a staggering list of tasks to accomplish, and you’re doomed to disappointment.
⚙️ Action steps
Alright we’ve covered a lot in section one, so I want to bring it all together with a few quick action steps.
The first part of our goal system is setting goals. To set the right goals you need to:
Identify the long term output metrics you want to work toward.
Determine the input metrics that contribute to your desired output metrics.
Select a small number of the easiest input metrics and set those as your goals.
Once you’ve set your goals, the next part of the system is tracking your progress on those goals. We’ll cover how to track your progress in the next section 👇🏻 👇🏻
📈 Track
After you’ve set your goals, it’s time to start achieving them. At this point, goal tracking becomes super important.
End every evening with a checklist
Most nights before bed, I pop into my office to plug in my phone and prep my checklist for the next day. I’ve found a post-it note works best for me. I enjoy the physical feeling of writing my tasks by hand and crossing them off when complete.
Why do I do this at night rather than the morning? A few reasons:
Writing my tasks for the next day helps me remove them from my brain. The fewer thoughts I have bouncing around my brain, the better I sleep.
I usually end the evening with a pretty good idea of what I want to work on the next day. If I jot down these tasks while they’re fresh in my mind, I don’t forget them.
Writing my list at night lets me hit the ground running as soon as I get out of bed. I don’t need to waste time thinking of the things I need to do. I can simply look at my list and get to work on the first task.
If I don’t know exactly what I want to do the next day, night time is the perfect opportunity to figure it out. If I’m going to expend brain power, I’d rather do it right before I’m about to recharge for eight hours instead of right before I start working for the day.
Another benefit of a list is the psychological advantage. There are few feelings like crossing off a task you just completed. It’s almost addicting.
On the other side of the coin, seeing a list of unchecked tasks is a bad feeling. It creates a little pressure for you to get shit done.
When you don’t have to think about the things you need to do, it’s easier to do them. Do yourself a favor, and write yourself a checklist before bed.
Make tracking easy
The last thing you need after working hard all day to complete your goals is to have a complicated system to log your progress.
I can tell you from experience, if your tracking system isn’t simple, you won’t use it. If you don’t use it, you won’t know if you’re making progress, and then this whole thing falls apart.
To ensure you’re tracking progress toward your goals, your tracker should be at your fingertips. I’ve found the notes app on my iPhone to be the best way to track my progress on almost everything. I always have my phone with me, the notes are backed up to the cloud, and they’re searchable.
I have a note for my ab workouts, a note for my regular workouts, a note to track the days I don’t stretch, a note where I write down the interesting people I meet, and a note with links to all my Twitter threads.
If I’m tracking something, there’s a good chance it’s on a note in my phone.
Some of my other goals have trackers built in. For example, I can check Mailchimp to see how many newsletters I sent. I can look at my website to find how many articles I published. I can look in my journal to see how many entries I wrote.
My point here is that you don’t need some fancy tool. You need something simple that’s always with you. The notes app on your phone is sufficient for most of your tracking needs.
If you’d like to go into greater detail, you can build trackers in Google Sheets for just about everything. I’ve built a bunch of my own, which I’ll show you how to get at the bottom of this article.
But the important thing to remember is that a note is better than a spreadsheet because a note is simple, and it’s at your fingertips.
Track failure as enthusiastically as you track success
When you fall off the wagon, stop making progress, or otherwise lose your way, it’s easy to give up.
Instead of looking at failure as an excuse to quit, look at it as an opportunity to improve.
Let me give you an example from my life.
I set the goal to stretch every single day. For a year, I did really well. I stretched on 348 of 365 days. In a full year, I only missed 17 days of stretching. Put another way, I stretched on 95% of the days during the year.
Then the next quarter, I fell off the wagon. I did such a bad job stretching that I stopped keeping track of the days I missed. In a single quarter, I skipped somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 days, but I can’t tell you the exact number because, well, I’m a schmuck and I didn’t track it.
It’s impossible to know how much you improve or regress if you don’t keep track.
In the long view—which is the view we should be taking—it’s silly to think you won’t have bad quarters. But just because you have bad quarters doesn’t mean you should stop keeping track. Making mistakes is acceptable. Compounding those mistakes is not.
No matter how good—or bad—your progress may be, always make sure to track it.
⚙️ Action steps
Alright we’ve covered a lot in section two, so I want to bring it all together with a few quick action steps.
The second part of our goal system is tracking goals. Here are the actions you need to take to successfully track your goals:
Make a nightly checklist. Write out the tasks you need to accomplish tomorrow so you can begin the day as soon as you get out of bed.
Keep your tracking simple. Most of your goal tracking can be done in the notes app on your phone. If you don’t keep it simple, you won’t keep at it.
Even if you aren’t hitting your goals, just keep tracking. You need data to improve. At the very least, collect your data.
Once you’ve tracked your progress, the next part of the system is reflecting on your progress. We’ll cover how to reflect on your progress in the next section 👇🏻 👇🏻
🤔 Reflect
Reflection is crucial for growth. When it comes to goal setting, reflection is the step people most often skip.
I’ve found the best time to reflect on goals is quarterly. More frequently, and you start second guessing yourself.
Me, after three days of hitting my input metrics: “Am I working on the right thing? Why am I not seeing results yet?”
Less frequently, and you risk not making necessary adjustments.
Me, after not reflecting on my input metrics for a year: “I did two pushups, three jumping jacks, and four situps every day for a year. Why don’t I look like Chuck Norris?”
At the end of every quarter, give yourself a couple hours to reflect on your progress from the previous quarter. Go to Starbucks, or the library, or your back porch. Wherever you go, make it somewhere you enjoy and somewhere you can think. This should be a fun activity you look forward to.
Once you find some time and a good place, follow this three part process for reflecting.
Be informed
You must come prepared with the information you want to reflect on. You can’t reflect on information you don’t have.
Come to this session with the following:
Your list of goals from the beginning of the quarter.
The data you collected throughout the quarter from tracking your progress.
Someplace to write. This can be a special notebook, a Google Doc, an Evernote notebook—whatever you want—but writing is a key part of the reflection process, so you need somewhere to do the writing.
Once you have the information you need, you can start step two.
Keep a record
Reflection is most valuable when you return to it. You’re building a process you’ll return to every quarter, and you want to have a special place where you keep all your reflections to be referenced later.
I keep mine in Evernote, but as I mentioned above, you can use whatever you want as long as it’s centrally located and the same every quarter.
Now the reflection begins.
I start by breaking my goals into three buckets:
Complete successes
Partial successes
Failures
You can define these however you want—or even create your own categories—but I define mine generally, as follows.
Goal buckets
Complete successes - These are the goals I nailed. I completed them 100%. If they are a binary, yes or no goal, the answer to, “Did I complete this goal?” is “yes.”
For example, one of my quarterly goals is to complete an investment program analysis. If I did this, then I put it in the complete success bucket. If I didn’t, then it would go in the failure bucket.
Another quarterly goal I have is sending a newsletter every Friday. If there were 13 Fridays in the quarter, and I sent 13 newsletters, that goal goes in the complete success bucket. If I sent 11 newsletters, it would bump down to the partial success bucket.
Partial successes - These are the goals I didn't quite nail but I didn't strike out on either. I didn’t complete them 100%, but I made decent progress. If they are quantifiable, I completed at least 50%.
For example, I recently had a goal to complete 36 ab workouts in the quarter. I completed 27, so I put that goal in the partial success bucket.
I had another goal to publish six essays. I only published three. I made decent progress. I didn’t totally fail on the goal, but I definitely didn’t succeed either, so I put it in the partial success column. If I published one essay, it would bump down to the failure bucket.
Failures - These are the goals I didn't accomplish. They serve as good lessons and points of reflection. Generally, these are the binary goals that I didn’t complete or the quantifiable goals where I completed less than 50%.
For example, I used to have a quarterly goal to spend one afternoon per quarter volunteering. Usually by the end of the quarter I hadn’t done any volunteering, so I always put that goal in the failure bucket.
I recently had a goal to add 200 newsletter subscribers to my email list. At the end of the quarter, I had only added 18—less than 10% of my target, so I put that goal in the failure bucket.
Free form reflection
After I split my goals into the right buckets, then I reflect on each one individually. For goals in the complete success bucket, I usually write a brief description of how I succeeded and how that success is contributing to my higher level output metrics.
For goals in the partial success bucket, I write what I did, explain why I missed my goal, and briefly note how I can improve in future quarters.
For goals in the failure bucket, I evaluate why I failed and how I can improve. I also reflect on whether the goal is something I should be pursuing. Sometimes when I fail to achieve a goal, the reason is that I actually don’t care about that goal, so I don’t devote any time to it. If that’s the case, I’ll scrap it. If not, I’ll figure out how to improve my performance.
Finally, after I finish reflecting on my performance, I list my goals for the next quarter. Often I have a lot of the same goals from quarter to quarter. If my priorities change or I determine a goal isn’t effective, then I’ll remove it or adjust it. But when I find a goal is contributing to progress on my desired output metrics, I keep chipping away at it.
After you finish, you’ll have a valuable record of your goals, your performance, and your thoughts about your performance.
As you can see, some of the record keeping is subjective, but that leads me to step three of the process.
Be consistent
Reflecting on your goals is a subjective exercise. I could define a rigid structure for you, but it likely wouldn’t work, and you’d quit.
Instead, I’m suggesting a flexible three step process which you can adapt to fit your needs. And I suggest you do adapt it.
My only rigid rule is that you be consistent. Whatever system you decide works for you—however you decide to keep a record, quantify success, and reflect on your progress—do it the same every time.
You shouldn’t bucket your goals one quarter and rank them by number the next. Pick your process and stick to it. Then, when you’ve written four quarterly reviews, you can look back and assess your progress with consistent data.
Your reflections are much more valuable when you do them the same every time.
⚙️ Action steps
Alright we’ve covered a lot in section three, so I want to bring it all together with a few quick action steps.
The third part of our goal system is reflecting on goals. Here are the actions you need to take to successfully reflect on your goals:
Schedule a time at the end of every quarter when you will reflect on your goals. This should be several hours on your calendar in a quiet setting you enjoy.
Come prepared with your goals, your tracking data, and something to write in.
Reflect on your progress by grouping your goals into categories and writing about your performance.
Do your reflections the same every time.
Conclusion and next steps
Now you have a simple three part framework for achieving your goals.
This guide covers everything you need to set, track, and reflect on your goals on a quarterly basis. If you’re ready, you can get started today.
If you’d like more guidance, I have two options for you:
My Quarterly Review Toolkit - This is a package that comes with trackers and templates for you to begin your quarterly goal setting journey, as well as video instructions on using them. My Quarterly Review Toolkit includes:
📝 A goal setting template with prompts and questions to help you identify your output metrics and turn those output metrics into actionable input metrics.
📈 A tracker pack with five easy to use trackers for everything from finances to fitness to reading and writing. These are the trackers I use for my quarterly goals, and they’re fully customizable for your needs.
📝 The quarterly review template I use to write my reviews. I’ve used it to write seven consistent reviews resulting in improved fitness, wealth, and happiness. The template includes prompts and questions to help you write reflections that result in progress in all areas of your life.
🎥 Video explanations walking you through every template and tracker.
If you’d like my Quarterly Review Toolkit, you can find it here.
Personalized Coaching - I offer customized coaching for people who are serious about setting goals and achieving success. My personalized coaching includes:
Initial 1-on-1 session to uncover your desired output metrics and identify the right input metrics to craft effective goals.
Weekly 1-on-1 coaching calls to maintain accountability, track progress, and clear impediments to action.
Quarterly reflection meetings to measure progress and set goals for the upcoming quarter.
If you’re interested in working together to achieve personal and professional success, fill out the form below, and I’ll reach out to schedule a consultation call.
