
Ask HN: How do you organize/track your personal goals? - mezod
- Monthly, quarterly, yearly?
- notes, kanban, outlines?
- how do you visualize your progress?
======
bergerjac
On paper. Physically writing stimulates neurology. This then gets embedded
into the subconscious.

\---

And some tidbits on goalsetting which I'd have liked 15 years ago...

Goals are \- SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, Time-
bound) \- written in present tense. \- stated in the positive. \- attached to
an identity, or 'self-image'. \- expansive.

"I will own 30 apartments" (future tense) -> "I own 30 apartments." (present
tense) -> "I am the owner of 30 apartments." (identity) -> "I am the owner of
30 or more apartments." (expansive)

"I will quit smoking by July 31." (future tense) -> "I quit smoking by July
31." ('quit' is negative)-> "I am free from cigarettes by July 31."

More important than the outcome, is how you see yourself. If you couldn't
imagine yourself as a person achieving the goal, then it won't occur.

Who do you have to become, to achieve the goal?

Never leave the scene of plan without taking action. After setting a goal, at
least 1 crumb-sized action must be taken immediately. Who could you message,
call, email...?

~~~
ihodes
Might be of interest to you [https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/when-smart-
goals-are-not...](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/when-smart-goals-are-
not-so-smart/)

~~~
9diov
I think the problem is that the definition of goals is too vague and narrow
causing the problem with using SMART system. I believe you need a hierarchy of
goals, like so:

\- Mission: This could be specific like "bring humans to Mars" or it could be
vague like "accelerate space exploration".

\- Strategy: This should be the principles and methods used to implement the
mission. Example: "Starting up a private company that works on rocket
technology. Sell electric cars on the side to make money."

\- Roadmap: This should be actionable, measurable and time-based such as
"build a reusable rocket by 2016"

------
iamben
Daily stuff, I use breeze.pm, which is a bit like Trello except has swimlanes.
For current stuff I have a board separated into three swimlanes - client work,
my work and personal. These are separated in columns - this week, today,
doing, blocked and done. I'll add to and move between columns as necessary.

I keep pretty high level (like I don't want a million tiny tasks), but
everything that's listed has to be accomplished within a few hours or a
working day at most.

Anything there over a week, or not getting done is moved to a 'longer term'
board, which is more of a brain dump of ideas and things I'd like to get
moving on at some point. Basically I want my to do list to be current and not
a bucket list.

I keep the 'stuff in play' Breeze list pinned next to a Google Calendar
window. GCal has dates of everywhere I need to be and dates of everything I
need done in different colours.

I think I could still be more efficient, but this works pretty well for the
time being.

For 'reach' goals, I've separated the year into 4 quarters of 12 weeks with a
week off between each one. It's easier not to lose motivation over 12 weeks. I
have a BitBar plugin that shows me days gone and days left in the quarter.
Before each quarter I'll write down what I want to achieve and then how I
intend to do it. After 12 weeks I'll review and revise. Most of these can be
tracked with something like HabitBull - "I want to lose 5kg this quarter, I'll
visit the gym 3 times a week". Then just tick as you go. If you don't hit it,
figure out why and what to change next 12 weeks.

~~~
matty22
Intrigued by this breaking the year into quarters idea. What's the name of the
BitBar plugin you use for this?

~~~
iamben
I wrote it myself. You're more than welcome to have the code if you want it
(it's pretty simple!!). The quarters are like new year's resolutions - but
easier to stick to because it's only 12 weeks. The plugin is just a visual
reminder of where we're at.

~~~
matty22
That'd be great! Do you have it online in a repo somewhere you could link me
to?

~~~
iamben
Drop me an email. Domain in my profile :-)

------
enitihas
I use org mode for both regular work as well as one off targets. Org mode
allows me to clearly bucket tasks into what is scheduled and needed by when,
tag related tasks together but define them anywhere, also allows to define
subtasks and track task progress in terms of sub tasks. It allows you to see
your agenda on a configurable time period, and can also equally support GTD.
Personally I find it to be a really nice place to dump all your thoughts and
with trivial effort get them organised in a nice to see and search format.

~~~
noelwelsh
Seconding org mode. It's great. Super configurable but easy to get started
with.

~~~
sunnybythesea
Orgmode has been great. However, after Org Timeline was recently removed, I've
struggled to get the same functionality with custom agenda views.

~~~
aban
I've never used Org Timeline, but these two links may be of interest to you:

\-
[https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/7hps9j/rip_orgtime...](https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/7hps9j/rip_orgtimeline/dqt4pfs)

\- [https://github.com/Fuco1/org-timeline](https://github.com/Fuco1/org-
timeline)

------
bpatel576
I take a video of myself each morning talking about what I want to get done
that day. At night I watch the video, take a mental note of what I need to
work on the next day based on what I did and didn't accomplish that day.
Repeat.

~~~
mcrittenden
That's interesting. How long do the videos tend to be? Any particular reason
why you think this works better than just writing them down?

------
pixelmonkey
Loop Habit Tracker for Android is the only thing that has ever worked for me
for tracking goals -- and sticking to them.

[https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits](https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits)

Simple interface where you set your "habits" and how frequently per week you
expect to do them. (E.g. exercise 4x per week, eat healthy 6x per week). Then
you simply check off each day whether it happened. The analytics makes it
clear if you are doing the right thing. Really good.

~~~
beachsam0rai
is there any ios alternatives? I found an app called Loop - Habbit Tracker (by
Qinzen Xu) on appstore but I think that's not the one that on github.

~~~
pixelmonkey
A friend of mine, upon seeing my setup, said the recently launched product
Habitify was similar (iOS & MacOS), but I haven't tried it:

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/habitify-for-
macos](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/habitify-for-macos)

~~~
beachsam0rai
hey thanks, I will definitely check it out!

------
ljf
For personal projects and goals I keep a couple of index cards aside - one I
used for GTD - 2 columns on one side (Next Action and Inbox/New Items) , 3 on
the other (Waiting For, Projects, Someday). And then another index card or two
for notes and sketches. I find it good to limit them (and keep just three
folded in half in a back pocket) , otherwise I end up dragging around a stack
of cards and not using them. If I limit them but replace as needed, I seem to
use them more and keep them to hand.

I redo my GTD card weekly and drop stuff off every time that I 'thought' I
wanted to do but just the act of writing it down and reviewing shows me it is
not a priority. For a while I kept my old cards, but now I ditch them.

GTD = Getting Things Done - [https://hamberg.no/gtd/](https://hamberg.no/gtd/)

-

I use a combination of a mental/back of index card kanban board for purchasing
goals (a cadence of what I can afford to save/spend, leading me along a list
of prioritised items I want <or don't want by the time I can buy them in cash
usually>) - been thinking about making an app for it for a while, but beyond
my skills.

Right now I have two or three 'main' hobbies - paddle boarding, brewing beer
and cycling. While I have a good salary, we have 2 kids and a single income,
so things I would have just bought without thinking just a few years ago, now
get thought about for a good while before pulling the trigger. If anything I'm
happier this way. I stops me buying 'hobby crap' that I never use, and gives
me time to find the best item I'm looking for (is it worth buying that huge
saucepan cheaply, or waiting to get a better one? Or second hand?)

------
thesimon
Semi-Related: How do you come up with long-term-goals? Owning a car in the Bay
is worthless, real estate is too expensive. Traveling the world is nice, but
it might get boring after some years.

I kinda like my work and my life, but I feel like I should have a big future
goal.

~~~
egypturnash
If you want to take a mystical angle on it, start reading stuff about one's
True Will.

~~~
monch
Sounds interesting, can you point me to a little more?

~~~
egypturnash
I’m too lazy to do more than drop you in at the deep end:
[http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/True_Will](http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/True_Will)

------
jclif
A collection of google drive documents. I went through the process of deciding
on Core Values (viz. the Integrity Report that James Clear does), and life
time goals. Now I set yearly/monthly/weekly/daily goals that wrap up into
larger scale projects. One useful process has been period reviews (daily
reviews at the end of day, etc), where I'll check how well I did with regard
to my goals, and whether I'm living with integrity (according to my explicitly
set Core Values). During these reviews, I'll make note of the next level up,
e.g. during monthly reviews, I'll check my annual reviews and update them as
necessary.

[https://jamesclear.com/integrity](https://jamesclear.com/integrity)
[https://jamesclear.com/goal-setting](https://jamesclear.com/goal-setting)

------
dbla
I use a Trello board for my 10 year goals. Lists are:

1\. Primary Goals

2\. Secondary Goals

3\. Immediate Goals

5\. To-do this week

6\. Daily

I started it at the end of 2015 so there's a card in primary goals list for
each major thing that I would like to have accomplished (or just continued to
do) by the end of 2025. Each primary goal gets its own label and a checklist
of what specifically accomplishing that goal means to me.

Secondary and immediate goals are how I broke down the bigger goals into
smaller, more manageable parts. For example, one of my primary goals is
"Health." So a secondary goal might be "rock climb twice per week" or
"research ways to improve my memory". Every card in every list has a
label/labels that relate them back to a primary goal.

The weekly and daily todos further break everything down into things that I
can focus on in the next day or week.

Here's what I learned:

\- For all of 2016 (the first year) I would update this Trello board
religiously every day with my weekly and daily todos. I found that I actually
didn't enjoy doing this. While things were getting done, they didn't seem to
be things that were that important or impactful. I stopped doing this so I
could completely cut out those last two lists. Now I re-visit the board every
so often when I feel like I need a reminder or what past-me thought was
important. Sometimes I update the primary goals (I've only added to this once
and never removed from it) and more frequently I'll decide that a secondary or
immediate goal didn't make sense so I'll get rid of it or add a new one. The
whole process is much more free form and I think that works better for me.

\- One of my mantras that has come out of this exercise has been "don't do
something for just one reason." The things that I tend to enjoy and accomplish
successfully are ones that have multiple primary goal labels on them.
Sometimes they only have a loose relation or benefit but it's still more
compelling to me because if it turns out one of the benefits doesn't work out
the way I planned then there's still a reason to be doing this thing for
another reason.

Still an ongoing experiment but I'm generally happy that I'm doing it.

~~~
nferracin
I also use a trello board. I have one column for each year, plus a wishlist
column with short/mid/long term goals and a separate column just for travels
that I want to do. Once a task is completed I mark it with the green label. If
I just don't care anymore about something or I "fail" the task, then I mark it
in red.

I find this setup quite helpful for:

\- breaking down huge goals (such as learning a new language)

\- having short/mid/long term goals all available at a glance

\- giving priority to stuff I'd otherwise keep procrastinating (I tend to
procrastinate for weeks or months doing several things until I put everything
in one checklist at the top of the current year column and power through them
all in a short time)

\- giving myself some perspective and appreciate all the things achieved in
the past months/years. Things that were once just dreams or seemed very hard
to achieve are now the normal day-to-day life and it's way too easy to
undervalue them.

I use the board in a positive way, in the sense that I don't see deleting
tasks or failing to achieve something as some kind of failure. I only
celebrate the green "done" labels.

EDIT: formatting

------
bibac
I don't. Live is hard enough without you constantly pushing yourself and
giving yourself a bad conscious for not reaching your goals. Relax, kick back
and just do what you feel is fun.

~~~
swah
Most people already do that.

~~~
icebraining
If they did, mid-life crisis wouldn't be so common. I'd say many people have
lofty yet rather undefined goals in life, which is why they crash hard when
they realize they are far from achieving hem.

------
rrivers
I find that organization helps me accomplish much more; taking the time every
Sunday to plan out my week makes focusing significantly easier and more
productive.

For standard tasks, I use Excel to track my weekly tasks. I prefer Excel
compared to a web application because it's just always open on my laptop:
[https://imgur.com/a/bp2sJYY](https://imgur.com/a/bp2sJYY) \- I break them
down into priorities (Low - Absolute), class (blacked out column, I use the
names of my two orgs), category, and a target date I set at the beginning of
the week. \- Anything not completed transfers over to the next week and is
reassigned an appropriate priority and date. \- Started this level of detail
in Jan. 2018 and have been very happy with it.

For larger, more complicated projects I use a top-down approach I call
strategic planning. I wrote a detailed article on the approach here:
[http://bit.ly/2zWlARj](http://bit.ly/2zWlARj)

------
neilsharma
Google Keep.

I have four types of notes: personal, work, learning, and health. For each
type of note, I have a short term and long term list of tasks.

All tasks in my short term lists should be cleared within 1-2 days. This
includes everything from paying bills, doing a few online course lessons,
committing a PR or two, running 5 miles, purchasing something online, etc. I
also include a few habits in this that I try to build, like "daily
affirmations". The key is to make these as bite-sized as possible.

My long term TODOs are essentially a backlog dump that I pull from when I need
to refresh my short term TODOs. Many of these are fuzzy ideas that I haven't
broken into actionable steps, like "learn docker", "plan europe trip", or
"hack on X". Some of these are small tasks that I just haven't gotten around
to doing, like "add expenses to tax return", but at least its written down
somewhere. I groom this every now and then.

I have a third type of note -- daily accomplishments. I essentially just
bullet everything I accomplished that day outside of routine chores like "cook
dinner" or "call parents". I archive this daily. I get lazy and don't fill
this out 80% of the time.

Not sure if this is the best system, but it sure beats my old system of having
a giant list of TODOs written on a piece of paper

------
roryisok
One of my goals this year is to be better organised at tracking my goals :) so
far I haven't got around to it.

In all my note taking I try and keep things plain text. I have a folder for
the year with a file called goals.txt with a list of everything I plan to
achieve. I then have a done.txt file with everything I did achieve, divided my
month. This is because life invariably throws things at you which were not on
your initial plan, but are worth remembering that you did

------
chillacy
I break a Trello board into four columns:

1\. Habits which have some weekly frequency (meditate 10 mins 3x/w) and are
all aligned to one or more...

2\. Goals which are measurable (complete 3 headspace packs) and all align
to...

3\. Values which are unique to me (mental health) which agree with...

4\. Principles or rules of nature which apply to everyone (better mental
health leads to more happiness, happiness leads to better life quality)

I create a board every quarter to re-adjust my values, goals, and habits.

~~~
nihlaak
I do something similar but not very structured. I've got a few questions:

    
    
      * Do you represent the alignments (e.g. goals aligning to values) in the board somehow, or is that you just in your head?
      * Do you track progress on 2-4, or just on the actual execution of habits? If so, how?
      * Are the values (3) just a subset of (4)?

~~~
chillacy
Nice. I could talk all day about this stuff.

I represent goal/value alignments by assigning each value a label and labeling
each goal. For instance mental health might be blue, professional competency
might be yellow, etc.

Tracking depends on the specific thing. Most habits I track in an iOS app
called Streaks. For skills which require introspection to improve, I keep a
journal right in the trello entry for that specific habit. For instance if you
play a musical instrument and you get feedback from a teacher weekly, you may
want to journal that.

Values & Principles were later additions (I only added principles in the last
year). The distinction is that values are specific to a person while
principles are broad. For instance a lot of people agree in the principle that
giving back to the community leads to deep happiness in the long term. But
some might choose to do it by teaching python to kids, others might make dance
tutorials on youtube.

My thought is: values do change over time as we get older or re-prioritize
things in life, principles should be more steady. And it's useful to ground
our values to reality.

Granted it's probably impossible to write down principles objectively, but I
think it's worth a shot, even if to remind us that our values are only that:
things we value, not necessarily others, who are all on their own journeys.

[https://medium.com/the-mission/the-difference-between-
princi...](https://medium.com/the-mission/the-difference-between-principles-
and-values-789b95452422)

------
ohmatt
Not really a solution, but a problem that I have (which this thread has
actually given me several new ideas to try fixing) isn't so much organizing or
tracking my goals, it's that even when I get them organized, and plan out my
days (not excessively, but a handful of easily achievable things I want to do
in a day or week) I find that I don't have the drive or motivation to
accomplish them half the time.

Getting home from work exhausted, not from stress exactly, but from just being
focused and working for the whole day + commuting + going to the gym, makes it
hard to find the energy to do the things I WANT to do. So I end up going for
the easy thing, which is browsing HN or Reddit, watching TV, playing video
games. I do enjoy those things, but feel like I waste time when I do them.

I have realized in the past several months the very common idea that getting
started is the hardest part. Most of the time when I force myself to just
start on something, I end up investing hours into it.

The other problem is that I want to do too many things, and often don't want
to start on a side project, or practicing an instrument, because I don't want
to do just one thing for the night and neglect other things, which leads to
just doing nothing of value that I wanted to do.

I just try to constantly remind myself that if I spend an entire night
practicing keyboard, it's a thousand times better than thinking about the
things I want to do, and then browsing the internet all night.

To the original topic though: I use a combination of Keep, OneNote, and a
Habit tracker to help. It's just the breaking through and starting on things
that is the main issue for me. Thinking of trying out a kanban board to track
personal goals though.

~~~
slowwwclap
I found these comments on 1) Getting Started 2) Focusing on What You Really
Want to Achieve 3) Avoiding What You Really Want to Achieve by Wasting Time /
Not Getting Started as the most important and most challenging for me on this
message thread.

Regarding the question... As a solopreneur, it is important that I create my
own strong structure and discipline - I use a combination of methods to track
my personal goals/habits.

First, it's the Coach.me App to track my daily habits/ritual - the core of all
progress. I'll execute tasks that are routine for me, and its a reminder to
focus on habits I am struggling with or striving to build. These change
overtime depending on my goals (next piece).

Second, it's a series of planning documents that include a) mission, b) long-
term goals/focus, c) short-term goals/focus and d) maxims/principles to live
and work by. I keep all these in a folder in my desk below my pile of weekly
business bills called: 'Focus / Structure'. I review it periodically on
different levels of focus, and if I notice I am struggling with something,
I'll keep a duplicate copy of the specific item that needs focus on my desk
alongside my day-to-day work.

------
lcall
I have found it more effective personally to focus more on priorities and
habits than SMART goals. To track habits and progress and notes on
_everything_ , I heavily use a tool I've mentioned before, which I wrote
(after trying org-mode, collapsible outlines in other tools, etc). It uses
postgres, and I hope that "sharing" data exchange features are coming (though
it already does export to org-mode-like text, and to html). Best code is that
in github, though a downloadable .jar is available. Currently keyboard and
desktop-only (text-oriented). The most efficient/effective thing I have found
for notes/lists/details of all kinds, and should be easy to learn to use, as
all the essentials are on the screen. There is a tutorial.

By marking things done or "archived", it also provides a journal feature or
personal log, of entries created or archived in any date range (defaulting to
"yesterday and so far, today", to help with daily standup reporting).

[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) (AGPL)

------
xtiansimon
I'm assuming by 'personal goals' you are referring to the category of goals
for life-long-learning, and not "vacation at the cabin this July".

If that's the case, then for me this is the wrong question. To suggest I
should try to organize my goals is similar to asking me to graph the neurons
in my brain, or catalog my dreams. My objective is to "capture/track my ideas"
and aspirations. I work to develop my practical skills for, writing, coding,
drawing, reading, recall/findability.

Many ideas prove low-value, or impossible to realize. I simply work to find a
way to effectively express my personal ideas in the highest fidelity. If I
imposed organization on this mess, I would sub-consciously limit my
expressions.

That said, if an idea proves to have merrit, then I devote my time towards
definable projects. I hope to complete them in a timely fashion.

I'm not part of a leasure class. I have enough pressure at work, so I don't
sweat it. That's my choice.

------
frankdenbow
Large whiteboard with a 100 day mind map of goals. Daily journal structured to
write out what I'm doing towards each goal that day, then daily 1 min video
check in repeating those goals along with a general assessment of how I'm
feeling/things I'm thinking about. Has been transformative to do things this
way.

------
apicardami
Over the past few years I've tried: \- Checklists, OKRs, Kanban

Currently, I use a goal system with 3 components: (1) long-form essay writing
to explore goals, desires, interests. I then capture this into a Google doc
for the year and make it the Backlog. (2) Google spreadsheet for logging,
tracking and measuring progress. (3) Periodic Reviews and retrospectives in
the form of blogposts.

Here's the Goal System Tracker:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U0ufWHqntVcz89nebyRt...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U0ufWHqntVcz89nebyRt7RNvej6J2TpdVOwaGH-
RmcE/edit?usp=sharing)

Here are the Blog Posts (Reviews & Retrospectives)
[https://apicardami.com/category/goals/](https://apicardami.com/category/goals/)

------
ioddly
I use an app that I wrote, meditations, in order to break down goals into
daily habits:
[https://github.com/ioddly/meditations](https://github.com/ioddly/meditations)

e.g. "I want to run a marathon" becomes a daily "Exercise" habit. It's good
for both progress and logging; now if I want to know what program I was
running on June 28, 2015 for example I just filter for Exercise and go back to
June 2015.

It was originally a Trello board so it's got an obviously kanban-ish look to
it, but it's got things built in to collect things like time spent on habits
overall, streaks.

I'm still working on the best flow for longer-term projects and "negative
habits" (i.e. losing weight, not compulsively using the internet).

------
enraged_camel
I built an app for this for myself. Showed it to some friends casually and
they really liked it, so I launched it:

[https://www.aspireapp.io](https://www.aspireapp.io)

It's positioned as a career development app but it can be used for anything,
really.

------
grosjona
I only have a single personal goal in life and it changes slightly over time
as I learn more about life so it wouldn't make sense for me to write it down.
I just think about it and work towards it every minute of every day so I don't
need to track/organise anything. It's more like a principle than a goal.

The idea that someone would have a rigid list of goals and work through it
like some kind of checklist sounds very self-indulgent.

I could make it my personal goal to eat a fruit for breakfast everyday for 1
month; that type of goal would be achievable enough for me to put into a list;
but the idea that I would get any satisfaction out of this is cringeworthy.

~~~
gaurgo
It might be cringeworthy for you, but others may need goals like that which
can become incrementally more challenging for their discipline.

Breaking down a goal into a checklist can be useful, e.g. one of my goals was
to work at a big company. I broke it down into action items, like who can I
talk to? What habits do I need to implement for the medium term to accomplish
this? With this systematic approach I made it happen. Another goal I had was
to learn a third language. I broke it down into different modalities to hack
it over the past year, and now I’m about to spend several months in the
country practicing the language.

A list of goals does not need to be rigid, and they could be secondary goals
for one’s primary goal or mission.

------
Cwizard
I personally use trello for keeping track of the things going on in my life. I
don't necessarily use it to set goals for myself but whenever I want to do or
learn something I make a list for that topic on my board. Then I start adding
content (in the form of cards) to the list, to flesh out what it is exactly I
want to achieve or how I might get there.

I sort lists by priority, so things that are the most important are on the
left of the board. This really helps keep me focused on only a few topics at a
time. Usually 4-5 lists are actively worked on.

I also have one list completely to the left of the board for things that need
sort term attention. For example a paper I need to finish by next week or if I
want to, for example buy a new pair of headphones, I make a card for that on
that first list.

Then finally I have two general lists that are usually somewhere in the middle
of the order about "Blog posts and Articles" I need to read and another one
titled "Books" (list of books I am interested in reading). I keep both of
these lists fairly short so nothing ends up forgotten in a forest of cards.

I found that keeping track of everything really helped me get more stuff done.
But it also helped me to discover new things I want to do.

------
kevan
I used to keep my goals in a journal and review it yearly but it didn't help
me stay on track. After a few months I mostly forgot the goals I set until the
next year. Now, I'm trying to review my big goals quarterly. I have Kanban
boards for each goal (e.g. home improvement, skills development, side
projects) in Trello that track task state really well.

But, Kanban boards by themselves still leave a gap for me. They're great at
tasks but not necessarily how those tasks fit in with my goals. For that, I'm
trying to be more proactive about what I choose to work on each day (staying
in quadrant 2 for those that have read 7 Habits[1]). I'm building Natrium[1]
to help me with that. Every day it reminds you what your long-term goals are
and prompts you to enter what you plan to do for the day.

On the backside, every week it prompts you to review your progress, a bit like
an iteration retrospective in scrum. This helps me stay mindful about what I
achieved the past week and where I need to change focus. Because it organizes
the retro per-goal, it's easy to see when I'm avoiding working on a goal or
putting too much focus on one at the expense of others. For example, this
summer I've spent way too much time on lawn care instead of my other goals.

It's very new and doesn't have all the features yet, but if you have any
feedback I'd love to hear it!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effecti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People)
[1] [https://natriumapp.com](https://natriumapp.com)

~~~
dreeves
_disapprobatory throat-clearing noises_
[http://forum.beeminder.com/t/natrium/4122](http://forum.beeminder.com/t/natrium/4122)

------
copperx
With Beeminder. This is the best application that I've ever use to track and
nudge me into incrementally working towards my goals.

------
m4n
As a high school teacher, I like to use diaries and sticky notes to track
them. Once in a while, I go through them and update them.

------
amelius
I want to be able to leave notes on my phone by using short voice commands,
then later export everything to ascii, and analyze it on a computer. I'm not
aware of a solution for this, but in combination with some data-mining, it
would be a great tool for analyzing habits (and keeping track of diet as
well).

~~~
mstank
You should try Rec. It’s a voice recording app that has a built in human
transcription feature.

------
house9-2
I don't have personal goals.

I do have TODO lists I track on paper, usually things that need to get done
within a month.

~~~
kd5bjo
Without goals, how do you decide what you do and don’t need to get done?

~~~
grosjona
I think that it's better to be guided by passion and personal principles than
some cheesy list of goals that you tick off one at a time.

Maybe they just have a single unachievable goal that they work towards
endlessly; I think that's a worthy goal and it definitely wouldn't fit into a
list format.

~~~
xtiansimon
Exaclty! Except I use many unachievable goals that I work towards
endlessly...to develop my touch-typing skills.

------
cattlefarmer
I use a Trello board that I update weekly. There's a list of tasks, and then 7
lists for each day of the week. I assign the tasks to each day and archive
them when I've completed them. If they're only half done, I just shift them to
the next day and so on. For things that _need_ to be done by a particular
date, I assign them dates and link it to iCal.

Having been doing this for the past 3 months and it has helped put some
structure into my life though sometimes I find it a bit too micro-managing. It
also gives me tunnel vision since I can only do short term plans.

I've tried various other GTD and OKR methods without success. I've noticed
that if I don't look at them at least once a week, I'll quickly forget about
it and return to my old habits.

------
Seanny123
complice.co which I've written a love-letter to here:
[https://medium.com/@seanaubin/an-open-love-letter-to-
complic...](https://medium.com/@seanaubin/an-open-love-letter-to-complice-
fd89ac5fe837)

------
dewey
I started just writing it down in the Notes app included with macOS as a list
and mostly keep it in my head. I guess I try to look at it at the beginning of
the year and see what I achieved but it's mostly bigger generic points ("get
raise to be over $amount", "sign up for $class").

I don't think there's much value in micro-managing your life, especially if a
lot of things are out of your hand and there's not really a good way to
measure progress. Writing down some top-level goals and keeping them in mind
feels helpful to me and I don't think a specific tool or task managing
methodology is needed there.

~~~
nchelluri

      print $amount;

------
grzkv
I use OKRs for personal goal setting and tracking. All best practices that
apply to OKRs apply here. See
[https://amzn.to/2LP9myF](https://amzn.to/2LP9myF) and
[https://amzn.to/2OxEBN1](https://amzn.to/2OxEBN1) Keep goals SMART
[http://bit.ly/2LIQX7z](http://bit.ly/2LIQX7z)

I use vimwiki
[https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki) to
organize everything.

------
PeOe
I use Getting Things Done with our own Tool Zenkit. The most time I work with
Kanban Boards and organize everything in several columns (e.g. Inbox, To do
today, next actions, calendar). I work with it every day and are happy when I
can tick off the tasks I already did. For appointments and due dates, I switch
to the calendar view to have a good overview. In Kanban, you can see your
progress by having a look at the "Done" column.

At first, I organized everything with pen & paper but I always forgot to take
my planner with me, so I switched to our online tool.

------
mattchamb
I record my quarterly goal as my work computer login. This forces me to review
it every 90 days and makes me keep it short. The main benefit is that I have
to repeat it to myself several times a day.

------
your-nanny
I have a paper notebook with a daily to do list. sone todo items are necessary
some aspirational. you can classify as urgent/not-urgent important/not-
important. but each day I rewrite it out. if things I didn't finish yesterday
aren't compelling enough I won't expend the effort to write it back down. I
can always go back if I want.

the main thing I think is just taking the time at the start of each day to
think about what you are doing, what's important and why, to have some
semblance of a plan.

------
ryanstorm
Another +1 for journal here. Specifically, the bullet journal:
[http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/](http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/)

It's very modular, so you can do whatever you want with it. But I write a
daily to-do list and also use it to keep track of longer term tasks and goals.

I have used it for 3 years now, have filled up two moleskin-type journals, and
my SO and I are convinced that this is the single best thing we've done to
improve ourselves.

------
Gauc2
I use a journal.

I strive to layout daily goals in the morning and then reflect on the day in
the evening. Lately it has been difficult to consistently layout goals in the
morning, so the evening portion has morphed into reflection on the day and
planning what to do the next day. I will also occasionally update monthly and
yearly goals if necessary. It has been a great benefit for me to be able to go
back and see what I was occupied with at a given time and be able to put my
current situation into perspective.

------
Aeolun
I have a bunch of goals every year. They're written down on a small whiteboard
that I've got hanging right next to my desk. Whenever I wonder what to do,
I'll look at that whiteboard to tell me what currently has my highest
priority.

At least, that's the theory. It doesn't always work out that way, but I can
just write new goals down next year (or leave/rearrange the ones I didn't
reach).

------
therealdrag0
Plug: I wrote an app to do this in a minimalist way. It's called Casual
Planner
([https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1320558091?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1320558091?mt=8))
It has repeating events, and goals for "soon" and "sometime".

------
sbjs
I personally choose to have so few goals that I can count them on one hand,
and remember them at all times. This means I have to say "no" to a lot of
interesting ideas that come to mind, so it's a compromise for sure. But it
means I'm always on top of my goals and always making progress towards them.

------
CaptAw
I used todolist for everything on organizing tracking. I start a completely
new one each once and a while so I'm forced to purge or reconsider old and
forgotten tasks. Saves as an simple .txt file.

[https://abstractspoon.weebly.com/](https://abstractspoon.weebly.com/)

------
hardix
I am using [https://www.trask.life](https://www.trask.life)

------
vshan
I recently read 'Measure What Matters' and find OKRs to be a great way to
track personal goals.

------
yogesh_sp
I don't use any app for tracking goals. Rather I use a marker and board for
that. I tried trello but its not good with respect to personal context. I
suggest people to use diary and pen. Writing down things you want to do and
cut it down once you had done.

------
nagarjun
I use this really simple app on Android -
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uha...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uhabits)

------
vinchuco
Using TeX syntax (or any language with collapsing blocks of text), a text file
with branches.

[https://hastebin.com/gocibazeji.rb](https://hastebin.com/gocibazeji.rb)

------
maksa
If I didn't use Evernote for storing and carrying my life around I'd use
[http://notion.so](http://notion.so)

------
zmix
I got a simple XML document, that contains tasks and todos. I query it from
either command line or via a web interface, using mainly XQuery and a little
XSLT.

------
metalrain
I like to keep it simple, I have 5-10 goals in google docs. I revisit my goals
and progress about monthly and log where I am and how I see my future
progress.

------
m0llusk
Peter Drucker style Life List, which oddly enough I fell into doing well
before I read any related Drucker material.

------
ojuara
I’m testing Things 3 right now. It’s based on GTD philosophy.

I’m looking for a way to visualize my progress yet.

------
stedesign
OT: achieving the goal is just a temporary pleasure.. remember to enjoy the
journey!

------
vinceguidry
I've tried and failed to use and stick to many productivity systems over the
years. It almost seems like an obsession at this point to find technological
means for improving throughput.

I was able to take certain ideas from GTD but I've never found myself able to
stick to a particular system. They all introduce too much friction and I end
up discarding them in favor of just using mind, memory, and physical
reminders.

What starts to go missing when I ramp up productivity is the meaning behind
what I'm doing. It's too easy for me to announce, 'doing things this way is
stupid', putting the whole thing down, and then go back to relaxing.

The big problems in life don't really respond to any amount of productivity
improvements. You can't GTD your way to having more meaningful personal
relationships. And you can't GTD your way to more deliberate practice, you
just do it, day after day.

I'm not _quite_ at the point where I'm willing to write off productivity
hacking as profoundly missing the point of life. But tracking and organization
is what you do to things that need to be done that you can't bother to make
enough of a priority to where they can be focused on with 100% of your
attention and creative energy. And if you are focusing on things with 100% of
your attention and creative energy, then tracking just gets in the way.

That all said, I am actually actively working on a productivity system. It's a
console and text-based system where I add things just by typing `add
<COLLECTION> <ITEM>` into a terminal. Triage is accomplished by using `sort
<COLLECTION>` and going through item after item with one strike of a key.
Using Ruby metaprogramming superpowers, I'm slowly hacking away at the
friction behind creating little software tools that all interoperate with each
other.

What triggered this was when I got the idea to move all my personal scripts
off of Github and onto Dropbox. I don't need version tracking, I need syncing
and durability. This seemingly little change made all the difference in my
interest in recreational coding. Being able to just pop open a console in any
machine that I've set up and start running commands without having to pull git
repos feels amazing. I can literally stop typing, letting the text editor
autosave, then get up, go home, and get on one of my personal machines and
pick right back up where I left off.

The grand idea is to profoundly reduce the amount of friction involved in
integrating software into my life. I'll be able to `add idea vacation` then
`sort` it into a category, then `plan` it, the end result being a flat list of
action items that I can accomplish X number of every day.

Is it overkill? Absolutely. But the dream of absolute perfection is the only
vision compelling enough to get me to even think about productivity
improvements anymore. There's no lower fruit left for me to pick that actually
moves the needle on anything.

~~~
Timothee
You might be interested in TaskWarrior
[https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/)

Or maybe not :) I originally found the terminal-based aspect appealing but in
the end found the tool didn’t work for me. And maybe you just want to work on
your own tool, which would be a fair reason not to stop.

------
hopesthoughts
I used 43things.com for years. Now I mostly make lists in text files.

------
mehh
if you need to write it down is it really a personal goal that is core to you
or your likely to actually do?

------
rman666
I just ask my spouse what I’m supposed to be doing on any particular day, and
she tells me!

Relax! Just kidding :-)

------
megamindbrian2
Google calendar

------
Numberwang
I spend hours making notes and then I do not read them or action them.

Instead I do the bare minimum to get through the day.

~~~
tobbe2064
Same here, I even sync my notes across devices and put them under version
control

