I’ve been reading about setting goals recently and there’s a lot of good literature out there. This year I am using a framework by Sahil Bloom.
The link is above and worth a read. I like the simplicity of the framework. At the start, you pick the areas that you want improvement in. Once you have your areas, you come up with your BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal. These are north stars that act as a guide. It’s what you’re working toward over the year, not what you’re working on every day. These BHAGs are broken up into strategic mid term goals. You can only have one short term goal per BHAG. The purpose is focus and quality of work, otherwise you get into decision paralysis. Finally, your mid term goals are split into daily process goals. These are simply inputs that help you compound your progress.
Personally, I have committed to three areas to work on; personal, health and professional. My BHAGs are Learn German C1, lose 13 kgs, and get 100,000 customers. My mid term goals differ in terms of their length. For personal and health I operate on a quarterly goal. But for professional I operate on a weekly sprint. That allows me to condense the work and iterate faster, which is important for the stage of company I have. Finally, the process points are all micro processes that I can complete each day. For the professional process goals I simply have “read and write for 1 hour,” “code for an hour” or some sales metric. I haven’t broken the sprints into daily goals because I think having the process as goals is actually more helpful. I get more done, and procrastinate less if it’s a process rather than a daily goal.