Goals & Progress
Play 28 cards down to the five you would defend
Your five values are the test every goal in your plan has to pass. The Goals & Progress Life Goals App turns that choice into a card game of about five minutes. Read this guide with the app open, on a phone or on a computer.
Where you are in the journey
You have the app open and your name in it. That was the guide before this one, Start with the app in ten minutes. Next you turn these five into one sentence, in Write your purpose sentence.
What you will learn
- What the 28 cards cover.
- How to build a hand of five, on the phone and on the computer.
- How to rank the five, and why position 1 becomes your North Star.
- Where your five turn up later in your plan.
What are the 28 cards?
The deck has 28 cards. Most cards show a line of near words under the description, headed Also covers. Use it to find the card that holds the word you had in mind.
Achievement covers Excellence, Mastery and Competence, which makes the deck 28 different lives instead of 28 words for one. The 28 come from six groups: inner life, craft and mastery, people and belonging, vitality and joy, freedom and agency, contribution and fairness. You never see the group names on screen. The values list has all 28 with their groups and a print version.
How do you build a hand of five on the phone?
Open the Values step first. On the phone it is the first row in the step list on Home, marked Values. The first tab, Play your hand, is where the game runs.
- Open Values, then the Play your hand tab.
- Read the card on the table and press Keep or Pass.
- Swipe right to keep and left to pass, if that is quicker.
- Keep going until you have five cards.
- Press Rank my Top 5 when the five feel right.
Step 2 is the whole game. You read one card, then press one of the two buttons under your hand.
Each card you keep fills one of the five Empty slots.
Once your hand holds five, the Keep button becomes Swap in. Keeping a sixth card opens a short sheet, Which card goes back?. Tap the one you give up, then press the button under the list to make the trade.
How do you build a hand of five on the computer?
On the computer, Values is the first step in the strip at the top. The app deals your first five cards into Your hand for you.
- Open Values, then the Play your hand tab.
- Compare the five in Dealer’s offer with the five in Your hand.
- Click a dealer card, then the hand card it replaces.
- Press Swap to make the trade.
- Press Deal me 5 more cards when nothing in the offer beats your hand.
- Press Rank my Top 5, which turns up after two rounds.
Both rows are on one screen, so step 2 is a straight comparison.
Two counters show you where you are. The phone counts the deck and your hand, as in Card 7 of 28. The computer shows Round 1 of about 5.
Click one card in each row to set up a trade.
Nothing changes until you press Swap, so a wrong click costs you nothing.
A card you pass can come back. On the computer it waits in the Maybe pile under the table, and a click puts it back in the next offer. On the phone the passed cards return after the last card, through Look again. Press Look again as well if you reach card 28 holding fewer than five.
The app saves your hand as you play, so you can leave the step and come back to it. Press Restart this step for a fresh hand and a freshly shuffled deck. You confirm first. The confirm box spells out that your ranked five and your purpose sentence go too.
How do you put the five in order?
The second tab is Rank your five. Rank them, because two of your five can ask for the same free hours. Autonomy and Security often share a shortlist, and position 1 is what settles them.
- On the computer, drag a card sideways into place.
- On the computer, press Tab to a card, then the arrow keys to move it.
- On the phone, tap the five in the order you want, starting with position 1.
- Look at position 1, marked North Star.
- Press Where your values show up to finish the ranking.
On the phone the list fills from the top as you tap.
To fix a wrong order, press Undo last move on the computer, or Start again on the phone. Both leave your five cards where they are.
On the computer the five stay in one row, numbered 1 to 5.
Your North Star is the value you follow when two of your five want opposite things. The weighted decision matrix scores one hard choice against what you care about. The Core Values Finder sorts these same 28 cards on the website, and it names the pairs that will not always agree.
Where do your five turn up later?
Once your five are locked, a third tab appears: Where it shows up. It lists what the rest of your plan does with them.
Each row also has a button into that step. These are the five rows:
- The Purpose step takes your top two as the raw material for your sentence.
- The Vision step shows which interview question your North Star speaks to.
- The Summit Goals step keeps your top values in view while you compose each goal.
- Your day plan puts one of the five in front of you as Today’s value.
- The Strengths Profile step pairs what you value with how you work.
Press Continue to Purpose at the foot of that tab when you have read it.
The day plan rotates Today’s value through all five, so it is not always your North Star. To switch it off, open Settings from the More sheet or menu, then Appearance, then Daily value line.
What Maya picked, and what the app wrote for her
The app’s example plan belongs to Maya Chen, a bank branch manager. Her five are Connection, Discipline, Security, Growth and Fun, with Connection at position 1. From her top two the app drafts a purpose sentence for her. It reads: “I exist to stay close to the people who matter most, guided every day by connection and discipline.”
Her North Star then shapes the third tab. Under Today view she finds one question: did today bring her nearer to someone who matters?
Use these tips while you play
- Ask which of your five you broke this week. If nothing comes up, you picked a wish list.
- A hand you lock and never drag keeps the order it was dealt in. Drag it anyway, because position 1 does real work.
- Re-rank your five months later without losing your record. The new order reaches tomorrow’s value, and your purpose sentence stays as you wrote it.
Key takeaways
- The deck has 28 cards, and most of them list the near words they cover.
- You hold five cards, and you trade one for one until the five feel right.
- Position 1 is your North Star, the value you follow when two of your five collide.
- Pressing Restart this step clears your ranked five and your purpose sentence too.
Open Values now and press Play your hand. Take the first five cards and stop there. You can trade any of them later, so the first hand costs you nothing. The app’s own recipe, pick your top five values, has the same steps.
