Goals & Progress
A life goal is something you want to be true about your life, far enough out that reaching it changes the shape of your years rather than your week. Below are 60 examples across ten areas of life. Most lists stop there. This one also tells you, for each goal, the signal that it belongs to you and what finished looks like, because a list you cannot choose from is just a longer way of feeling behind.
How to pick from this list
Read the areas first, not the goals. You are looking for the area where the distance between how much it matters to you and how it is actually going is widest. That is where a goal changes something.
Two numbers per area, both out of ten, both yours to judge:
- Satisfaction. How is this area actually going right now?
- Importance. How much does this area matter to you? Not to your family, your manager or anyone else.
Importance is where your values enter. That is the whole connection between the two, and it is worth being clear about because it is the step people skip. You are not rating how important an area is in general; you are rating how much it matters given what you actually value. Someone who holds security near the top will rate Financial high and mean it. Someone who holds craft near the top will not, and that is not a wrong answer. If you have never written your values down, the core values finder uses the same 28 values the app does, so a value you pick there carries into every score you give here.
Then: gap = 10 minus satisfaction, and priority = gap times importance. The highest number is where to start. An area you are unhappy with but do not care about scores low, which is correct: it is not the one to spend a year on. Working through the ten areas takes about ten minutes with the life areas assessment, and the Life Areas Map does the arithmetic and keeps the result.
A goal is worth a year when the gap is real and the area matters. Either one alone is not enough.
Pick one area. Two at most. The reason is not motivational: the goal-setting research that actually replicates is about specific, sufficiently difficult goals with feedback, and neither specificity nor feedback survives being spread across ten fronts (Locke and Latham, 2002) [1].
The ten life areas
These are the same ten areas the Life Areas Map and the app use, so a score you produce in one place carries into the others.
- Physical Health
- Emotional Wellbeing
- Relationships
- Career
- Financial
- Growth and Learning
- Fun and Recreation
- Purpose and Meaning
- Environment
- Contribution
Physical Health goals
The body that carries you through every other area. Sleep, movement, eating and energy here ripple into your mood, your focus and how you show up for the people you love.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Run a 10K without walking | you already walk regularly and want a finish line, not a vague fitness plan | you cross the line, whatever the time says |
| Sleep seven hours on at least five nights a week | you function fine and are tired all the time | four weeks in a row where you hit five nights |
| Cook dinner at home five nights a week | ordering in is a default rather than a decision | an ordinary week where you did not order once |
| Lower your resting heart rate | you want a health marker that is not your weight | a lower monthly average than the month you started |
| Get through a winter with no back flare-up | sitting all day already hurts | the season passes without days lost to it |
| Still carry your own luggage upstairs at 70 | your horizon is decades, not months | you can do it now, and each year you test it you still can |
Emotional Wellbeing goals
Your inner climate: how you handle stress, hold steady under pressure and recover from setbacks. It quietly shapes every relationship and decision you make.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Finish an eight-week mindfulness course | you have tried apps and none of it stuck | you attend the last session |
| Write an evening reflection five nights a week for a year | you cannot say what actually drains you | twelve months of entries, gaps included |
| Have one honest conversation a month about how you really are | you answer “fine” by reflex | twelve conversations you can name |
| Go a full quarter without work email after 8pm | work follows you home and you let it | ninety days, and your phone can prove it |
| Name what you feel before you react to it | arguments escalate faster than you intend them to | you can point at three times you paused |
| Stop apologising for things that are not your fault | you notice yourself doing it and dislike it | a week where you catch it and say nothing |
Relationships goals
The people you live with, love, work with and lean on. This is the area that quietly absorbs the cost when another area gets a big year, and the one that takes longest to rebuild afterwards.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| One screen-free evening with your partner every week | you are in the same room most nights and not together | forty-eight weeks out of fifty-two |
| Rebuild five friendships you let drift | you can already name the five people | five people you are actually in contact with again |
| Host something at home once a month | you keep meaning to see people and never fix a date | twelve gatherings, however small |
| Call a parent or grandparent every Sunday | you know the time left is finite | a year of Sundays |
| Learn the names of your children’s friends’ parents | you feel outside a world your child lives in | you know who they are without asking |
| Say the hard thing to the one person you have avoided | it has been sitting with you for months | the conversation happened |
Career goals
Where you spend most of your waking hours. This is about the work itself: its meaning, growth, autonomy and fit, not only the pay.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Move into work you would choose again | Sunday evening has a weight to it | you accepted something different, or reshaped what you have |
| Learn one skill and use it on real work | you collect courses and apply none of them | one finished piece of work that needed the skill |
| Ask for the raise you keep putting off | you know roughly what you are worth and are not paid it | you asked, whatever the answer was |
| Get your commute under thirty minutes | travel is the worst hour of your day, twice | you moved, or your working days changed |
| Take four full weeks off in a year | you leave holiday unused every year | the days are gone from your balance |
| Write down what you delivered each quarter | promotion cases are built from memory and yours is poor | four written records by December |
Financial goals
Money as a tool, not a score. Income, savings, debt, and the freedom your finances give you to make choices that match your values.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Build six months of expenses in cash | one bad month would break something | the balance covers six months of what you really spend |
| Clear the debt with the highest interest rate | you pay interest and you know the number | that balance reads zero |
| Find out what you actually spend each month | you are guessing, and you know you are guessing | three months of real figures in front of you |
| Automate saving so it happens before you see the money | you save what is left and nothing is left | the transfer runs on payday without you |
| Have one honest money conversation a quarter with your partner | you both avoid it | four conversations, not four arguments |
| Buy nothing new in one category for a year | you own more of something than you use | twelve months, one category, no exceptions |
Growth and Learning goals
The slow, deliberate expansion of who you are, through reading, courses, conversations and reflection. Without it the other areas tend to plateau.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Read twelve books you would not normally pick | you read the same kind of thing on repeat | twelve finished, not twelve started |
| Learn a language far enough for one real conversation | you have started three times | one conversation with a stranger, badly |
| Take one course and finish it | you start things and drift away around week three | the last lesson, or the certificate |
| Teach something you know to one person | you understand things better when you explain them | one person who can now do it without you |
| Learn an instrument to five songs played through | you have always meant to | five songs, beginning to end |
| Change your mind about something in public | you notice yourself defending positions past their evidence | you said so out loud, to someone who heard the old view |
Fun and Recreation goals
Real play, rest and joy. The area that reminds you why the effort is worth it, and the first one most ambitious people quietly cut.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Take a holiday with nothing planned | you optimise even your time off | you went, and nothing was booked in advance |
| Do one thing a month purely because you enjoy it | you cannot remember the last time you did | twelve entries you would defend to nobody |
| Go back to the hobby you dropped | you know exactly which one it is | you did it four times, not once |
| See live music six times | screens have replaced rooms with people in them | six tickets |
| Learn something with no use whatsoever | everything you do has a purpose and it has become tiring | you are bad at it and still doing it |
| Keep one weekend a month completely unscheduled | your calendar fills itself if you look away | twelve empty weekends held |
Purpose and Meaning goals
The reason behind your day. Without it, success in the other areas can feel hollow; with it, even hard seasons feel survivable.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Write down what you want to be true when you are 80 | you plan quarters and have never planned decades | one page exists, in your handwriting |
| Name your five values and test one real decision against them | you have never actually written them down | one decision you made this way and can explain |
| Find work that would still matter to you if nobody saw it | recognition drives more of you than you are comfortable with | you did it and told no one |
| Spend a year on something that takes a year | you only start things that finish quickly | it is finished, or visibly underway and still moving |
| Decide what you will not do | your yes list is full and your no list is empty | three noes, written down |
| Sit with the question of what you are for | you change the subject when it comes up, including with yourself | you can answer in one sentence you actually believe |
Environment goals
The spaces you can shape: your home, your workspace, and the places you choose to spend your time in.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Make one room you actually want to be in | you avoid parts of your own home | you spend time there by choice |
| Set up a workspace that does not hurt | your back reports on it daily | a full week without pain |
| Remove everything you have not used in a year | the rooms feel heavy and you cannot say why | the boxes have left the house |
| Live somewhere you chose rather than ended up | you stayed by inertia and know it | you moved, or you decided to stay on purpose |
| Get outside every day, whatever the weather | you can go two days without leaving the building | thirty days in a row |
| Fix the three things that annoy you every single day | you have stepped over them for months | all three, fixed |
Contribution goals
How you give back beyond your immediate circle. Mentoring, volunteering, giving. It is the easiest area to postpone forever, because nothing outside you ever asks for it.
| Example goal | Choose this if | What done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Mentor one person for a year | someone asked once and you deferred | twelve months of sessions that actually happened |
| Give a fixed share of your income, automatically | you mean to give and then forget | the transfers ran all year without a decision each time |
| Volunteer where your actual skill is needed | you want to be useful, not merely present | they would notice if you stopped |
| Leave one thing better than you found it | you walk past problems you could fix | the thing is better and you can point at it |
| Teach a skill for free to someone who could not pay | your knowledge cost you and could cost them nothing | one person who can now do it |
| Thank three people who shaped you, properly | they do not know, and one day it will be too late | three letters sent |
When two areas pull against each other
A ten-area list creates this problem the moment you use it. The promotion and the screen-free evenings are not both available this year. Almost no goal list admits that, which is why so many of them collapse in March.
The resolution is not balance, it is sequence. Rank by priority, take the top area, and write down what the second area gets instead. Not nothing: a floor. Career is the focus this year, and relationships hold at one protected evening a week. A floor is a decision. Hoping is not. The goal cascade is where that sequencing gets written against real quarters.
When two life areas compete, the answer is not balance. It is sequence, plus a floor under the area that waits.
What if you do not know what you want
This is the most common honest reaction to a page like this, and reading more examples will not fix it. Examples work when you already know roughly what you value and need the concrete form. If you do not, you are one step upstream.
- Start with values: the core values finder gets you to five you can test a real decision against.
- Or start with futures: the three futures exercise writes three versions of your next decade and asks which one you would regret not trying.
- Then come back here. The examples read differently afterwards.
Why most of these will not survive the year
Picking the goal is the easy half. Four findings predict what happens next, and each one has something you can do about it today.
| What the research says | What to do about it |
|---|---|
| Intending to do something and actually doing it are only loosely connected, which is the whole reason goal lists disappoint (Sheeran and Webb, 2016) [3]. | Treat choosing the goal as the start of the work, not the work. |
| An if-then plan naming when, where and how you will act raised goal attainment by d = 0.65 across 94 tests (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006) [2]. | Write one sentence per goal: if this situation happens, then I will do that. |
| Imagining the outcome on its own produces commitment that ignores whether the thing is achievable. Contrasting it against the present obstacle is what makes commitment track reality (Oettingen, Pak and Schnetter, 2001) [4]. | Name the obstacle in the same sitting as the goal. The WOOP method is that step in four minutes. Pooled across 21 studies it is a small-to-medium effect, g = 0.336, and the authors flag publication bias, so treat it as worth four minutes rather than as a guarantee (Wang, Wang and Gai, 2021) [6]. |
| Goals centred on money, image and recognition track lower wellbeing than goals centred on growth, relationships and contribution (Kasser and Ryan, 1996) [5], though that evidence is correlational. | Check who a goal is for before you spend a year on it. |
This page is about personal life goals
One disambiguation, because the phrase is shared. If you are looking for goals of care in an end-of-life or palliative context, that is a conversation with a medical team and this page is not it. Everything here is personal goal setting for the years ahead.
Common questions
What makes a good life goal?
Three things: it is specific enough that you would know if you had reached it, it is hard enough to require a change in how you spend your weeks, and it sits in an area that actually matters to you. The first two come from the goal setting research [1]. The third is what the priority formula on this page is for. A goal that fails the third test gets abandoned in March no matter how well it is written.
How many life goals should I have at once?
One, or two if the second one is genuinely low effort. The constraint is not willpower, it is that specificity and feedback are what make goals work, and neither one survives being divided across five fronts. Ten goals is a list of intentions. One goal with a named obstacle and a first action is a plan.
What is the difference between a life goal and a yearly goal?
Scope and reversibility. A yearly goal changes what your months look like and you can drop it in June without much cost. A life goal changes what your years look like, and dropping it usually means the area it belonged to goes back to where it was. In practice a life goal is the thing a run of yearly goals adds up to, which is why it needs breaking down rather than restating.
How long should a life goal take?
Long enough that you cannot finish it this quarter, short enough that you can picture the finish. Three to five years suits most of the examples above. Under a year and it is really an annual goal. Over ten and it stops informing what you do this month, which is the only thing a goal can actually change.
What if I reach one and feel nothing?
That usually means the goal belonged to someone else, or it was a proxy for something you never named. Goals centred on money, image and recognition track lower wellbeing than goals centred on growth, relationships and contribution [5], and the flat feeling after finishing one is the most common way people find that out. The check is the one in the table above: work out who the goal was for, before the year rather than after it.
Key takeaways
- A life goal is a statement about your life, not your week. Sixty examples across ten areas are above.
- Choose by priority = gap times importance, where gap = 10 minus satisfaction, not by which example sounds best.
- One area. Two at most. Specificity and feedback do not survive ten fronts.
- Write what done looks like before you start, or the goal cannot end.
- When two areas conflict, sequence them and give the second one a floor.
- If none of the examples land, you are upstream of examples. Start with values.
If you only do one thing
Score your ten areas. It takes about ten minutes and it is the step that turns this page from reading into deciding, because the list stops being sixty options and becomes six that belong to the area you scored highest. Then write what done looks like for the one you pick, in the words you would use to tell a friend it was finished. Everything else on this page is downstream of those two sentences.
Where to go next
- Life goals: the full guide for the method behind this list.
- How to set effective life goals for the step-by-step version.
- The life goals worksheet to work through it on paper.
- The life goals template for the structure to fill in.
- The Life Areas Map to score your ten areas and keep the result. No signup, and your data stays on your machine.
References
- Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
- Gollwitzer, P. M., and Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
- Sheeran, P., and Webb, T. L. (2016). The intention-behavior gap. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(9), 503-518. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12265
- Oettingen, G., Pak, H., and Schnetter, K. (2001). Self-regulation of goal-setting: Turning free fantasies about the future into binding goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(5), 736-753. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.5.736
- Kasser, T., and Ryan, R. M. (1996). Further examining the American dream: Differential correlates of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(3), 280-287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167296223006
- Wang, G., Wang, Y., and Gai, X. (2021). A meta-analysis of the effects of mental contrasting with implementation intentions on goal attainment. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 565202. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565202