Full Disclaimer: The Goals planner is not a weekly or monthly planner that you can use for everyday tasks. It doesn’t have traditional weekly or monthly calendars or even a yearly overview.
IT’S ONLY FOR YOUR GOALS. It is 100 percent goal-oriented, so customers typically use it as an add-on to our Flex, Classic, or Monthly planning inserts.
The Goals planner is a guided journal that takes you through every phase of the goal-setting process: before, during, and after. It's full of prompts that require you to dig deep and answer difficult questions about your life.
Is the Goals Planner for Me?
While the Goals planner is suitable for all ages and experience levels, the Goals planner is ideal for two kinds of people:
- Someone with up to 12 big goals that can be broken down into smaller goals over several months
- Someone that is completely lost. They’re not sure what goals to set or where to start.
For those who fall into the latter group, the Goals planner asks the hard questions! It will help you look at your life from different angles and choose where you want to focus. The questions on the first page demand more reflection and soul-searching than you may be comfortable with, but as you answer them, goals and areas for improvement will come into view.
In the bluntest of terms, the Reflection section can feel punishing. It forces you to look back and not just think about potentially painful times but write them down and then analyze the heck out of them.
That said, this sometimes-excruciating self-guided journal WORKS, if you do the work.
If you give yourself an honest assessment, set meaningful goals, AND do the daily actions you assign to yourself, you will get what you desire.
The Goals Planner is not for everyone
If your goal is to simply eat more healthy foods and drink more water, you may not need the Goals planner.
You can use ANY inkWELL Press planner to crush those goals! All inkWELL Press planners have Goals and Quarterly goals worksheets with only two pages to fill out. You can track your progress each month on a monthly mission board and use habit trackers to keep a visual account of your water intake, sleep, or exercise goals. You can set goals and hold yourself accountable quite thoroughly with ANY inkWELL planner.
But if you want to go deep (really deep!) and keep your goals as a separate planning function…then the Goals planner is for you.
Still on board? Great! Here’s a breakdown of the six main sections:
- Reflection – Look back on the past year. This is where you document the good, the bad, and the ugly. You’ll also create the first of five Life Wheels, which helps you visually grade eight personal categories: Finances, Workspace, Health/Fitness, Friends/Family, Spirituality/Purpose, Fun/Recreation, Personal Growth, and your relationship with your Significant Other.
- Projection – Use what you learned last year to decide how you want the future to look. Define your future self, do a Goal Brainstorm, design a Goal Vision Board, and set quarterly goals to prevent your goals from clumping into one season.
- Action – You know where you want to go, but how will you get there? Assign daily actions with 12 Action Road Maps and Tanya’s IMPACT method to evaluate your goals.
- Monthly Checkpoints – If you’re an inkWELL Press planner user, these will look familiar. Monthly mission boards, plus monthly focus, habit trackers, and a download or recap of the month let you assess your progress at the end or beginning of each month.
- Quarterly Checkpoints – Reflect on the quarter and assess your progress, revise plans through Goal Alteration, and do a new Life Wheel. See how this wheel compares with the one you did initially. Each Quarterly Checkpoint includes a different end page to motivate you, help you create healthy habits, or analyze your fears.
- Year End Review - Note your accomplishments, challenges, and pre-plan for next year’s goals.
Tips from Tanya
Tanya Dalton created the first Goals planner in 2017 and updated it in 2020 as a companion planner for her book, On Purpose. Here are her top tips to get the most out of it.
- Use a PENCIL, especially in the Quarterly Goal matrix. A pencil lets you make changes since goals tend to shift and change.
- Be extremely honest when answering the Reflection questions. They cut through the clutter of what we tell others and get to the heart of what YOU need.
- For the Calendar Year Overview, use last year’s planner or calendar app to see what you had going on during those months.
- The Life Wheel will never be a perfect circle, don't force it to be!
- Feeling stuck? Use the Goal Brainstorm and Vision Board to think of things that you truly desire.
- Balance out your goals over the year, don’t try and do everything before Easter. The Goal Setting Matrix lets you do this every quarter. This is also your reference for each Quarterly Checkpoint later in the planner.
- The Action Road Maps are a springboard for each monthly checkpoint. If you find yourself wondering, “What did I want to focus on this month?” Go back to your Action Road Map and see.
The best way to get started? Answer the questions in the Reflection section and let it guide your thoughts. The Goals planner is open-dated, meaning there are no yearly dates to hold you to a certain time frame. We recommend adding it to our Monthly planning insert so you can plan activities and keep track of deadlines throughout the year.
The Goals Planner does NOT include the following pages:
❌ Important Dates
❌ Yearly Overview
❌ Monthly Views
❌ Gift List, Gratitude, Bucket List, Bill Tracker, or Monthly Automations
❌ My Project Plans
❌ Graph Notes
❌ Next Yearly Overview
✅ You can find all the pages listed above in our Flex, Classic, or Monthly inserts.
Do you have questions about the Goals planner? Write us at hello@inkwellpress.com and let us know what we can do to help!