How I Think About Goal Setting

Getting better at goal setting has been one of the single biggest drivers of change in my life.

I didn’t always believe that. For a long time, I thought hard work was enough. I was busy, ambitious, and constantly moving. But I wasn’t being intentional about where I was going.

About ten years ago, I woke up at 35 and had a quiet but uncomfortable realization. I wasn’t where I thought I’d be. I had gone through a divorce. I had a business fail that came close to bankrupting me. From the outside, it looked like a rough chapter. From the inside, it felt more confusing than dramatic.

What stood out wasn’t failure. It was drift.

I hadn’t consciously designed my life. I had just been living it. And when you don’t choose a direction deliberately, you still end up somewhere. It just may not be where you intended to go.

That realization sent me down a path that I’ve been refining ever since. Over the last decade, I’ve built a simple but disciplined approach to goal setting that has completely changed how I operate. It’s not motivational. It’s not complicated. It’s directional, practical, and cumulative.

This is the process I use.

Most people don’t fail to reach their goals because they lack discipline. They fail because they never clearly decide what they’re building.

You can work incredibly hard and still end up somewhere you didn’t mean to be. Hard work without direction doesn’t compound. It just exhausts you.

I’ve come to believe there are two ways lives get built.

The first is accidental. You react, you stay busy, you make the next logical move, and you look up years later and accept the result.

The second is intentional. You decide, ahead of time, what you want your life to look like, then you reverse engineer your actions to support that outcome.

Goal setting is the mechanism that makes intentional living possible.

This is the biggest shift in how I think about goals.

Most people start with inputs. They focus on habits, routines, productivity hacks, and discipline. Those things matter, but only after direction is clear.

Without a destination, it’s impossible to design the right daily behaviors. You can be disciplined in the wrong direction for a very long time.

For me, everything starts with long-term direction. Once that’s clear, discipline becomes obvious instead of forced.

I always start with ten-year goals.

These are intentionally big. They’re not meant to create pressure. They’re meant to create clarity.

There’s good data showing that we dramatically overestimate what we can accomplish in one year and massively underestimate what we can accomplish in ten. I’ve found that to be very true in practice.

I spend real time on this. At least once a year, I set aside a full day alone to think deeply about where I want to be in ten years. Life changes, priorities evolve, and perspective sharpens. My ten-year goals do shift over time, but only slightly. If you’re completely rewriting them every year, you probably aren’t thinking long enough term.

I break these goals into categories: family, work, finance, personal, and travel. I try to be as specific as possible. If you want something, clarity matters.

I also use images and vision boards. Not because it’s trendy, but because the brain responds to specificity. Vague goals produce vague effort.

This part is especially important if you’re married or building a life with someone else. I use a simple metaphor here. If you were on a cross-country road trip and taking turns driving while the other person slept, you’d both need to agree on the destination. Otherwise, you’ll wake up in very different places.

The same is true for families and companies. Alignment on long-term direction matters. Everyone needs to be rowing in the same direction.

Once the ten-year direction is clear, I build goals for the next year.

These have to be far more realistic. Time horizons change what’s achievable. I use the SMART framework for every one-year goal. They need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.

What matters most is alignment.

One-year goals should either complete a ten-year goal or move you meaningfully onto the path toward one. For example, a ten-year goal might be to build a company doing ten million in revenue. A one-year goal doesn’t need to accomplish that. It might simply be to lock an idea, incorporate the company, or make the first key hire.

A good one-year goal often doesn’t finish the journey. It commits you to it.

I use the same categories here as I do for my ten-year goals. That consistency makes gaps and imbalances obvious.

This is the most important part of the system.

Goals don’t get accomplished by ambition. They get accomplished by inputs.

I track daily behaviors that create the foundation for everything else. Workouts. Nutrition. Phone boundaries. Writing. Journaling. The exact inputs change over time, but the concept stays the same.

These are not output metrics. They’re input metrics. They’re the things I can control every day regardless of mood or circumstance.

Tracking them daily removes emotion from execution. You don’t need to feel motivated. You just need to show up.

This is where most people break down. They set goals but don’t design the daily platform required to support them.

Vision sets direction. Inputs create inevitability.

I use simple tools to keep everything visible and connected.

I track ten-year and yearly goals using Notion boards. They give me a clean, high-level view of direction and progress. I review ten-year goals annually and yearly goals regularly.

Daily habits are tracked separately. That’s the heartbeat of the system. I look at it every day.

The tools themselves aren’t the point. This framework works in a notebook, a spreadsheet, or any system you like. What matters is that direction, translation, and inputs are all connected.

Just as important is what I don’t track. I don’t micromanage outcomes. I don’t constantly rewrite goals. I focus on showing up for the right inputs consistently and letting time do its work.

After ten years of being intentional about goal setting, my life looks very different than it did at 35.

Not perfect. Not finished. Still evolving.

But it’s no longer accidental.

I’m clear about where I’m going. I’m realistic about what progress looks like this year. And I’m disciplined about the daily behaviors that move me forward.

You don’t need to overhaul your entire life to do this. You don’t need more motivation. You need clarity about what you’re building and the patience to let consistent inputs compound.

The hardest part isn’t execution. It’s deciding, deliberately, what kind of life you want to build.

Once you do that, the rest becomes much simpler.