How to set life goals with a napkin plan

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I’m the kind of person who gets a kick out of goal setting, and putting systems in place to achieve them. The ‘napkin plan’ approach to setting life goals is a quick n’ dirty exercise you can do in half an hour or less — like on a date night, with your Sunday morning coffee, at the start of a new year, or on a milestone birthday!

Here’s a quick video (7min) explaining how you do it:

Here’s what’s covered:
0:20 What is a napkin plan?
0:53 Starting a napkin plan: four quadrants
1:20 Set your timescale
2:00 Long term, lofty goals (eg. in 5 years I…)
2:20 1 year goal
2:53 6 month goal
3:22 One month goal
4:04 Another goal demo
4:43 Adapting for different types of goal (eg. relationship, finance, health…)
5:42 Napkin plan summary: why do it?
6:23 Taking it forward

And this is the kind of thing you end up with:

The steps to create one for yourself are:

1. Draw lines on a napkin (or piece of paper!) to divide it into four sections
2. Choose whatever timeframe you want to look at to apply a timeframe for each section (e.g. 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, OR 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year)
3. Start at the far end (e.g. 5 years section) and set some lofty high-level goals; these can be whatever, but I aim for 1-2 goals per category: health, relationship, personal, career.
4. For each of those goals, figure out what would be the steps in each timeframe

Example:

• 5 year goal: buy a house!
• 1 year goal: have a deposit saved and finance approved
• 6 month goal: have your ‘hit zone’ selected (what location meetings your budget, and is in a place you want to live?) and wishlist confirmed (what does this house need to have?)
• 1 month goal: setup a savings plan, sign up to real estate emails and apps, and start attending inspections.

It’s not really about needing to stick to the same goals forever but more to prompt yourself to examine and articulate what it is what you want out of life. Deep, huh.

You know I love a template so here’s one you can use — either make a copy of the Google Slide, or download the PDF 😘

We have some other free templates if you’re interested, check ’em out.