a journey of self improvement
A great worksheet is the BEST tool to help you achieve your goals. What makes a worksheet great is how compatible it is to your goal, your life, and YOU. If your goal is to successfully make it through your busy day without forgetting anything, there’s a worksheet for that. If your goal is to crush a 30-day challenge, there’s a worksheet for that, too! If you’re a detail-oriented person or a big-picture thinker…you get the idea!
Here are 8 printable worksheets you can use to manage your life and attack your goals. Find the ones that best suit your needs, click on the hyperlink to download, and get to work! You can download the whole Goal-Setting Printable Bundle <-here.
Printable Planning Worksheets to Help You Organize Your Life and Achieve Your Goals for 2021 and Beyond
1. Daily Schedule
The Daily Schedule (<- hyperlink!) worksheet is the most reliable planner sheet! It’s a fantastic day-at-a-glance. It enables you to see your To Do List right next to your schedule for the day. This way, you can work on action items on the left while keeping tabs on when your next meeting or appointment is on the right.
Be intentional with your goals section! This space is an opportunity to focus on your priorities. These goals can be 3 or 4 action items towards a major goal you’re working towards, like getting a degree or losing weight. Or, let’s say your goal is to establish a morning routine. These goals can be 3 or 4 elements of your morning routine you want to track, like taking time to sweat, having a quiet time or meditation session, and completing your skin care routine. This all-encompassing worksheet will keep you on schedule and tracking toward your goals.
2. Weekly Habit Tracker
Another favorite worksheet is the Weekly Habit Tracker. For many of us, 2020 was a year lived at home, and the days quickly blurred together without traditional routines to keep track of the passing time. This habit tracker can help you establish a good work-from-home routine and keep you accountable for checking off those healthy habits you’ve been meaning to get serious about.
This worksheet is great for people who are trying to tackle many items per day as consistently as possible. Here are two examples of how I recently used the Weekly Habit Tracker:
1. Goal – Lose Weight. Habits: (1) Daily exercise, (2) Daily walk – in addition to exercise, (3) Eat roughly 1500 calories, (4) Drink 1 gallon of water, and (5) No alcohol.
2. Goal – Establish Nighttime Routine. Habits: (1) Brush teeth, (2) Floss, (3) Waterpik, (4) Mouthwash, (5) Cleanse face, (6) Facial toner, (7) Night serum, (8) Night cream, (9) Hand cream, and (10) Lavender pillow spray.
3. Week-at-a-Glance
The Week-at-a-Glance worksheet is a bird’s eye view of your commitments and intentions for the week. It is NOT meant to be super detailed – that’s what detail-oriented worksheets like the Daily Schedule are for. Instead, the Week-at-a-Glance is meant to help you keep track of important items.
For working parents with kids, this sheet is crucial. This is where you identify everyone’s meetings, appointments, rehearsals, practices, etc. This worksheet is also great for the busy person carrying many different responsibilities, like me. I often joke and say I hold weekly staff meetings with my, myself and I. The problem anyone faces when scheduling a bunch of unrelated things – whether for themselves or a family – is that there are multiple “first” priorities. The Week-at-a-Glance is the perfect place to track these various priorities!
4. Goal Planning Worksheet
The Goal Planning Worksheet will take your goal from being a bucket list item to a detailed plan-of-action! It will help you set, plan, and track your goal from start to finish. There’s an important block in this worksheet called “Know my ‘Why’.” You need to know why you want to achieve this goal – what is motivating you to start? Why do you want to achieve this? Your “why” will help you dig in deep when the goal-getting gets tough.
The Goal Planning Worksheet is where you take your goal and break it down into bite-sized steps. Use these mini goals to track your forward progress by assigning due dates for each step and marking them off once they’re complete. You can also assign a small reward for each mini goal. Scheduled treats or rewards are a great way to celebrate the small wins along the way and motivate you to keep pressing on!
5. Yearly Goal Map
The Yearly Goal Map is just what it sounds like – it’s a map of your year which depicts whatever goal(s) you are going for. If a Week-at-a-Glance is a bird’s eye view of your week, the Yearly Goal Map is a satellite’s view of your year.
The best worksheets for you are the ones that best suit your needs. If you have longer-term goals – several months long or longer – the Yearly Goal Map is a great way to get a handle on where your major milestones fall over the course of a longer project. You can even use multiple Yearly Goal Map worksheets to map out the path of a multi-year goal, like a college degree or an entrepreneurial project.
6. Priority Planning Worksheet
There once was a CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Brian Dyson, who gave a commencement speech at Georgia Tech where he talked about juggling the 5 balls of life: Work, family, health, relationships, spirit. Dyson described work as a rubber ball, which if dropped would bounce back, and the other four as glass balls, which would shatter if dropped. The speech went as viral as it could for the 1990s for promoting the need for balance.
The Priority Planning worksheet stems from this idea of there being 5 balls of life, and adds a sixth: your future self. You want to prioritize both present and future goals! For example, you want to invest in your children today and prioritize your future financial independence. We each have priorities in these different areas of life, and this worksheet will help you identify which ranks first in each category. List the top priority for each section at the top.
7. Personal Planner
If your preference is working with a more flexible worksheet, the Personal Planner is for you. This sweet, simple worksheet will allow you to capture all of your pressing engagements and goal activities without forcing you down into the weeds. You can even jot down your meal planning, shopping list, or brainstorm your next big goal in the notes section.
8. 30 Day Challenge
And finally, the 30-Day Challenge Worksheet! The BEST tracker for progress towards a goal is one that shows consistency, and the 30-day timeframe is a manageable – yet still challenging – amount of time. This worksheet gives you a visual of your consistency streak, which helps you celebrates how far you’ve come and motivates you to keep going. This worksheet can be used to map out a month’s worth of steps towards a goal, or you can simply X out each day that you did your goal-task. Use multiple sheets for multi-month projects!
These 8 printable worksheets can be used in any combination to help you plan and achieve ANY goals you have in life. Create your customized planner binder by printing the pages you need, hole punching them, and organizing them into a planner that best suits your needs!