For many years, I’ve been on the search for the perfect planning process – which has led to trying dozens of apps and paper planners. And as hard as I tried to find a single system that worked for keeping track of everything in my life, I’d come up short.
I’d always have multiple ways of keeping track of everything from paper planners to lists on Trello to Google Drive to the Notes app. I used several systems at a time. And I never really had a proper place for managing my goals.
Then, I found the ClickUp app, and suddenly, I had an all-in-one system that worked for everything – and it’s free. (I did buy the paid version because I wanted unlimited customization, but it’s not necessary!)
If you want to dive into everything that ClickUp can do thoroughly, head to their website or download our guide on why I chose to make the switch to ClickUp.
I use ClickUp for planning and organizing everything, but today we’re diving in on how I specifically use ClickUp for planning and tracking goals.
Set quarterly goals
I like to set quarterly goals with a theme.
So, I created a layout within ClickUp, where I can keep track of the progress on my goals.
I set due dates, use categories like “travel” or “career” or “personal” to show what category they all under. You can also prioritize your goals, so you know which one you’re choosing to focus on most.
Most of my current goals are based on my career, as you can see below.
You can create labels with whatever you want. All the stuff on the right side is adjustable. You can create categories and choose whatever labels that make sense for your goals. I love how customizable everything is. You can make it work for the way that you work best.
I break down my 2020 Goals into each quarter, with a new list for each quarter – and I’m able to view the full list, or select the current quarter of the year. Right now, that’s Q1.
If I have an idea for a future quarter of what I might want to work on later, I’ll add it to the “ideas” status in a different quarter.
I set up my quarterly goal statuses with four phases:
- Idea
- Researching
- In Progress
- Done
For my quarterly goals, I like to have something that I’m researching and a few big goals that I’d like to work toward at a time.
Track your goal progress
They also have a section for creating goals that you can track based on a money amount, true or false (aka whether the goal is completed or not), tasks completed or a number.
You can assign goals and tasks to someone else if you have a team. And most importantly, you set a deadline.
Sometimes we don’t complete our goals simply because we haven’t made it official with a deadline – and a specific strategy on how we plan to get there.
ClickUp has fantastic tools for tracking stats and tracking results. So if you have a financial goal you want to hit, you can use ClickUp to track your progress.
You can update this manually, or set it to be completed based on your task statuses.
My favorite way to set goals in ClickUp is based on to-do lists because it pulls directly from your task lists that live in a different list within the app. You don’t manually have to update it, because it automatically keeps up with your progress.
Examples Of Goals You Can Track
- Financial / saving goals
- Health or fitness goals
- Project-based goals like a podcast, blog or course launch
- Social media stats
- Home renovations
- Career aspirations
Create subtasks
Breaking up a goal into sub-tasks with deadlines is so important – and as you can see in the goal above, I broke Self-Commitment Academy into 23 tasks to complete the course.
As I was progressing with my to-do list, it automatically used my subtasks to track my progress. And the smaller you make your subtasks, the easier the goal will be to complete.
What I love most about ClickUp is that it keeps me from duplicating my work. It keeps it simple; I’m not spending time re-writing tasks.
Creating a habit tracking spread
I’ve created a weekly habit tracker within ClickUp to keep a log of all my habits.
If you’re trying to tackle new habits, it can be helpful to hold yourself accountable along the way. Because when we check things off, we don’t like to break the chain. So if you have some habits you’re working on, you might want to create a habit tracking system.
When I’m struggling to make a habit happen, tracking my progress can be really helpful. So you can set up columns within ClickUp to create a little tracking progress. You can customize this however you want, or simply copy my format.
If this sounds cool but you want more details about ClickUp, get the guide to find out if it’s the right platform for you.
