Printable Goal Setting Worksheets to Help You KILL Your Goals (PDF)

Last Updated on August 14, 2024

Looking for a printable goal setting worksheet that actually works? These templates will help you plan your goals from start to finish! Perfect for students, young adults, moms, and anyone looking to achieve what matters to them.

Setting a goal is one thing, but actually achieving it? And having the right processes in place TO achieve it? That’s a whole ‘nother story! To achieve the goals you care about, you need an organized strategy for getting there. This is where having a good printable goal setting worksheet comes in and why I created the printable goal planner to get you one step closer to accomplishing the important stuff.

If you’re tired of setting goals but never seem to follow through, or you’re unsure how to set goals that work in the first place, the printable goal setting worksheets in this goal setting planner will help you set, plan, AND actually achieve the right goals for your life!

If you want consistent success at making things HAPPEN, keep reading to see how the Goal Planner worksheets offer you a step-by-step effective strategy for finally reaching those goals!

Table of Contents

This post is all about the best printable goal setting worksheets.

How do you create a goal setting worksheet?

The printable goal setting worksheets in my goal planner will help you make a simple, yet effective goal plan for yourself.

In the goal planner, you’ll be walked through the step-by-step process of effective goal setting in four crucial areas:

Step 1: Intentions And Brainstorming

First of all, we need some guidance before we can determine which goals are worth pursuing. This is why it helps to start at the very beginning: identifying your intentions.

There is a printable goal setting worksheet inside the goal planner for identifying your intentions in each area of your life. This allows you to breakdown the ideas for what you want to achieve in ALL areas of your life! You need to have some sense of direction before you set your goals.

Think about what you want in areas like…

Home life
Career
Health + wellness
Relationship
Social Life
Personal Growth

When you understand your intentions for each area, this will help you arrive at the corresponding goals.

Step 2: Setting Broad Goals And Habits

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, it helps to start off more general in your goal setting. Think about some goals you’d like to achieve over the next year, or quarter-by-quarter.

Think also about what goals would get you closer to achieving your ideal life in all areas. Then, consider which habits would actually GET you to achieve those goals! Our habits are extremely important because they establish the systems we need in place to stay on track toward our goals.

Step 3: Setting Specific Goals And Habits

Now it’s time to crack down and get more specific. At this stage, you’ll want to break your goals down into small steps. You also need to outline aspects like the specific actions you’ll take, the measurability, and the timeline of your habits and goals.

This is also where you need to make a game plan for holding yourself accountable. The goal planner includes a PDF goal setting worksheet specifically for tracking your habits and planning out projects, so you’ll know exactly where you’re at at all times!

Step 4: Reviewing Your Goals

Finally, reviewing your process at the end is essential. Did you achieve your goal? Was your process efficient? Did the steps you took helped you or hurt you? These are all important to reflect on so that you can only get better next time!

So to recap, the proper goal plan needs to go beyond just goals alone. It needs to include three things:

Your intentions (why do you want to achieve something?)
Your goals (of course!)
The habits necessary to achieve your goals

And if you’re not quite clear on what your goals should be yet, no problem! The goal planner starts with intention-setting and brainstorming, so you can identify the goals that are right for you and that align with your values.

From there, you will work from broad, big-picture goals, to the nitty-gritty specifics of forming S.M.A.R.T goals. And finally, reviewing your goals to see if you achieved them effectively and efficiently!

By the end of the printable goal setting worksheets in this goal planner, you’ll have a foolproof goal plan built on specifics, consistency, good habits, and proper preparation for potential obstacles.

goal setting worksheet for high school students pdf

Click here to purchase the Printable Goal Planner PDF worksheets.

20+ Templates Inside the 2023 Printable Goal Setting Workbook

Intention setting goal worksheet

If you don’t even know where to start when it comes to setting relevant goals, look at your intentions for your life. Where do you want to be in each area of your life?

Feel free to think long-term, too. If one day you want to settle down in a house in the woods in Alaska, write that down! If you dream of becoming a full-time business owner and quitting your day job, take note! This exercise will help you learn more about what you truly want out of life, which will then give you some clarity on how to set up your goal plan in the next several printable goal setting worksheets.

Click here to purchase the Goal Planner.

Mapping out your ideal life goal setting worksheet

Between the intentions page and this page, the Goal Planner includes a brainstorm page and a page for thinking ahead to 1, 3, 5, and 10 years from now. After all that brainstorming, you get the opportunity to decide on more concrete goals you’d like to focus on for the rest of the planner.

You would print the Goals For Your Ideal Life page once for each life category, that way you are creating up to 4 goals per area of your life. The example in this photo focuses on the health + wellness category, so each of the 4 goals are specific to physical and mental wellness.

It’s also important to outline your WHY. Why do you want to achieve these specific goals? Identifying the motivation behind your goal is another way to further your clarity. It also helps you keep sight of the long-term reward!

Habit setting goal worksheet

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE PRINTABLE GOAL PLANNER

No goal plan is complete without setting both goals AND the habits necessary to achieve those goals! This is why you get to tie relevant habits to the goals you just set in the previous page.

Setting habits will ensure that you’re making consistent progress toward your goals. So when you say to yourself “I really want to get in better shape!” you’re following it up with a plan to hit the gym 3 times a week.

Many people set important goals like getting in better shape without thinking ahead to the specifics of what getting in shape truly entails. But writing down your habits as well as your goals in this format will show you what you need to do to get where you want to go!

Breaking down goals worksheet

Let’s say your goal is to decrease your anxiety. That can be a big, intimidating, and somewhat vague goal! What exactly does it mean to decrease your anxiety? You can answer this question by breaking down a big daunting goal into 4 small “mini goals” that get more specific!

If you were to leave your goal at “decrease my anxiety,” where would you even start?! What would you even do? It would be so much more helpful to reframe your goal into bite-sized pieces.

First, you can research therapists online. Next, you can schedule your first therapy appointment. Third, you can make it part of your night routine to journal your thoughts each night. Lastly, you can find your go-to self soothing activity.

Taking a goal in baby steps will make it feel so much more achievable. There’s often a lot of moving parts that need to come together to achieve a big goal, so take the time to outline them in this printable goal setting worksheet so you know exactly what you need to do!

Check out more details here.

S.M.A.R.T Goals worksheet

I offer a simplified version of this S.M.A.R.T printable goal setting worksheet for free right here if you’d like to give it a try before buying the full Goal Planner featured in this post!

So first of all…

What are S.M.A.R.T goals?

“SMART” stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This is a good formula for structuring your goals in a way that sets up concrete, executable steps for each goal.

For example, instead of just “eat healthier,” I’m going to give myself specific guidelines for what “eating healthier” means. Instead, I’ll say “eat 3 servings of vegetables a day, only buy fast food once a week, and prioritize home cooked meals.”

If I just left my goal at “eat healthier,” I’d be more likely to justify the choices I make that aren’t in line with my goal. It won’t give me the structure I need. Clarity and specificity are everything here!

Using the S.M.A.R.T printable goal setting worksheet

After breaking your goal down into specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound steps, you’re left with a far more structured and specific goal! In the example of the above photo, we went from “write a book” to “write a 60,000 word self help book in 6 months.”

SO much more specific and will give you a way better chance at CLEAR success!

From there, you outline the action steps it takes to achieve this goal. This is yet another way to break the goal down into more digestible pieces, just like we did in the Breaking Down Goals worksheet. Adding start dates and due dates will hold you accountable too!

It’s also important to outline the potential obstacles you may face and how you plan to overcome them. By predicting what may go wrong, you can prepare for the worst-case scenario and tackle it with resilience!

The printable goal planner can be purchased here.

Habit Tracker worksheet

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I told ya we couldn’t overlook those habits! Habits are everything for sticking to a goal, and I absolutely swear by using a habit tracker to aid me in reaching my own goals. That’s why I use and love this particular PDF goal setting worksheet all the time!

The satisfaction of checking off a habit each time you complete it is so rewarding and motivating. And this sheet will be fairly easy to set up, because all you need to do is transfer the habits you wrote down in the Habits For Your Ideal Life page for each life category!

If you’re unfamiliar with habit trackers, the concept is to track each time you participate in a habit for each day of the month. So if on day 1 you meditated, went to therapy, and exercised, you would fill in the squares that line up under “1” with those corresponding habits you did.

At the end of the month, you get a full 30-31 days worth of data to see how you did! This gives you the chance to see where you can improve, see which habits felt good to stick to, and which habits you may want to cut out next month.

As a reminder, you want to always be checking in and thinking in terms of:

Daily habits and goals
Weekly habits and goals
Monthly habits and goals
Yearly habits and goals

Post-Goal Review worksheet

So, you just completed a goal. Heck yeah! Congrats to you! It ain’t easy! But don’t stop there. Check in on how it went, because this is valuable information for next time.

If you’re one of those folks that chronically underestimates how long a goal will take to complete (I’m guilty!), it will be evident when you compare the planned time frame to the actual time frame in this PDF goal setting worksheet. Now you know how to adjust your expectations for your next goal!

You also want to look at what went well and what didn’t. Maybe you need to adjust your strategy and process in the future!

Then, think about which habits helped you toward your goal. Were any steps planned and unnecessary? What about unplanned and necessary?

For example, in the photo above where the goal was to redo the bedroom walls, now this person knows what to do differently the next time they take on a similar project!

After several post-goal reviews, you may be able to pick up on patterns in your behavior of how you work on a goal. Maybe you have the tendency to rush the project or not do enough research or prep work beforehand. This is SO important to be aware of!

Identifying unhelpful behaviors in your goal process is the first step toward improving them!

Grab yourself the printable goal planner right here.

FAQs about Printable Goal Setting Worksheets

What is a Goal Setting Worksheet?

A goal setting worksheet is a useful guide for setting up the framework for your goals! It can help you plan your goals in terms of your intentions, action plan, identifying necessary habits, and foreseeing potential obstacles. A worksheet ensures that you have a detailed plan for carrying out the goal. This way, you’ll know what your process is and exactly what you need to do to reach that goal.

This printable goal setting worksheet will teach you how to create ACTIONABLE steps to achieve your goals.

If you struggle to set clear goals, a printable goal setting worksheet is exactly what you need to plan out each step of the goal process. Having a step-by-step guide for planning out your goals from start to finish tremendously increases your chance of success!

What Are Some Examples of Personal Goals?

Need some ideas for what goals to set in the first place? I’ve got you covered! Here are some of the top examples of personal goals people like to set.

Exercise regularly
Eat a healthy diet
Reduce anxiety
Learn a new skill or pick up a new hobby
Learn a foreign language
Start a business or side project
Improve your social, romantic, or familial relationships
Save more money and become financially stable
Buy a house
Find your dream career
Travel the world
Pursue a creative activity like dance, singing, painting, etc.
Give back to your community by volunteering
Practice stress-reducing activities like yoga or meditation
Journal everyday
Write a book
Improve your time management

Why You Need to Start Using Printable Goal Setting Worksheets

Research shows that goal setting is linked to higher achievement. That said, you need to know how to do it right. When you think of setting a goal, how do you go about it? If you’re like most people, you probably write down your goals in a notebook only to never look at them again.

You might not consider necessary steps like identifying habits that will help you achieve the goal, mapping out potential obstacles, or thinking about your “why.”

And if this sounds familiar, don’t feel bad! School doesn’t really teach us these things, so unless you spend a lot of time learning about effective goal setting processes, it’s normal to not always get it right.

This is why everyone needs to be using resources like these printable goal setting worksheets. They cover ALL the bases. From start to finish, from identifying your intentions to completing the goal, worksheets guide you through every step of the process so you don’t overlook a thing.

And a well-designed goal setting strategy works wonders for actually achieving the goals you set.

What Are the 5 R’s of Goal Setting?

Notice a pattern of setting goals only to never achieve them? The culprit may be in the way you’re approaching and viewing the goal setting process. So let’s rethink things.

There’s 5 super important elements to a solid goal setting strategy, called the 5 R’s. These are results, reasons, reflections, resources, and responsibilities. But what do these really mean?

1. Results

Your goals need to be results-oriented. By that I mean you need to think about what achieving this goal will actually get you. It’s breaking down the “why?” behind your goal. If your goals look more like “exercise more” or even “exercise 3 times a week,” that’s not telling you much about the motivation behind it, right?

To create a results-oriented goal, you need to take things a step further. “I want to exercise 3 times a week so that I can feel healthy, strong, and confident” is far more appropriate because it’s showing you what the goal will give you when all is said and done.

2. Reasons

Now that you’re starting to unpack the “why?” behind your goal, you’ll want to expand and elaborate a little bit more. There’s a few ways to think deeper about your intentions behind your goal, like…

Listing 5 ways achieving this goal will positively impact your mental or physical health, sense of self, or life in some way.
Identifying your motivation. What makes you so fired up to focus on this goal now of all times?
Entertaining what happens if you fail. How would you feel if you lose sight of this goal? Will you be unhappy, stagnant, or displeased in any way? This isn’t the most comfortable thing to think about, but it’s the honest reality to help you see your goal from all sides.

3. Reflections

Believe it or not, there’s still room left to assess your goal even more! You’ll want to reflect on what it really means to work toward this goal. This means asking yourself…

How will my daily, weekly, or monthly routine have to shift as a result of working toward this goal?
What might I have to give up in order to prioritize this goal?
Does the accomplishment of achieving the goal outweigh the downsides of the change I have to adjust to?
And finally, do I believe this goal is truly worthwhile to pursue?

4. Resources

There are different resources that come into play when working toward a goal. Outlining these resources and having a backup plan if certain resources aren’t available is a must.

For example, say you’ve picked out a gym to start going to as part of a fitness goal. Well, what if that gym suddenly closes down? Change is off-putting and can even leave us stuck, not knowing where to go next.

You don’t want to get stuck in the moment of the unexpected. In this case, you might keep your eye on another gym to transition to. Or, you may have a backup plan of workout videos saved to a YouTube playlist to use at home.

Having resources handy, available, and planned for if sh*t hits the fan can be so helpful!

5. Responsibilities

Ah, now this is where accountability comes into play. It can be all too tempting to shift blame or convince ourselves of reasons why we couldn’t reach a goal. But instead of pointing fingers, realize that you don’t need to be so harsh. You just need to evaluate where you went wrong and take action to turn it around next time.

This is where we make a game plan for what habits we need to stay on top of that will ultimately aid us in reaching a goal. These habits can be based on what we didn’t do with our last “failed” goal, that we need to be doing next time around.

Another responsible approach to goal-setting is to brainstorm any potential obstacles or roadblocks that could prevent you from sticking to your goal. This is SO important!! Like I said before, we tend to freeze when the unexpected hits. So eliminate as much of the unexpected as you possibly can and you’ll be better equipped to handle it.

Final Words About Goal Setting

Remember, goal setting is most effective when you have the right tools and systems in place.

I created this printable goal planner to go above and beyond similar products so that your goal setting process can be as effective as possible. Many goal planners stop at goal setting but fail to put the right strategies in place, such as habits and action steps, that will actually help you achieve your goals!

That’s why this goal planner is different. With an organized design that ventures from brainstorming, to broad goals, to cracking down on specifics, and finally reviewing how the goal process went, you’ve got yourself the perfect strategy for finally achieving what you care about in any area of your life!

I’m thrilled for you to print it out, put it in a nice binder, and see for yourself how much these printable goal setting worksheet templates will improve your goal setting and planning skills!

Click here to purchase the Printable Goal Planner PDF!

I can’t wait for you to use it!

Psst…want to get a taste of the Goal Planner before buying? Download a (free!) simplified version of the S.M.A.R.T goal setting one-page worksheet when you sign up for my email list! Grab it below!