Looking for awesome, easy-to-use goal setting worksheets to help maximize your performance and streamline your success?
Perhaps you’ve tried several goal-setting worksheets centered around the SMART Goals framework. Maybe you hoped that setting a few Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely goals would help you find the success you’ve been looking for.
Maybe you’ve tried a few goal setting templates that focused on your daily and weekly “Big Three.” Personally, I’ve seen a lot of success by focusing on my big three goals daily, but this is just one aspect of goal setting—it’s not a complete strategy.
The fact that you’ve been trying other worksheets and researching goal setting is incredible! Not everyone can say that because not everyone is actively focusing on self-improvement. Kudos to you!
But the fact that you’re here means that you still haven’t achieved the success you’ve been looking for, and there’s a simple reason for that: a free worksheet or template won’t help you build a strong foundation for long-term goal setting.
To succeed with goal setting, you have to take a step back and work towards building the right mindset. You have to discover and overcome the obstacles that have been holding you back. You need to reflect on what you want and identify fears that might be keeping you stuck.
Trust me, goal setting is a powerful tool that will help you achieve everything you want in life, but achieving massive success is no walk in the park. Goal setting can be challenging, but don’t worry; I’m going to be your long-distance goal-setting coach, and I’m going to help you Crush Your Goals!
Hi, My Name is Austin Bollinger
I started blogging and podcasting back in 2017 as a way to encourage people to start setting goals all year long, not just for a few weeks at the beginning of each year.
Since starting the blog and podcast, I’ve seen how goal setting transformed my own life, and I’ve become obsessed with how it can change the lives of others. In 2019, I wrote a book called Crush Your Goals!: The Ultimate Guide for Achieving Consistent Success
Through the process of writing this book, I discovered that goal setting isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I found that goal setting comes with all kinds of obstacles and issues: paralyzing fear, repeated failure, lack of confidence, focus, clarity, motivation, just to name a few.
But I also discovered several techniques and strategies for tackling these issues head-on, and I put them all in my book.
If you haven’t bought a copy yet, I invite you to do so, but if you’re not ready to do that, you can still download my Crush Your Goals! The Field Guide for free!
These worksheets are something that, until recently, I reserved for people who had bought my book, but now I’m opening them up to you.
The following 29 goal-setting worksheets and self-assessments are a companion to the Crush Your Goals! book, so you’ll get 10x the benefits if you work through both together, but you don’t have to.
Download the workbook today and, if you want some additional help, feel free to reach out via Facebook or email. I’m here for you.
Good luck!
Download all 29 FREE Goal Setting Worksheets
Section 1 – Cultivating a Goal Getter’s Mindset
Before we dive into the first group of goal setting worksheets, let’s talk about mindset. Mindset is a lot more than positive thinking; it’s how we tend to look at the world, it’s our system of beliefs, our fears, our motivations, our attitude, and so much more.
Mindset is the foundation on which we build all of our future success. Build on a sandy foundation, and your success will be short-lived. Build on a solid foundation, however, and your success will stand the test of time. Mindset is incredibly important, and that’s why my book, Crush Your Goals!, begins with cultivating a Goal Getter’s mindset.
Sure, you can skip ahead to the goal-setting worksheets that teach the tactics and strategies for everyday goal-setting, but if you don’t take time to review and improve your mindset going in, you’re more likely to continue failing with your goals.
If you want to succeed in crushing your goals and achieving success, then I encourage you to start with the following worksheets and self-assessments. They are all designed to help you improve your mindset and clear a path for a lifetime of successful goal setting.
#1. Discover and Embrace Your Why
Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why, has made the idea of trading the what and the how of a matter for the why famous, but he’s not the only one talking about the importance of why.
Tony Robbins says, “If you get a big enough why you can do anything.”
Michael Hyatt’s wife, Gail, says, “People lose their way when they lose their why.”
Brendon Burchard, the author of High Performance Habits, says, “You didn’t lose your motivation, you just forgot what you’re fighting for.” In this context, “what you’re fighting for” is also the why, or the intrinsic motivation you had for pursuing your goal.
I dive much more in-depth on this in my book, but essentially, if you can find a concrete reason why you want to pursue the goals on your list, then you’re far more likely to achieve them. If you why is extremely weak, however, you’re much more likely to fail.
Many people set off pursuing goals that they don’t actually want to achieve, not deep down at least. When this happens, they throw in the towel, chalk up another failed goal, and become discouraged about goal setting altogether. But this doesn’t have to be your fate.
Instead, take some time to identify the whys behind all of your goals. Pursue the strong ones, and ditch the weak ones, at least for now. Once you complete this goal setting worksheet, dive into the next set of self-assessments and overcome the fears that have been keeping you stuck.
#2. Overcoming the Six Fears of Goal Setting
Before you dive into this self-assessment, it truly helps to read the corresponding chapter in Crush Your Goals!, but if you haven’t picked the book up yet, just know that six fears surround goal setting, and this first worksheet will help you identify which ones might be holding you back.
Again, the full-length chapter does a much better job in shining a light on these fears, but the self-assessment gives you a high-level overview of each fear as well. Complete this worksheet to find out which of the next six worksheets you should do.
This set of goal setting worksheets may not be the most enjoyable, after all, who wants to think about their fears, right? But here’s the deal, fear, especially fears you don’t even know you have, are one the most significant things that keep derailing your success.
You might have a deep-seated fear of loss or the unknown, and those fears keep you from truly going all-in on your goals. You might have a hidden fear of success or rejection, and those fears continue to sabotage your success along the way. These fears might be holding you back without you even realizing it.
You may not want to stare fear in the eyes, but if you’re going to achieve massive success in your life, you need to dive headfirst into these self-assessments. Face your fears and trust me; you’ll come out the other side stronger and more confident for it.
#3. Overcoming the Fear of Loss
When you fear loss, you may be afraid that your potential goals are going to cost you something that you may be unwilling to lose. This worksheet will help you identify the things you might be afraid to lose, as well as help you to redefine and move past this fear.
#4. Overcoming the Fear of Rejection
When you fear rejection, your fear of what others may think of you in both failure and success. This fear gives people the power to make you feel guilty for wanting something more in your life. This goal setting worksheet will help you identify which people’s opinions matter genuinely to you, which people’s opinions don’t, and how to interact with the people in both categories.
#5. Overcoming the Fear of Discontent
When you fear discontent, you worry that your ambitions might make you seem ungrateful or
not thankful for your current place in life. This assessment will help you take stock of your accomplishments in life so far, and it will help to shift your outlook on achieving more success going forward.
We’ve all obtained a certain level of success in life so far—it’s how we got to where we are today. Maybe you’ve drawn a line in the sand and decided that it’s wrong to push further, but this worksheet will help you move past that idea, both in your mind and in reality.
#6. Overcoming the Fear of the Unknown
When you fear the unknown, you worry about choosing the wrong path, or you may fear what your current path will someday mean for your life. Fear of the unknown can cause analysis paralysis, which can lead to indecision. This worksheet will help you to evaluate the possible paths in your life, as well as help you to take action despite not seeing all the steps in front of you.
#7. Overcoming the Fear of Failure
When you fear failure, you avoid setting goals because it’s easier to stay where you are than it is to gamble on something new, even if the something new is far better than what you have. This worksheet will help to redefine what it means to fail.
Often, we fear failure so much that we try to avoid the pain of failure at all costs, but we forget the countless times that we survived, even thrived, beyond failure in the past. Because this fear is one of the most common, this worksheet is a deep dive and calls for a great deal of reflection, but it’s well worth it in the end.
#8. Overcoming the Fear of Success
When you fear success, you worry that you’ll be ill-equipped to handle the new levels you might reach in life. To you, greater success equals more substantial responsibility, and you’re unsure of your ability to perform at a higher level.
This worksheet will walk you through envisioning what life might look like if you succeed in achieving every goal you have so that you may move past the self-sabotage that’ been robbing you of your success. By envisioning the future, we can better prepare ourselves in the present, allowing us to pursue our biggest goals with exceptional confidence.
#9. Building Rock-Solid Confidence
When it comes to goal setting, confidence is critical. This worksheet shines a light on the connection between self-confidence, self-discipline, and self-esteem and provides several techniques for improving all three.
Often, one of the biggest things holding us back from achieving success is our lack of confidence. We might feel like we’ll never succeed going into a goal, and therefore create a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein we never succeed. This assessment will change all that.
#10. Developing a Goal Getter’s Mindset
As I mentioned earlier, the mindset you take into your goal setting is paramount. Our mindset is the foundation on which we build our futures. So far, we’ve looked at several goal setting worksheets aimed at finding our why, or our motivations, we’ve tackled fear, and we’ve worked on improving our self-confidence.
Now, this worksheet will introduce you to nine other key mindsets that will serve you on your goal-setting journey. Again, the book provides a much deeper dive into these mindsets, but the worksheet will also do a fantastic job of walking you through each one and will help you to evaluate your ability to embrace these concepts.
These nine mindset are a lot like matras; they can be lived, practiced, and honed. They aren’t pass/fail. Instead, use them as guiding principles as you move forward with your goals.
Section 2 – Getting Started with Goal Setting
Once you’ve worked on improving your foundational mindset, it’s time to move into the strategies and techniques of successful goal setting. The following goal setting worksheets will teach you the strategies I’ve used to launch my blog, self-publish my book, lift 1,250 pounds, and more.
What will they do for you? I can’t wait to find out!
#11. The FOCUSED Framework™
How many goal-setting frameworks, strategies, and techniques have you tried in the past?
Me? I had been using the SMART Goals method for years, but truthfully, I didn’t always see the success I wanted. Sure, my goals were specific, measurable, yadda yadda yadda, but I found that my success was still hit or miss.
Why?
Personally, I think it’s because the SMART Goals method lacks an emotional connection to the goal you’re trying to achieve.
Don’t you want to set exciting goals? Wouldn’t it be nice if a goal was challenging, yet energizing? Wouldn’t it be great if you felt drawn to a goal, rather than obligated to stick with it?
I was missing an emotional connection to my goals, and I couldn’t help but think that others might be too. So, I created a new goal-setting model that I call The FOCUSED Framework. This goal setting worksheet will introduce you to the new framework, teach you how to use it, and help you evaluate your goals using my new framework.
#12. Plan Your 3- to 5-Year Vision
Planning goals can be a difficult task all on it’s own, but trying to think about your goals five years into the future, now that’s a challenging task, right? Sure, it can be hard, but thinking about your future is essential when it comes to setting your goals today.
The goals you pursue today are going to drive where you end up later in life. If you’ve ever heard the old saying, “Begin with the end in mind,” you know that it’s essential to create the future we want by setting the right goals today.
Many people struggle with their goals because they don’t know how they are going to contribute to their futures, but this worksheet will help you do some Blue-Sky Thinking and get clear on the future you want to build. From there, we can work towards setting goals that will get you where you’re going.
#13. Plan Your Annual & Quarterly Achievement Goals
Once you complete the 3- to 5-Year goal setting worksheet, you can use this worksheet to distill your longterm goals down into annual and quarterly goals. These are the 10-12 goals you want to achieve in a given year, spread across 3-month periods of time.
This worksheet will help you to start narrowing down and focusing on which goals you should be working towards this month, next month, and for the rest of the year. More importantly, it will help you avoid distractions and other goals that you’re saving for later.
#14. Set and Track a Habit Goal
Habits are at the core of all good routines, and some goals can be achieved simply by following the right routine. This worksheet will help you set a habit goal that will contribute to the success of one of your active quarterly or annual goals.
Want to workout four days a week, read 24 books this year, or drink 115 ounces of water per day? A habit goal is the best way to go, and this worksheet will help you crush it!
#15. The Eisenhower Matrix and the Four Ds
Prioritization and organization are vital skills on the path to becoming a successful goal setter, but they’re not skills that are difficult to learn. Many times, focusing on the right tasks and goals at the right time is a matter of using the right tools and tactics.
While the Eisenhower Matrix and the Four Ds are not my original ideas, this worksheet will provide the templates and processes for helping you hone in on your top priorities, allowing you to succeed faster than you thought possible.
#16. Getting Started with Time Blocking
Crushing your goals can be an arduous, perhaps impossible task if you’re not in command of your daily calendar. Unplanned events, unscheduled appointments, and undesired to-dos are a sure-fire way to rob you of all your time, derailing all of your goals.
If you want to take back control of your calendar and schedule, start with time blocking. Time blocking is a tried-and-true method of managing your calendar, your daily goals, and your top priorities. Best of all, you can use it to make more time for family and friends, too.
This one-page worksheet will teach you how to implement time blocking and have you off to the races in a flash.
#17. Pareto’s Principle, a.k.a. the 80/20 Rule
Another great way to ensure that you’re spending the majority of your time on the tasks that matter most is by employing the 80/20 Rule. Pareto’s Principle states that, for many events, roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes.
In other words, for most things, 80 percent of your rewards are going to come from 20 percent of your efforts. Are you wasting too much time chasing tasks that barely move the needle on your goals?
Use this worksheet to refocus your efforts on the tasks that matter most and recover a significant portion of your time and energy.
#18. Implementing The ABCDE Method
For those who don’t like drawing out the Eisenhower Matrix, The ABCDE Method of prioritization helps you identify your top-level tasks using five levels of priority. This goal setting worksheet will teach you the simple, easy-to-use method of prioritization that you can use in any area of your life.
#19. The Best Tools for Tracking Your Goals
If you turn to your favorite search engine or dive into the app store on your phone, you’re sure to find countless options that claim to be the best tool available for tracking goals.
Maybe they are but take it from a guy who’s tried just about every gizmo that he could get his hands on: there’s no one-size-fits-all tool for tracking goals.
We’re all different. This worksheet will help you identify which tools, resources, or apps are best for tracking your particular goals. More importantly, the tool you use could vary from goal to goal, so this worksheet will help you get clear on what works best for you.
Apps for fitness goals. Notebooks for career goals. Whiteboards for home renovation goals. Find out what works best for you!
Section 3 – Establishing a System for Success
When you’re in the early stages of setting goals and building habits and routines, the most challenging thing can be sticking to your plan. When we take deliberate action towards our goals, we have to defend our time, reprioritize our ever-changing list of tasks, and work to stay focused on the big picture.
While incredibly rewarding, it’s exhausting work, this game of goal-setting.
That’s why building a support team is so important. A system of success can look different for everyone, and the following worksheets will help guide you through the process of setting each one up. If you want to explore the pros and cons, and the ins and outs of each, dive into the book for more details.
#20. Establish an Accountability Partnership
Accountability partners are the most common method for staying committed to your goals, but it’s easy to approach the idea of accountability all wrong and end up with the wrong partner.
As you begin to think about looking for an accountability partner, you might wonder which traits a reliable partner might possess. It’s a great question. To establish an effective accountability partnership, you need to consider the following three pillars: trust, respect, and a mutual understanding of the relationship.
This worksheet will help you get clear on what kind of accountability you’re going to need to crush your goals, and what type of person would make a great fit.
#21. Joining or Starting a Mastermind Group
Mastermind groups are often also referred to as accountability groups, peer groups, or even support groups. While accountability is a part of a mastermind group’s mission, it’s not the core purpose.
Participants of a mastermind group raise the bar by challenging each other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each other in all areas of life with total honesty, respect, and compassion.
If you’re looking to join a Mastermind group, or better yet, start one of your own, be sure to use this worksheet to help guide the process. Every group is different, so it’s essential to understand what you hope to get from a group, as well as what you hope to bring to the group, before diving in head-first.
#22. Finding a Mentor
If a Mastermind group is like a team, then a mentor is like a coach. A mentor has played the game you’re playing before. They’ve mastered the game, written the playbook, and now they’re looking to pass their wisdom on to a select few individuals.
If you’re looking to accelerate your goals, a mentor is a great option, but again, you need to get clear on the type of mentor you need. This worksheet will guide you through finding your first mentor as well as the dos and don’ts of how to start the mentorship process.
#23. The Four Cs of High Performance
Real long-term success takes time, especially with goal setting. To achieve high performance for the long-haul, we need to mind the Four Cs: Competition, Commitment, Completion, and Closure.
Competition between your goals can undermine your success and drain your energy. Lack of commitment can have you failing before you’ve even started. There’s a lot to the Four Cs, and you can learn more about them inside Crush Your Goals!, but this worksheet will help you get closure on past failures and set you up for maximum success.
#24. Developing a Success-Driven Routine
Habits and routines play a massive role in successful goal setting. A bad routine or habit can derail you day after day, but a great routine can help you achieve incredible success.
This goal setting worksheet will help you build an effective routine around your goals, allowing you to automate your success and renew your energy.
#25. Build Momentum Using the Domino Effect
Just like compound interest working to build wealth in the stock market, momentum can go to work in your life to compound your success. Starting and stopping is one of the biggest energy drains and goal killers I’ve ever seen.
The amount of energy it takes to start is far greater than the energy required to keep going after you’ve started and gained some momentum. It’s been said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, but momentum is taking the second, third, and fourth steps.
This worksheet will help you identify all of the steps involved in seeing your goal through to completion so that you can put momentum to work in your life.
Section 4 – Dealing with Difficulties
As they are with everything else, difficulties are inherent to goal setting. There are going to be motivation issues, obstacles, setbacks, and maybe even some failure along the way. But if it were easy, everyone would be wildly successful goal setters.
Anything in life worth having is worth working hard to have, and that goes double for our goals. When you encounter trouble along the way, don’t give up on your dreams. Instead, dive into the goal-setting worksheets below to work through the rough patch.
These are sure to give you the pick-me-up needed to continue crushing your goals!
#26. Getting Motivated to Crush Your Goals
Did you know that there are two different kinds of motivation: Extrinsic Motivation and Intrinsic Motivation? One is quick and easy, while the other comes from deep within ourselves.
If you’ve ever Googled, “How to stay motivated,” you know what I’m talking about. There are a lot of quick-fix solutions out there, but a short motivational quote isn’t enough to fuel your long-term goals.
Instead, like finding our why, we have to connect with our intrinsic motivations to see real success. What drives you towards your goal? That’s what you’re going to discover in this goal setting worksheet.
#27. Overcoming Obstacles and Setbacks
As much as I love goal setting, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, right? Life has a funny talent for getting in our way from time to time. Things don’t always go the way we think they will. Setbacks, obstacles, and failures are bound to pop up from time to time.
The good news is, when we get knocked down, we don’t have to stay down. We can use several different strategies and techniques for bouncing back. This self-assessment will help you employ those strategies if you’re down and out right now, and they’ll also be there to serve you in the future. You’ve got this!
#28. Moving Beyond Failure
I talk about this a lot, but I firmly believe that, as long as you keep trying to achieve your goals, you can never truly fail. Maybe you won’t achieve your exact goal, but as long as you’re trying, you’re becoming Better Every Day.
However, sometimes, things happen that are well beyond our control. Perhaps a recession kills your business. That would certainly feel like a failure. Maybe you’ve spent two years working on a blog or a book that no one is reading. That might feel like a failure, too.
So yes, I admit that failure is an unavoidable part of life, but it doesn’t have to paralyze us or stop us from shooting for our dreams. If you’ve had a recent bout with failure, or want to learn how to bounce back more quickly, be sure to grab this worksheet.
#29. Taking Massive Action!
I’m a huge fan of investing in personal development. Books, podcasts, ebooks, free worksheets: these are all fantastic tools and resources, but all of the learning in the world wouldn’t help us achieve success if we never take action towards our dreams.
Another book on the shelf won’t change our lives, and another free ebook or worksheet won’t crush our goals for us.
These goal setting worksheets and self-assessments weren’t designed just to teach you about setting goals—they were designed to help you take your life from where you are right now to where you want to go.
With that in mind, I encourage you to start taking action towards your dreams and goals today. If you haven’t already, start using these worksheets to crush your goals. The final worksheet is geared towards taking action, and that’s what I invite you to do today.
Be sure to download all of these free worksheets, and you’ll be well on your way towards achieving massive success in your life.
Good luck, my friends.
Now, go Crush Your Goals!
