Measure what matters in your own life.
Plain-English guides to personal goals, habits and metrics: setting goals you can actually track, building habits that stick, and measuring time, money, health and learning without obsessing over the numbers. Every guide links to its sources.
Articles
18 articles
Goal-Setting Theory: What Locke and Latham's Research Found
What decades of goal-setting research by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham found about specific, hard goals, commitment and feedback, plus the side effects to watch for.
Read · 6 min read →Goals That WorkLearning Goals vs. Performance Goals: When to Use Each
Why a hard performance target can backfire on a new, complex skill, how learning goals differ, and how to choose and sequence the two for your own goals.
Read · 6 min read →Goals That WorkIf-Then Plans: How Implementation Intentions Help You Follow Through
What Peter Gollwitzer's research on implementation intentions found, why if-then plans help you start and stay on track, and how to write ones that work.
Read · 5 min read →Goals That WorkPersonal OKRs: Objectives and Key Results for Your Own Goals
How to adapt Objectives and Key Results to personal goals: writing objectives, measurable key results, committed vs. aspirational goals, grading and quarterly check-ins.
Read · 5 min read →Goals That WorkThe Weekly Review: A Short Routine That Keeps Goals on Track
How to run a weekly review that keeps personal goals alive: the research on progress monitoring, the GTD Weekly Review steps, and a step-by-step template.
Read · 5 min read →Goals That WorkWhen to Change or Quit a Goal: Adjusting Without Guilt
How to decide whether to keep, adjust, scale back or let go of a goal, drawing on research on goal disengagement and reengagement, with practical review questions.
Read · 6 min read →Habits & RoutinesHow Long Habits Take to Form: What the Research Really Found
The 21-day rule is a myth. Here is what a real-world study of habit formation found, why it ranged from 18 to 254 days, and how to plan around it.
Read · 6 min read →Habits & RoutinesHabit Tracking That Helps: Record Progress Without the Nagging
How to track habits the way research supports: what to record, how to measure automaticity, how to treat missed days and how to use reminders without nagging.
Read · 6 min read →Habits & RoutinesCues, Habit Stacking and Environment Design: Make Habits Easy
Habits run on cues. Learn how to choose reliable cues, stack new habits onto old ones and arrange your surroundings so the behavior you want is the easy one.
Read · 6 min read →Habits & RoutinesBreaking Unwanted Habits: Cues, Substitutes and Vigilance
Why stopping a habit is harder than starting one, and research-backed ways to change the context, watch for slips, replace the behavior and plan for hard moments.
Read · 6 min read →Habits & RoutinesMorning and Evening Routines: Build Them From Small Habits
Build morning and evening routines that last by chaining small habits onto daily anchors, protecting a minimum version and adjusting the routine week by week.
Read · 6 min read →Habits & RoutinesA Sleep Routine You Can Keep: Schedule, Wind-Down and Log
A habit-based approach to sleep built on CDC and NIH guidance: a steady schedule, a short wind-down, daytime adjustments and a simple log. Not medical advice.
Read · 6 min read →Personal MetricsPersonal Time Tracking: How to Keep a Time Log You'll Learn From
How to run a short, honest time log using methods borrowed from the American Time Use Survey, and turn it into two or three personal KPIs.
Read · 5 min read →Personal MetricsPersonal Finance Metrics: Savings Rate, Net Worth and More
How to calculate and track savings rate, emergency fund coverage, net worth, debt-to-income ratio and financial well-being, using federal definitions.
Read · 6 min read →Personal MetricsActivity Metrics: Tracking Minutes and Steps the Smart Way
What federal activity guidelines ask of adults, how to judge intensity, and how to turn your own step counts into a goal tied to weekly minutes.
Read · 5 min read →Personal MetricsTracking Learning: Measure Skill Progress, Not Just Study Hours
Why feeling fluent misleads, and how to track learning with delayed recall, unaided practice and other output metrics backed by education research.
Read · 5 min read →Personal MetricsMood Tracking, Carefully: How to Log Feelings and When to Get Help
A simple, low-pressure way to keep a mood log, review it weekly, protect your privacy and recognize when it's time to talk to a professional.
Read · 5 min read →Personal MetricsWhen Self-Tracking Backfires: Proxies, Obsession and Fixes
How Goodhart's law shows up in personal tracking, from step counts to sleep scores, the warning signs to watch for and how to design metrics that stay useful.
Read · 6 min read →Glossary
53 Goal, habit and self-tracking terms explained in a sentence or three, from habit stacking to SMART goals.