The Goals Document
Three Questions That Turn Self-Knowledge Into Action
After the Personal Constitution, I had a clear picture of who I am at my core: my values, how I work best, what depletes me, where I want to grow. It was the most honest accounting of myself I’d done in years.
But a self-portrait doesn’t move. The Goals Document is what turns all that self-knowledge into something you can actually act on.
Three questions. And they look deceptively simple until you’re actually inside them.
Q1: YOUR TOP 3 GOALS
What are your top 3 goals for this year? The three things that, if achieved by December, would make you say “that was a great year.”
The constraint is doing a lot of work here. Three — not five, not ten, not a rolling wishlist — means you have to choose, and choosing means admitting which things actually matter and which ones are just pleasant to imagine. Most people carry around a vague collection of things they’d like to do someday. This question refuses to let you stay vague.
Consider what real goal-setting looks like up close: advance to a senior role at work, pay off credit card debt, run a half marathon. These aren’t vague. They’re specific, they have a finish line, and you’d know by December whether you got there or not. That’s the standard.
Q2: ONE FIRST STEP
For each goal, what is the one first step you could take this month that would make you feel like you’ve started?
This is the question most people skip, not because it’s hard, but because it exposes the gap between wanting something and actually starting. Claude doesn’t let you skip it.
The first step isn’t a plan. It’s the thing that proves you’ve begun: schedule a conversation with your manager, set up automatic debt payments, sign up for a 10K race as a near-term milestone. None of those are the goal. They’re just the proof of movement, which turns out to be the most important transition of all.
Q3: BUILD, KICK, PROTECT
Are there habits you want to build or kick? And habits you already have that you want to protect?
Build and kick are the ones we always talk about. Protect is where this question earns its place.
Habits worth protecting are usually invisible: a morning reading hour, a Sunday ritual, the quiet stretch before the day gets noisy. They’re working so well you’ve stopped noticing them, which also makes them easy to give away without realizing what you’ve lost. Being asked to name them directly forces an inventory most of us never take. Less about discipline, more about knowing what’s already holding things together.
YOUR SMALL MOVE THIS WEEK
Answer Q1 only. Three goals. No explanations, no context, no “because.” Just the three things that would make December feel like a win.
Edition 06 covers the final document: Your Work Strategy. This one shifts the lens entirely: not who you are or what you want, but how you work, who you serve, and what you’d redesign if you had the chance.
Until next week —
Nela