Ask HN: How do you organize/track your personal goals?

- Monthly, quarterly, yearly? - notes, kanban, outlines? - how do you visualize your progress?

I started just writing it down in the Notes app included with macOS as a list and mostly keep it in my head. I guess I try to look at it at the beginning of the year and see what I achieved but it's mostly bigger generic points ("get raise to be over $amount", "sign up for $class").

I don't think there's much value in micro-managing your life, especially if a lot of things are out of your hand and there's not really a good way to measure progress. Writing down some top-level goals and keeping them in mind feels helpful to me and I don't think a specific tool or task managing methodology is needed there.

Most people already do that.

I want to be able to leave notes on my phone by using short voice commands, then later export everything to ascii, and analyze it on a computer. I'm not aware of a solution for this, but in combination with some data-mining, it would be a great tool for analyzing habits (and keeping track of diet as well).

For personal projects and goals I keep a couple of index cards aside - one I used for GTD - 2 columns on one side (Next Action and Inbox/New Items) , 3 on the other (Waiting For, Projects, Someday). And then another index card or two for notes and sketches. I find it good to limit them (and keep just three folded in half in a back pocket) , otherwise I end up dragging around a stack of cards and not using them. If I limit them but replace as needed, I seem to use them more and keep them to hand.

I redo my GTD card weekly and drop stuff off every time that I 'thought' I wanted to do but just the act of writing it down and reviewing shows me it is not a priority. For a while I kept my old cards, but now I ditch them.

GTD = Getting Things Done - https://hamberg.no/gtd/

-

I use a combination of a mental/back of index card kanban board for purchasing goals (a cadence of what I can afford to save/spend, leading me along a list of prioritised items I want ) - been thinking about making an app for it for a while, but beyond my skills.

Right now I have two or three 'main' hobbies - paddle boarding, brewing beer and cycling. While I have a good salary, we have 2 kids and a single income, so things I would have just bought without thinking just a few years ago, now get thought about for a good while before pulling the trigger. If anything I'm happier this way. I stops me buying 'hobby crap' that I never use, and gives me time to find the best item I'm looking for (is it worth buying that huge saucepan cheaply, or waiting to get a better one? Or second hand?)