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

Semi-Related: How do you come up with long-term-goals? Owning a car in the Bay is worthless, real estate is too expensive. Traveling the world is nice, but it might get boring after some years.

I kinda like my work and my life, but I feel like I should have a big future goal.

I used to keep my goals in a journal and review it yearly but it didn't help me stay on track. After a few months I mostly forgot the goals I set until the next year. Now, I'm trying to review my big goals quarterly. I have Kanban boards for each goal (e.g. home improvement, skills development, side projects) in Trello that track task state really well.

But, Kanban boards by themselves still leave a gap for me. They're great at tasks but not necessarily how those tasks fit in with my goals. For that, I'm trying to be more proactive about what I choose to work on each day (staying in quadrant 2 for those that have read 7 Habits[1]). I'm building Natrium[1] to help me with that. Every day it reminds you what your long-term goals are and prompts you to enter what you plan to do for the day.

On the backside, every week it prompts you to review your progress, a bit like an iteration retrospective in scrum. This helps me stay mindful about what I achieved the past week and where I need to change focus. Because it organizes the retro per-goal, it's easy to see when I'm avoiding working on a goal or putting too much focus on one at the expense of others. For example, this summer I've spent way too much time on lawn care instead of my other goals.

It's very new and doesn't have all the features yet, but if you have any feedback I'd love to hear it!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effecti... [1] https://natriumapp.com

I can see what you mean and you won't have that itch scratched until you find what drives you. I'm an outdoorsman myself, but a few goals I have are building a rally car initially purchased under $1000. You would be able to teach yourself some mechanics without breaking the bank. That skill will transfer to many things. I can't stress the kind of debugging it takes to work on a car. It's debugging code in hard mode because to 'test' your code you have to buy a part. Forces you to really think about things.

You could also start hiking taller and taller mountains. 14k or higher is where it starts getting fun. The mountains get as high as you want.

Learn how to ride a motorcycle. Super useful if you live in CA. A lot of people think its too dangerous, but honestly a little danger is good for the bones. We put ourselves in too many bubbles. The long-term goal could be to ride down Baja.

Have you tried to pick up cooking? Make advances recipes? You could have a goal of cooking for a huge party and everyone being amazed at the food.

I built an app for this for myself. Showed it to some friends casually and they really liked it, so I launched it:

https://www.aspireapp.io

It's positioned as a career development app but it can be used for anything, really.

I've heard to pieces of advice:

1. Pick an unobtainable goal. I had a big goal that I achieved and the sense of diretionlessness was real. Some people say it's better to have a goal you can never finish like "meet as many artists as you can" or "end hunger" as it'll continue to be your guidepost in life.

2. Enjoy the process. If you're working just to get to your goal and you achieve it, you'll have a few moments of bliss when you do and then it will fade. If you enjoy the process itself rather than just the end result then you can experience bliss more often.