How to actually set and effectively plan all your goals to do everything? Especially if you are a young adult working or studying full-time and juggling multiple interests? Like learning a new language, starting a blog or vlog, staying fit, reading, travelling, picking up a new skill and … endlessly growing your hobby list.
Read Vietnamese version here instead: 5 Bước Đặt Mục Tiêu Đúng Cách & Lên Kế Hoạch Hiệu Quả (khi Bạn có nhiều Đam Mê).
I’ve been there too! Through all the excitement phases of setting new (sometimes ambitious and ridiculous) goals. The overwhelming tug-of-war between “I want to do it all” and “I have no idea where and how to start”. The thrill of setting vision boards and habit trackers. Also the classic procrastination of doing nothing or the failure of doing nothing consistently enough.
I love reading and experimenting into this topic, through years of personal trials and errors with different methods and tools, digital and analog.
I now know that goal setting for multi-passionate people isn’t just about productivity or time management. It’s about clarity, mindfulness, and most importantly, intention.
I also build a framework and an “infrastructure” of tools and practices that have actually helped me stay focused and consistently progress to achieve multiple goals and intentions simultaneously WITHOUT BURNOUT.
This post is the concise summary of all I have accumulated and applied successfully for myself. At the end of this reading, you can take over my 5-step framework of goal setting and goal planning. You can leverage a mix of tools like the Level 10 Life, the Lag vs. Lead goals, the Bullet Journal methodology and so on.
🌟 The best yet: I bundled everything in a FREE 20+ page-long e-book with accompanying exercises! You can use it to delve in immediately to develop your own system of goals, and start to track and achieve them.
The Struggle: When You Want to Do Everything, But Can’t Do It All at Once
Let’s be honest—being a multi-passionate person is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you’re curious, creative, and motivated. On the other, you often feel scattered, stretched thin, or even stuck.
Take me as an example. I used to feel like I was running in ten directions at once. Language learning and exam prepping. Working full-time and creating content part-time. Trying to get back into shape before summer. Also trying to get back to all the books I’d been meaning to read.
It feels literally like the movie title “Everything. Everywhere. All At Once” (a great movie by the way)
Being multi-interested is a gift (as you’d rarely get bored). However, without a framework, it can leave you scattered and unfulfilled. You might end up:
- Starting a bunch of projects but finishing only few or none at all.
- Feeling guilty for “neglecting” some interests or responsibilities.
- (worst-case scenario) Burning out from trying to do too much at once.
What helped me was learning to shift from trying to juggle everything at the same time to focusing on a few things intentionally for a season, then reflect, rotate and repeat.
To achieve this, we need a framework to set and plan goals that help us achieve all we want, step by step without losing focus and ourselves in the process.
👉 Let’s read about this framework next.
5-Step Goal Setting and Goal Planning Framework for multi-passionate people
I distilled this 5-step framework that includes both faces of “goal setting” and “goal planning” of the coin “how to not only make goals but also achieve them”.
Goal setting is about the WHAT: which goals to pursue and why.
Goal planning is about the HOW: how to break-down goals into actionable and measureable bits, as well as when to do what.
It is extremely important to keep in mind that: goal setting alone is not sufficient to guarantee that you’d achieve your goals, even if the goal is carefully and strategically set with intentions.
Similarly, having a detailed list of actions to achieve your goals, without the right purposes and measurements, will turn you into a delivery machine and leave you question at the end “have I done the right thing?”.
It is my motto that it is both the WHAT and the WHEN and HOW, or nothing. (You will see this play out everywhere in this blog, this post or any others).
There are 5 steps in total: the first 2 steps will be dedicated for GOAL SETTING. The next 2 steps will be about GOAL PLANNING. Finally, the last “bonus” step is to reflect, rinse, and repeat.
Let’s dive into each step!
Step 1: Reflect and Clarify your “Why” with “Level 10 Life”
As the very first step of setting purposeful and intentional goals, I like to check in with where I actually am.
Ask yourself: What areas of my life actually need attention right now?
That’s where the Level 10 Life method from Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning comes in. This method asks you to rate 10 areas of your life on a satisfaction scale from 1 to 10.
Here are the 10 areas:
- Health
- Career & Business
- Finances
- Family & Friends
- Personal Growth
- Fun & Recreation
- Physical Environment
- Contribution / Giving
- Romance
- Spirituality
You can write this list down onto your Bullet Journal notebook (I highly recommend not to do this exercise on just a piece of paper, but somewhere you can store and review in the future). Then just go down the list, one by one and score each area based on how satisfied you are right now.
Remember: It’s not about perfection, it’s about awareness. Nobody can see this rating but you, so give this exercise an honest evaluation.
Alternatively, you can use my free e-book which has a done-for-you template, so you can print out and fill or color in the rating. It’d be lovely to attach to your notebook as well.
I even twist the design so you can do a period-over-period evaluation the next time you review this exercise. (It’s super handy to see overtime changes and detect patterns, made by a Data Analyst nerd). Seeing if you have made a step further towards “Level 10”, the highest satisfaction level of life, is a great motivational boost to keep you going!
Step 2: Goal Setting with 1–3 Focus Areas Per 12-week Season
Here’s where a lot of us multi-passionates get stuck: we try to improve every area all at once. That just leads to burnout.
Instead, I treat my year like a collection of seasons. Each season lasts roughly 12 weeks, inspired by the 12 Week Year approach by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington.
I love to call it a season to romanticize it, but also because it reminds us of the time span of just 3 months or 12 weeks, in which we do our best.
This “12-week year” mindset redefines our “year” to be just 12 weeks long. In 12 weeks, there just isn’t enough time to get complacent.
Therefore, the 12-week year creates focus and clarity on WHAT MATTERS MOST and a sense of urgency to do it NOW. In the end, more of the important stuff gets done and the impact on results is profound.
With this change of mindset, pick 1 or maximum 3 life areas to focus on each season based on Level 10 Life scores from step 1. Ask yourself these 3 questions to help identify these 1-3 prioritized areas:
- Which areas are scoring low and feel important to improve?
- Why do I care about that area right now?
- What would a level 10 look like for me in this area? (be really specific here!)
In my e-book freebie, there is also a done-for-you template to guide you step-by-step through these questions to identify your focus areas for each season, with detailed examples.
Here is a quick example:
- In the 1st 12-week year, I might focus on Personal Growth (like improving German language proficiency) and Career (like building this new blog).
- An example of “level 10 life” vision for Personal Growth would be to be able to use German as comfortably as my 1st language in personal life and professional work.
- In the 2nd 12-week year, I might shift focus to Health and Fun & Recreation (like getting outdoors more, going back to swimming and hiking, and picking up my camera as it is summer time).
- An example of “level 10 life” vision for Fun & Recreation would be simply to travel whenever I can and capture the moments with my camera more often.
Choosing focus doesn’t mean I abandon the other areas! It is just that my energy and focus revolve around the ones I’ve chosen to prioritize for this particular season of 12-week year.
For instance, I do keep simple health-related daily habits, such as staying hydrated every day.
Prioritizing means in this case to make more specific goals to improve a certain life area, with a project, for example; and more important, prioritizing to make these goals more realistic and less overwhelming, so they are more likely to follow through within 12 weeks (more in next step).
If you’d pause and do the math, the 12-week year gives us the perfect amount of time in a calendar year to rotate through almost all 10 areas of Level 10 Life, even if we just focus on 2-3 areas per season.
It is also totally more than welcome to just focus on 1-2 area per season and not iterate through every area per calendar year. Some areas might even need more than one 12-week year to improve to a certain satisfaction level.
In fact, it is impossible to achieve a perfect balance in every aspect of life at a certain point in life. What matters is, to realize what matters NOW. That is a clear “why” to learn and a goal to be set.
Step 3: Goal Planning with Lead and Lag indicators
Once you’ve identified your focus areas with a clear “why” and “level 10 vision”,” it’s time to get even clearer on how to achieve this goal and create a Master Goal List.
Here’s where I borrow a powerful idea from The 12 Week Year book about Lag and Lead indicators, to create goals as Lag and Lead Goals. In essence, they mean:
- Lag Goals (or outcome-based goals) = the outcomes you want to achieve
- Lead Goals (or habit-based goals) = the habits or actions that will get you there
You can also think of them as:
Lag = result (e.g., lose 5kg, publish 8 blog posts)
Lead = behavior (e.g., work out 3x/week, write for 30 mins daily)
Every goal I set now has both a destination and a map.
Let me give you an example to elaborate further!
- Focus Area: Personal Growth – Improve my German language proficiency
- Which 12-week year: 2nd year, or April to June (any 12-week period)
- Lag Goal: Be able to have a 15-minute conversation in German by the end of this 12-week period
- Lead Goals:
- Study German vocabulary for 1 hour per day x 3 days per week
- Have 2 speaking sessions per week (even if it’s just with ChatGPT!)
When your lead goals are clear and you track them closely, the lag results often take care of themselves.
If you are a fan of S.M.A.R.T goals or have used this framework before, you may realize that planning goals with this approach would automatically translate your goal to a SMART one:
- It is SPECIFIC: we identify in details not only what needs to be achieved but also what needs to done, when and how often to achieve that.
- It is MEASUREABLE: we come up with lead goals that can be tracked on a daily, weekly, monthly basis; as well as lag goals that can be assessed at the end.
- It is ACHIEVEABLE: we make sure to break this vision down to the smallest action level with the realistic timeframe of 12 weeks in mind.
- It is RELEVANT: we bullet proof this by finishing Step 1 and Step 2 above, to make sure this focus area matters with a clear “why”and “vision”, which are then supported by related goals in Step 3.
- It is TIME-BOUND: we use the 12-week year period to create a clear focus and a sense of urgency.
In my free e-book, you can find another done-for-you template to create a Master Goal List. You can use it to brainstorm BOTH your lead and lag goals, in accordance with the identified focus areas.
Hang this template up as a reminder of what you are striving for. Or use the template as an inspiration to create your own Master Goal List design.
Step 4: Use a Planning and Tracking System That Fits Your Life
Your goals are only as good as the system you use to support them.
As James Clear, one of my favorite authors and the author of Atomic Habits book, wrote: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”.
It is also for inspirations from Atomic Habits that I start to adopt the habit-based goal setting and planning system. Almost everything I do every day, week, and month is set as a habit, which was broken down and translated from a bigger outcome-based goal.
As long as you complete “lead goals’’ (or habit-based goals), you can be fairly confident that you will achieve “lag goals” (or outcome-based goals) at the end. In fact, the authors of the 12-week Year book predicted a lag goal’s success rate at 85% lead goal completion.
Having a support system for lead goals also helps to keep the daily planning and habit tracking practice more clear, simple, and consistent.
If you only just start out, I sincerely advise that you keep everything super simple and light-weight. Digital tools like Notion are very powerful, but then they are too powerful and complex for such a simple, personal, and urgent demand, like daily journaling, planning and habit tracking.
After using Notion as a personal planner for 1,5 years, I decided to return to analog methods. (more sharing in a future post)
Here is what I am using and recommend to keep it really simple yet effective:
- The 5-step goal setting and planning framework templates (download for free via form above)
- A physical Bullet Journal notebook to practice Daily, Weekly and Monthly planning and journaling, as well as simple habit tracking
- For monthly planning and reflection with 12-week year focus: (new blog post coming soon)
- For weekly planning, habit tracking and reflection with 12-week year focus: (new blog post coming soon)
- For daily check-ins, planning and journaling: read about how I Daily Bullet Journal to keep focus and mindfulness
- Phone Calendar app (or any other Calendar apps of your choice) to timeblock
- Streaks app to automate habit tracking
By downloading the 5-step framework freebie, you also automatically become a member of our MyA5Letter list. This way you’d always hear from me first, whenever a new post or new templates come out.
Step 5: Reflect and Reassess Often
Don’t wait until the end of the 12-week year to check in. Build in regular moments to reflect and adjust.
For example, I have a short weekly review routine every Sunday to plan the week ahead, check my lead indicators performance, and adjust if needed. Nothing complicated—just a quick reset.
Here are some suggestions for periodic review of your lead and lag goals:
- Weekly: Check your lead goals: are you doing the work? If not, why?
- Monthly: Look at progress toward your lag goals: are you getting closer?
- Quarterly (or end of 12-week year): Reflect on what’s working, what isn’t, and what focus areas you want to shift next.
This reflection keeps your system flexible and responsive to real life.
I will keep you updated more on these routines in upcoming blog posts, so keep an eye out for my newsletters 🙂
Bonus Tips for the Multi-Passionate Minds
For us, the multi-passionate minds (maybe overachievers here as well?), it can be a thin line between being highly successful and fulfilled versus being burned out and disappointed.
I do hope the 5-step Goal Setting and Planning framework will be a success story for you. I want to throw in some extra tips to help remind us to protect our mental health and enjoy the ride, not just reaching the destination.
- Create a “Someday” list for all those exciting ideas not in priority seasons right now.
- Use time blocking to rest, because not everything has to be a goal to be scheduled in to do.
- Celebrate small wins. Seriously. Progress deserves acknowledgment.
- Don’t aim for perfect. Aim for consistent.
- “It’s an infinite game” mindset. Life is a marathon and not a sprint. Take your time to grow towards your goals and enjoy the process.
Final Thoughts
Whether you are an individual with multiple passions and personal projects, or currently “wrestle” with multiple responsibilities, what you need is a framework that works with your brain, your energy, and your life, in order to help guide you through setting, planning and achieving all your goals.
By using the Level 10 Life to clarify your “why” and “vision” of your own, shifting to 12-week year mindset when setting and planning goals, and balancing lag (outcome-based) and lead (habit-based) goals, you can actually make progress without burning out or giving anything up.
Try this approach for 12 weeks. See how it feels. Adjust as you go. And remember:
You can do everything—just one thing at a time.
READY to get hands-on to set and plan all the goals for your dream life? Hop on to my free e-book!
