Advice about writing goals is usually abstract. Be specific. Make it actionable. Know your why.
Fine as far as it goes, and much easier to understand from examples. Here are six ordinary goals, as people actually write them, rewritten so that a tired version of you in March could read them and know what to do.
The test throughout is the same: does this tell someone with forty minutes what happens next, without any thinking?
The first three
Get fit
As written: Get fit.
There's nothing to do to it. It's a condition, not an action, and every time you look at it you have to invent tonight's meaning before anything can happen.
Rewritten: Swim at Castleton before work, Tuesday and Thursday. Floor of one session in a bad week. Because my back stops hurting when I swim regularly.
What changed: a specific place and specific mornings, which removes three decisions made at six in the morning. A floor, so a bad fortnight doesn't produce failure. And a reason short enough to still mean something in June — and specific enough to check against, because if the back stops hurting you've learned something.
Sort out the pension
As written: Sort out the pension.
A category rather than a task. The next action isn't obvious, and working it out is invisible unrewarded work that gets deferred indefinitely.
Rewritten: Consolidate the four old pensions. Next: find the login for the Aviva one. Because I don't know what's in them and it's been eleven years.
What changed: one physical action with a verb, small enough for an evening. The rest of the steps don't exist yet, which is correct — you'll know them after the first one. Ambiguity is the most common reason goals stall and the cheapest to fix.
Write a book
As written: Write a book about surveying by December.
Two problems: the deadline is invented, and the goal describes a destination that says nothing about Tuesday.
Rewritten: Two sessions a week on the surveying book, Tuesday and Thursday, half seven to nine. Review in March: still the book I want to write? Because nobody has written the practical one and I've read all the bad ones.
What changed: a rhythm instead of a date, so there's no day on which you fail. A review point, which creates a moment of honesty without creating a failure. And no word count, because on a long project word count falls during the best month you'll have.
A practice with no finish line
Learn Spanish
As written: Learn Spanish.
No completion state, no measurement that isn't demoralising for eighteen months, no indication of what tonight looks like.
Rewritten: Twenty minutes of Spanish after dinner, working through the podcasts in order. Five minutes on a bad day. Because I want to read Márquez without the translation.
What changed: an existing habit as the anchor, a defined material so there's no choosing, and a five-minute floor — which is what gets someone through month two, when progress stops being visible and the practice becomes a nightly decision.
Note what isn't in it. No fluency level, no exam date, no promise about how long it'll be kept up. Those would sound more serious and none of them changes what happens after dinner tonight, which is the only test that matters.
Two that are projects
Ship the beta
As written: Ship the beta.
Sounds concrete and isn't. Shipping is a state, and the goal is silent about what's between here and it.
Rewritten: Get the scheduler in front of ten real users. Next: sit with the receptionist on Thursday while she books three appointments. Blocked: waiting on Priya for the signed build, asked on the 3rd. Not doing recurring appointments before the first ten.
What changed: the next action is the exposed one, named explicitly, which is what a stalled side project is nearly always avoiding. The blocker has a name and a date. And the scope is frozen in writing, which is the only defence against inventing a new requirement in month three.
Get a new job
As written: Get a new job by Christmas.
An outcome you don't control, measured weekly, producing a verdict of failure every week until the day it doesn't.
Rewritten: Two applications a week, Tuesday evenings. Because I want out of contract work and into something permanent. Separately: Blocked — waiting on Harrison for a second-stage date, interviewed the 12th.
What changed: the tracked thing is the behaviour, which is the only part you control and the only part that responds to effort. The outcome sits in the reason line. And the individual conversations are separate items with names and dates, so the silence that's yours can't hide among the silence that's theirs.
That last separation is the one people skip, and it's what allows a job search to stop for six weeks while still feeling like waiting.
What they have in common
Four things, and none of them is ambition.
An action rather than a state — something a person does, not a condition to be in.
A next step small enough to finish in an evening, defined now so it doesn't need deciding at eight on a Tuesday.
A floor rather than a target, so an ordinary bad fortnight doesn't produce a failure the goal has to survive.
And one short reason, concrete enough to check against later. Not a paragraph — a line that tells you in June whether this is still yours.
Where this gets over-applied
Not every goal needs all of it, and there's a real cost to over-specifying.
A goal with a place, a time and a defined material is excellent until the pool closes for refurbishment, and then it reads as failed when the only thing wrong is a detail. Treat the specifics as provisional and edit them when the world changes — that's maintenance, not weakness.
Creative work often resists this too. If part of the point is finding out what the work is, forcing it into a defined sequence produces an outline you'll abandon. Specify the next action and leave the route open.
The rule that survives everywhere: whatever you write down should be readable by a tired person in March who has forty minutes and no memory of what you were thinking.
If you only take one thing from the six: write the next action, not the ambition. The ambition belongs in the reason line, where it can do its job without being the thing you're measured against every week.
Related: Write the goal so tomorrow-you knows what to do · SMART goals: what survives and what doesn't · Outcome goals vs process goals
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