3 Favorite Tools For Reaching Your Goals

If you've ever set a goal, gotten excited about it, and then thought, 'Well, now what?!', today's article is for you.

May 07, 2026

Are there any TV shows that your family or friends quote on the regular? We’ve got a few in my family, and I am continuously amazed at how often they show up in our conversations.

One such show is Seinfeld. Today I’m thinking of a particular episode where Jerry goes to a rental service to pick up the car he’s reserved, only to find the vehicle is no longer on the lot.

“You know how to take the reservation,” he says to the clerk, “you just don’t know how to hold the reservation.”

This difference between knowing and doing, or even between knowing and knowing how, shows up in life in all kinds of ways. And when it comes to goals, we often set the goal - we just don’t always know how to reach the goal.

My coaching clients can probably quote me verbatim at this point: Getting clear on the what before focusing on the how is a key aspect of purposeful goal achievement. When we know exactly what we’re moving toward, figuring out the best way to get there becomes much more clear.

And although focusing on the ‘what’ is important at the start, we don’t want to stop there.

That’s where today’s article comes in. Perhaps in January you set some hefty goals to reach by the end of the year, or maybe you’ve just set them now. Either way, fantastic! Let’s make sure you have the tools to make achieving them a reality.

*A sticker - or maybe a quote card? - in one of my journals from several years ago.*

Bold Goals, Bold Life

One of my greatest coaching joys involves helping clients set bold and meaningful goals, then bringing them to life. When we set bold goals, we take bold actions to achieve them - thus becoming more bold in the process.

And when our goals are meaningful, we know why we’re taking those bold actions. The meaning and purpose behind our goals is the best motivator I know of, especially when it comes to bold ones.

If you’re not familiar with my world of Bold Goals, let me just share one quick point about them to get us started: You get to define bold for yourself. What may be bold to me might be a regular activity for you, and vice versa. So if you’ve set a goal and it feels bold to you - like it will stretch, challenge, or muster up newfound courage in you to achieve it - go ahead and consider it a Bold Goal.

And since we’re still in the first half of the year, I will speak throughout this article in terms of a Bold Goal that you want to accomplish by the end of the year, but know that you can adjust these tools to meet other time frames as well.

OK! Out of the many tools and strategies I’ve created, use myself, and share with coaching clients for achieving bold and meaningful goals, here are three of my favorites.

1. Breakthrough Map

If you’ve ever set a Bold Goal, clarified your vision for it, gotten excited, and then thought, ‘Well, now what?’, the Breakthrough Map is here to help.

This is often the messiest (literally) part of my Bold Goal process, but in the mess lies the magic.

I like to start my Breakthrough Maps with a “How can I…” question in the center, then randomly write down any and all ideas that come to mind that may help answer that question: Action steps, resources, people, tools, anything at all.

For example, you might write in the center of your map, “How can I become a more confident leader?” or “How can we triple our incoming donations this year?”

Asking in question form can enhance the possibilities that come to mind, and jotting down responses randomly onto the map can expand the amount and creativity of those ideas as well. (Fellow list makers, fear not - you can turn the chaos into a nice structured list soon!)

Challenge yourself to get at least 25 ideas onto your Breakthrough Map, with zero judgment or censoring on how good/realistic/etc. they are as you brainstorm. You don’t have to implement every idea, you just want to open up your possibilities before you begin mapping out your plan.

I dedicated an entire article to step-by-step ideas for creating a Breakthrough Map, including photos and examples, so I’ll keep this portion brief today. You’re welcome to review that article here if you’d like more detail.

2. Quarterly Success Calendar

An exciting part of setting a year-long goal is that, with that expanse of time, we can really be visionary and dream big. With all those months on the horizon, we could start a business! Write a book! Finish a certification program! Train for a race! So many possibilities. It’s so exciting.

A challenge with year-long goals - which could also feel exciting at first, I suppose! - is that with that expanse of time ahead of us, we might also feel like we don’t really need to do anything now. Like Brian Moran and Michael Lennington discuss in The 12 Week Year, the urgency just isn’t there; we’re likely to put things off for weeks, months, even a good portion of the year - then scramble at the end to try and fill the gaps.

The Quarterly Success Calendar helps prevent that procrastination, while also eliminating the overwhelm of where to start.

A key element in achieving Bold Goals involves breaking them down into smaller, more manageable pieces. (Your Breakthrough Map provides an excellent starting point for this.) For a year-long goal, I like to help clients plan for four levels of action and achievement: quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily.

And as its name suggests, at its core, the Quarterly Success Calendar focuses on the quarterly.

Think of it like a year-at-a-glance calendar for your Bold Goal, highlighting quarters - with a bit of attention toward the months within each quarter, too. While action plans tend to become quite detailed (especially for Bold Goals), I suggest keeping the Quarterly Success Calendar to one page, providing the big-picture view to keep you on track and to remind you how far you’ve come. You can utilize this in a variety of ways, such as:

Reverse-engineering your goal. If you know where you want to be at the end of the year, work backwards from there to define your quarterly milestones.
Identifying a monthly priority. If this quarter’s milestone involves increasing your sales, for example, one month’s priority might focus on streamlining your internal systems, another’s on expanding your relationships through networking, and so on. This doesn't mean you’ll only act on that one area each month, but pointing to it as a high-level priority that will receive dedicated attention.
Celebrating wins. You might not have a supervisor or cheering squad giving you a hearty ‘Good job!’ for all that you do - so make sure you do this for yourself! You can utilize the Quarterly Success Calendar to document highlights and wins each quarter.

Having a tool specifically focused on the quarterly overview makes the goal more present than an endpoint way off in the distance, yet allows enough time (we can accomplish a good amount in three-month segments!) for significant action.

I also suggest including your purpose statement, core values, and related elements right on this tool as well. It’s beneficial to keep those important reminders front-and-center whenever and wherever possible.

3. Weekly Time Map

You’ve likely seen the structure of a weekly time map before - perhaps even every day when you log in to your schedule. The format is nothing new, but perhaps the way you use it to achieve your bold and meaningful goal is new.

The most basic way I use the Weekly Time Map is to map out when, specifically, I will dedicate time during the upcoming seven days to my goal. If I leave it for ‘whenever I have a free moment,’ my goal will rarely receive attention. And while I can’t necessarily work on my Bold Goal every single day, I do strive to make progress on it every week.

And, like Jerry Seinfeld suggested regarding his car reservation, I not only block the time, I also do everything within my power to preserve and utilize that time for its intended purpose. No catching up on emails or putting away laundry during dedicated Bold Goal time.

The most profound way I utilize this tool, however, is as an Ideal Time Map. For this, I will print out a copy on paper, pull out my goals and top priorities, and map out what my ideal week looks like. For example, I may decide that dedicating four hours per week toward my Bold Goal will be sufficient, so I might block a two-hour segment every Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning for just that purpose.

I think of the Ideal Time Map like a vision board, but for my time: I’m not necessarily able to live the ideal every week, but having it mapped out reminds me what matters most, what I’m moving toward, and where I do, ideally, want to devote my time.

And since our goals don’t occur in a vacuum separate from the rest of our lives, I incorporate both the personal and professional into the Ideal Time Map. For example, I might block 5-6am on weekdays for my morning routine, 4:30-6pm three days a week for workouts, and Saturday evenings for entertainment with family or friends. I’ll often use colored pencils in this activity to boost my creativity and to satisfy my inner eight-year-old.

I also typically keep my Ideal Time Map in the front of my planner or project notebook for frequent reference, particularly during my weekly planning sessions.

Know others who could benefit from this info? This article is open to the public, so feel free to share it.

Pursuing goals is about more than simply the achievement - it’s about who you become, how you grow, what you learn, and the difference you make in the process. And pursuing bold and meaningful goals, by their very nature, helps you become more bold and experience more meaning along the way.

I hope these three tools - the Breakthrough Map, Quarterly Success Calendar, and Weekly Time Map - help bring greater focus and ease into your meaningful pursuits. If you have any questions, feel free to share them in the comments below. And if you’d like one-on-one support in mapping and achieving your goals (including these customizable tools, among others), contact my office to schedule a Discovery Session and see if coaching is right for you!

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