Goals that come back on their own

Some goals finish. Others are habits: read every week, invoice every month, review the books every quarter. Those two need treating differently, and the third step of the wizard is where you decide which one you are creating.

Time Frame does most of the work

Time Frame offers Daily Goal, Weekly Goal, Monthly Goal, Quarterly Goal and Yearly Goal for regular rhythms, then Short-term Goal (3 months), Mid-term Goal (1 year) and Dream Goal (5 years) for ambitions, and Custom Dates when nothing fits.

The choice sets the Start Date and Target Date for you, which matters more than it sounds. A goal without a target date cannot be late, and a goal that cannot be late will not keep you honest.

Making it recur

Beneath the dates is Recurring Goal. Use Make recurring to set a schedule, and Edit schedule afterwards to change it. A recurring goal starts a fresh period rather than dragging the old one along, so last month’s shortfall does not poison this month’s number.

That reset is the whole point. If you track a habit with a single long-running goal, one bad fortnight sits in the total forever and the goal stops telling you anything. A monthly recurring goal instead gives you twelve verdicts a year.

Choosing between them

Ask whether being at fifty per cent is meaningful. For “launch the new site” it is — you are halfway there. For “exercise three times a week” it is not; last week is over and cannot be half-done. Anything in the second category should recur.

Recurring goals also work well as milestones. A quarterly parent with a recurring weekly goal underneath gives you a long horizon and a short feedback loop at the same time, which is usually what people are reaching for when they set a big goal in the first place.