Articles

A simple 7-minute morning goal routine

By Cam Slater · 13 October 2026

Most goals die in February. Not because they were bad goals, but because nobody looked at them after New Year.

The fix is boring. Look at them every morning, briefly, before the day starts deciding for you.

Here's the routine I use. It takes seven minutes. You need a pen and one page.

Minute 1: write your three current aims

Not your whole list. Three. Write them from memory. If you can't remember them, that tells you something.

The single aim that would make the year make sense if the others slipped. Write it again every day. Yes, every day. Writing it is the point.

For each aim, write one step you can do today. Small enough to finish. "Work on the book" is not a step. "Write 300 words of chapter two" is.

Put the hardest one first. Do it before noon.

Write down one idea. A better way to do something, a person to call, a question to chase. Then circle the one you will actually use.

Close your eyes for a minute and picture the day's steps finished. If you pray, this is a good place to do it. Hand the day over.

Then stop. Seven minutes. Go and do the first step.

It's daily. The research on goals keeps finding that writing things down and checking progress matters. A morning page does both, every day.
It's short. You'll actually do a seven-minute habit. You won't do a forty-minute one.
It's on paper. No notifications, no app to open.
It ends with action. The page is only useful if the first step gets done before lunch.

The daily goal page from Your Goal Setting Plan is free to download: daily goal page (PDF). Print a stack and keep it by the kettle.

If you want the whole system behind it (the year review, wheel of life, values rank and three goal sheets), that's the full workbook.