Adding Claude to my evolving goal flow

Tracking my yearly goals is a habit that has evolved in time. Around ten years ago I began formally writing down my yearly goals. I had recently become a manager at work for the first time and realized that I was unprepared for the task.

I began listening to a podcast called Manager Tools and it really taught me a lot, including how to set annual goals. From that point forward, I would think and document my annual goals at the beginning of the year. I would make a bunch of plans and execute a few of them and it was good.

It definitely wasn’t living with intention. Once I hit a busy patch or my priorities shifted because life threw a curveball at me I was off the track and reacting to life’s chaos rather than moving towards a target.

After a few years of this, I saw the pattern and resolved to do better. I wrote down my goals in markdown at the beginning of the year and would revisit them periodically. When I reviewed then I would note my progress and celebrate completions and it was good.

Still I have struggled to find balance with my goals. I am doing a much better job staying on track, but the check-ins were randomly spaced and it was difficult getting into a cadence of working on my goals yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily. I tried and the friction was too much. I wanted to avoid working on my goals, which is the opposite of what I want.

I want a system that is functional but flexible. I want to maximize the benefit without making the chore drudgery that I try to avoid.

Recently, I [wrote a simple MCP tool] that slices of my Obsidian notes that I select to the Claude UI. I like Claude as an AI assistant and I wanted to see what it could do with my goal setting process. I exposed slices of my notes:

• My yearly goals for the past few years
• My values and vision that have my longer term desires
• My daily notes for the past 30 days that can contain my thoughts on what I’m working on for a given day

This project has been very interesting. One of LLM’s shortcomings is that it is trained on all sorts of data, but it doesn’t have any context of my life.

Integrating my notes has given me the ability to ask questions along the following themes:

• I have a few hours this weekend, what can I do that will help move me forward on my goals?
• How did I do this week on my goals? What can I improve?
• I’m feeling overwhelmed, what can I remove from my goals and stay on track with my long term planning?
• What are good future goals to help me move towards my long term plans?

Exposing my goals in a limited way to allow Claude to help me with my goals has been eye opening. It has pointed out areas where I have been too timid and should take the next step. Sometimes it’s been too ambitious and I share my concerns and it will adjust. Other times it will find tasks to move forward multiple objectives at once.

In all Claude has been a very useful addition to my yearly goal planning workflow and I look forward to seeing where the journey takes me.