A personal goals map is a holistic view of what you want to achieve across the major dimensions of life — typically health, career, finances, relationships, and leisure. Popularized by productivity authors like Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989), the balanced-areas approach helps prevent over-optimization of one domain at the expense of others. This template lays out five life areas as branches, with space for specific goals, timeframes, and progress checkpoints in each.
Personal goals are the set of objectives a person defines for themselves across different life areas — typically health, career, finances, relationships, and leisure. The balanced-areas approach was popularized by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989), which argues against over-optimizing one dimension at the expense of others. The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound), created by George T. Doran in 1981, is the most used standard for writing actionable goals — 'run more' is bad; '10km in under 55 minutes by December' is SMART. A Dominican University study found people who write their goals and share them with someone are 76% more likely to achieve them.