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Once a year, usually around New Year or your birthday, it helps to step back and decide what the next twelve months are for. This page shows one way to do that in Heym: start from your life areas, choose a few goals for each, break them into quarters, and check in every month so the plan doesn’t stay in January.

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Start with each life area

Your life areas are the parts of your life you want to look after, such as health, work or family. Before you pick goals, open each one and write down what a good year in it looks like.
  1. Click Areas in the sidebar and open an area.
  2. Point just above the area’s name. Add cover and Show vision board appear, plus Add description while the area has none.
  3. Click Add description and write what a good year in this area looks like. The empty line asks What does success look like in this area?
The top of the Sport & Health area page with Add cover and Show vision board above the name, and the vision Move every day and stay strong into my 60s below it.

The buttons that appear above an area's name

To collect pictures, click Show vision board, then click the dashed + tile and choose Upload image, or paste a picture with ⌘V.
The Sport & Health area page with an empty vision board below the vision line: a single dashed tile with a plus sign.

An empty vision board with its + tile

Add cover adds a cover in the area’s color across the top of the page. To use a picture instead, point at the cover and click Change. Not every area needs a goal this year. An area you’re happy with can stay as it is. See Life areas.

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Pick one to three goals per area

A goal is something you want to reach, with an end. “Run a half-marathon” is a goal. “Exercise” is an area, and “run three times a week” is better as a habit.
  • On the area’s page, click Add goal. The new goal already belongs to that area.
  • Or open Goals, click New goal, then set its Life area.
Fewer goals get more done. If you end up with more than ten across all areas, keep the ones that would matter most by December.
On the Free plan you can have 3 goals at a time, and subgoals count as goals, so pick the two or three areas that matter most this year. Completed goals don’t count toward the limit; archived goals do. See Free, Pro and Lifetime.

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Give each goal a start date and a deadline

Open the goal and click Date under its name. Turn on Deadline, then click the start day and the last day in the calendar. The Goals list then shows how much time is left, for example 6m left. A deadline doesn’t need to be December 31. “Run a half-marathon” ends on race day; “Read 24 books” can run a full year from today.

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Break a goal into quarterly subgoals

A year is too long to plan in one piece. Split each goal into three or four subgoals, one per quarter, each with its own deadline.
1

Add the subgoals

Open the goal, scroll to Subgoals and click Add subgoal. Name it for what you’ll have done by the end of the quarter, for example “Finish a 16 km long run” by the end of March.
2

Date each one

Open each subgoal and set its Date the same way as the goal’s, ending on the last day of its quarter.
3

Let the subgoals fill the goal

Back on the goal, click the bar under Progress and choose Subgoal progress. The goal’s progress is now the average of its subgoals.
The menu under a goal's Progress bar with three choices: Completed tasks (e.g. 3 of 5 tasks done = 60%), Subgoal progress (Average progress across subgoals), which is checked, and Manual (Track any value toward a target).

Choose how the goal measures progress

The goal Take on more leadership responsibility in Work & Career, dated Sep 5 to Feb 18, 2027, at 67%. The progress chart reads 1 of 3 subgoals completed, and the Subgoals section lists Mentor two junior designers at 100%, Lead the Q4 planning offsite at 50% and Give one talk at the all-hands at 50%.

Subgoal progress: the goal's bar is the average of its subgoals

Subgoals go one level deep: a subgoal can’t have subgoals of its own. Each subgoal measures its own progress, by Completed tasks or Manual. More in Goals.
On the Free plan, a goal with three subgoals counts as four goals, one more than Free allows. Instead, keep one goal and add a task per quarter (for example “Q1: run 10 km”), each with a date and aligned to the goal. Set the goal’s progress to Completed tasks, and it fills as you finish each quarter.

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Connect the work to the goal

A goal only moves when something points at it.
  • Tasks: open a task and set Alignment to the goal or one of its subgoals. With Completed tasks progress, each finished task moves the bar.
  • Projects: for a goal with many steps, create a project and set its Alignment to the goal. The project shows on the goal’s page.
  • Habits: a habit can be aligned to a goal too, so you see them together, but completing a habit doesn’t change the goal’s progress.

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Check in once a month

Make a repeating task so the check-in happens: press C, type Monthly goal check-in and click Create. Open it from your Inbox, click Date, pick a day and choose Repeat → Monthly. For a rule like the first Sunday of every month, use Custom. See Repeating tasks. During the check-in:
  1. Open Goals, click the view settings button and set Sort to Deadline.
  2. For goals you track by hand, open each one, click Update and log the new number.
  3. Look at this quarter’s subgoals. If one is behind, give its next task a date this week, or move the subgoal’s deadline and say why in its description.
The weekly review covers the smaller loop: goals, habits and next week’s tasks.

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At the end of the year

  • Finished goals: open the goal, click ⋯ and choose Mark completed. If it still has open subgoals, Heym asks whether to Complete all or Just this goal.
  • Goals you’re dropping: open the goal, click ⋯ and choose Archive. They disappear from the list but aren’t deleted. Turn on Show archived in the Goals view settings to see them again.
  • Looking back: turn on Show completed in the Goals view settings to list the goals you finished.

Goals

Dates, subgoals and the three ways to measure progress.

Life areas

Write a vision and build a vision board for each area.

Weekly review

The weekly loop that keeps yearly goals moving.

Free, Pro and Lifetime

How many goals the Free plan allows, and what counts.