How to set goals in Obsidian // Templates, Periodic Notes

Keeping resolutions is hard partly because people don’t build a tracking system. A practical fix is a layered goal workflow in Obsidian that turns yearly intentions into daily, visible actions—so goals don’t fade after the first week of motivation. The setup starts with a “Core Principles” page that acts like a filter: every yearly objective, initiative, and task must connect back to the principles that define what matters. Those principles are written with descriptions of what it looks like when they’re practiced and when they’re not, including items such as “Learning in public,” “Improvement,” “Essentialism,” “Honesty,” “Open-mindedness,” “Hard work,” “Creativity,” and “Kindness.” When a decision comes up, the principles are reviewed to decide whether an action aligns with long-term identity.

From that foundation, the system builds five levels of goals: Yearly OKRs, Monthly Initiatives, Weekly Goals, and Daily Tasks. The yearly layer holds a manageable set of objectives—five for the year—split into categories like Work, Health, and Wealth (with personal goals folded into Work). Each objective is written as an OKR with clear key results that can be judged objectively. For example, “learn a language” becomes “Portuguese” paired with measurable key results such as passing a DELE C1 exam or completing a set number of lessons, plus more social outcomes like holding a 10-minute conversation in Portuguese without switching to English. The key distinction is avoiding vague resolutions like “speak fluently,” because “fluency” lacks a clear decision rule.

To move from yearly intent to execution, the system generates monthly initiatives using Periodic Notes. Each month selects a small number of initiatives—typically three—derived from the chosen yearly OKRs. This monthly view is intentionally shorter than a quarterly approach, because three months feels easier to hold in mind and act on. Initiatives are concrete starting points that can be broken down further, such as finding an Italki teacher for Portuguese, watching Portuguese YouTubers, choosing a Portuguese Netflix show, or reading “The Little Prince” in Portuguese.

Weekly review then ties the plan to reality. Using the Calendar plugin’s weekly views, the weekly page includes an end-of-week checklist (inbox zero, handling physical mail, restarting the computer, task-system maintenance, financial reconciliation) to reset operations. It also embeds the month’s initiatives so they stay visible during the week. The review process includes looking back at what was attempted, what changed, and writing three focused goals for the coming week—again tied back to monthly initiatives, yearly OKRs, and core principles.

Finally, daily tasks prevent forgetting. The Daily Note core plugin creates a daily page from a template that automatically fills fields like the local date and language, embeds the three weekly goals, and provides a task list plus a log and a daily review area. The system emphasizes automation (templates and plugin-generated notes), limited complexity (only five yearly OKRs), and continuous alignment (everything links back to core principles). It also leaves one gap—content creation tasks—because that workflow is handled separately.