The One Page Personal Plan – How Writing Down Our Goals Can Turn Them Into Reality

Where do you see yourself in 10 to 25 years? It’s a big question, right? Most people don’t take the time to seriously consider what they really want from life. But the truth is that thinking about your end goal can sharpen your focus on the present.

It’s like a football team chasing the Premier League title. You need a long-term vision of lifting that trophy, but every match, every training session, every tactic builds toward that. Without a clear goal, you’re just running around the pitch, chasing the ball, and hoping for the best.

A tool I use with clients is the One Page Personal Plan (OPPP), originally developed by Gazelles, which helps you envision your long-term personal and business goals. Many entrepreneurs start companies driven by personal motivations, and this exercise helps uncover those deeper reasons. Without a clear destination, you could spend your days driving around the block, feeling busy but ultimately going nowhere.

Here’s the truth: You must stop and reflect on your progress every 90 days. Set those 10/25-year goals as a direction of travel, but take regular moments to review and recalibrate. At some point, you might realize the goal is wrong—and that’s okay! Change it if you need to, but always keep moving forward. This is key to feeling momentum and success.

Step 1: Define Your Legacy

Before diving into the OPPP, I get clients to do a couple of reflection tasks. First, imagine you’re listening to your own eulogy. What would you want people to say about you? How would you like to be remembered? Or even better, what do you want people to say about you 10 years after you’ve gone? This exercise is about discovering the legacy you want to leave behind.

For many, this question sparks a “wow” moment. They’ve never thought about it like this before. They begin to reflect on the impact they want to make—whether it’s through their children, a cause, or a business. If you’re not working on that legacy now, it’s time to bring it into your plan.

Step 2: Reflect on What Makes Life Flow

Next, I ask clients to think about the last time their lives were really “flowing.” What were you doing? Who were you with? This helps create a “life works well when” list, giving insight into what gives them emotional uplift and reduces stress.

These are things you should aim to include in your life more often, and they should be reflected in your OPPP.

Step 3: Start Writing Your Plan

Now it’s time to move on to the OPPP itself. Start by picking a date between 10 to 25 years in the future—something significant, like your birthday or an anniversary. Then work through the following sections, thinking about where you want to be on that specific date:

• Relationships: Who do you want to be in your life? Children, spouse, close friends?
• Achievements: What do you want to have accomplished? Written a book, run a marathon, built a business empire?
• Rituals: What habits or hobbies do you want to be a regular part of your life?
• Wealth: Whether it’s money or time, get specific. How much money will you need by then? Or how will you build your business so you can spend more time with family?

Along the right side of the one page personal plan sheet, you’ll see the categories Finance, Fitness, Friends, Family, Faith and Fun. —these are your core pillars, like a team’s fitness, tactics, morale, and strategy. Strong teams—and people—succeed because they balance all these elements. Use these to frame your thoughts—how do your goals fit within these areas of life? And remember, faith doesn’t have to be religious; it could be a sense of purpose or spirituality.

And here’s the thing: just like a football team writes down their tactical plan, you need to write down your goals. Everything in your one page personal plan should be specific. Just like Cameron Herold, who wrote in his book Double Double that he wanted his company to become a Harvard Business Review case study—he wrote it down, and it became a reality. The same goes for Jeff Hoffman, who set a goal of visiting 50 countries—once he wrote it down, he built a travel company to achieve it. Be specific with your goals—write down the exact details, like an athlete planning their training schedule. When you put your goals in writing, they’re far more likely to happen.

Step 4: Work Backwards to the Present

Once your 10 to 25-year plan is clear, start working it backwards. What do you need to achieve in the next 12 months to be on track for those long-term goals? And what should you be doing in the next 90 days? It’s all about taking small, actionable steps—like in Stephen Guise’s book Mini Habits. Start small, something so simple you can’t fail at it, and build from there.

It’s like building a championship-winning team. You don’t win the league by focusing only on the final match. You focus on the next training session, the next game, and the next transfer window. The OPPP breaks down the process into manageable steps, just like creating a winning season—game by game, month by month.

For example, one of my personal goals is spending time with my daughters at the wakeboarding lake each week. These bite-size habits are what ultimately get us to where we want to be. It’s a small, manageable action that aligns with my long-term goals for family time. These bite-sized goals keep you moving toward your vision, just like a team focused on winning their next match – or my youngest daughter on landing her first wake jump!

Step 5: Review Every 90 Days

Every 90 days, review your progress. Have your 12-month goals moved out by a quarter? That’s fine! As long as you’re consistently reviewing and recalibrating, you’ll maintain momentum. Most people never take the time to do this, but those who do find it creates focus and purpose. Champions adapt their strategy at halftime, and you should too.

Dr. Gail Matthews, a professor of psychology at Dominican University, conducted research on goal-setting and found that writing down goals makes you 42% more likely to achieve them. If you update a friend regularly, that number jumps to 70%. Accountability, commitment, and writing down your goals really works.

In the end, this is your personal game plan. You’ve mapped out where you want to be and how you’ll get there. Now, it’s time to execute. Take stock every 90 days, just like a sports team constantly adjusting their tactics throughout the season. With the right focus, you’ll not only hit your goals—you’ll exceed them.

Remember, as I always say in my coaching, without a clear destination, you’re just running around the pitch. Get your OPPP in place, and you’ll know exactly where you’re heading, on and off the field.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get writing!