Emotional body chart
Summary
Use a goal breakdown worksheet in sessions to help clients transform broad aspirations into manageable, SMART steps that sustain therapeutic momentum.
Guide clients to align their objectives with core values and personal strengths to ensure their treatment goals provide a genuine sense of purpose.
Help clients anticipate potential barriers early by developing proactive plans to navigate roadblocks and maintain progress toward their milestones.
Break down larger ambitions into smaller, weekly tasks with clear deadlines to make clinical progress feel consistent, tangible, and attainable.
Incorporate a breaking down goals worksheet into your practice to regularly track client progress and adjust strategies as their life circumstances or priorities shift.
Goal breakdown worksheets are helpful tools for helping clients gain clarity and direction with their goals.
This article provides an overview of goal setting, its benefits, and how to create SMART goals.
We’ve also included a free downloadable breaking down goals worksheet to save to your electronic health record (EHR) and use in your practice.
How to succeed at setting goals
Research shows that goal planning is associated with enhanced outcomes in mental health treatment and quality of life.
By setting goals, people are also more likely to feel aligned with their values, giving them a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment. However, it’s vital to ensure that goals are structured to make them achievable in order to keep clients motivated, focused, and to give them the greatest chance of success.
One way to set goals like this is to use a goal breakdown structure, such as the SMART goal framework. This structure breaks down goals into smaller and more manageable steps and helps clients get specific about what they want and how to achieve it.
Before using a goal breakdown worksheet, it can be helpful for clients to reflect on their strengths, values, aspirations, and areas for growth. They might also consider and plan for potential roadblocks to achieving their goals.
These prompts can help with this planning stage:
Reflect on core values
Values are the deeply held beliefs that drive therapeutic progress.
For example, if social justice is a core value, a client might set goals around advocacy or career changes. If a client is struggling to identify these, a values clarification worksheet can be a helpful precursor to the breaking down goals worksheet.
Utilize strengths
Encourage clients to reflect on the unique strengths and skills they can leverage to achieve their objectives. Identifying the tasks or environments where they already excel helps build the self-efficacy needed to complete a goal breakdown worksheet.
Identify areas of growth
Help clients pinpoint specific areas for development. This might include resolving relationship conflicts by improving communication skills or focusing on health outcomes like increased movement.
Defining these areas clearly within a formal goal breakdown structure makes the breaking down goals worksheet significantly more effective.
Plan for barriers
Anticipating roadblocks is a vital part of the therapeutic process. By identifying potential obstacles early, you can help clients develop proactive strategies to maintain momentum and ensure the goal breakdown worksheet remains a functional tool rather than a source of stress.
Goal breakdown template
There are several approaches to goal setting and goal breakdown templates.
However, most include the following components:
Goal: A clear goal describing what you want to accomplish.
Deadline: The timeline for achieving your goal.
Objectives: The steps you will take to work toward your goal. You might also break down the goal into milestones with weekly tasks.
Resources: The tools, support, and resources needed to accomplish your goal.
Track progress: How you will track your progress. For example, you might keep track of your weekly tasks, set reminders in your phone or project management software, or set monthly review goals.
Adjust as necessary: When challenges arise or we have to divert our attention to another priority, our goals can become overwhelming or demotivating. It's important to adjust our goals to ensure they remain achievable and manageable, rather than trying to manage two projects simultaneously.
SMART goal breakdown
The SMART goal structure provides a helpful framework to achieve realistic goals. The acronym stands for:
Specific: Define what you want to achieve.
Measurable: Track progress with tangible milestones and provide criteria for successful completion.
Achievable: Set realistic and attainable goals considering available resources, skills, and circumstances.
Relevant: Goals should be aligned with your values and long-term vision.
Time-bound: Provides a clear deadline for completion
How to use the goal breakdown worksheet
You can download and use the breaking down goals worksheet in several ways.
For instance, print or screen share the worksheet in the session as a psychoeducational prompt about how to break down goals. You may also print copies to leave in your therapy room.
Provide the worksheet to the client to remind them of what you discussed during therapy. Ask clients to reflect on their goals between sessions and report their progress at their next therapy appointment.
You can also share the goal breakdown worksheet with coworkers and peers, or use it as a framework to describe goals to supervisees or interns.
Lastly, combine the worksheet with other goal worksheets, like our goal planning worksheet.
Sources
Ogbeiwi, O. (2017). Why written objectives need to be really SMART. British Journal of Healthcare Management.
Massachusetts Health Workers Association. (n.d.). Goal Setting Framework Worksheet.
Rose, G., & Smith, L. (2018). Mental health recovery, goal setting, and working alliance in an Australian community-managed organisation. Health Psychology Open.
Stewart, V., McMillan, S. S., Hu, J., Ng, R., El-Den, S., O'Reilly, C., & Wheeler, A. J. (2022). Goal planning in mental health service delivery: A systematic integrative review. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
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