Joe’s Goals is a free web application designed to enable users to keep track of their goals. More specifically, it is an online ‘log’ or record that users can make on a daily basis in order to more accurately view their actual (rather than their imagined) behavior in relation to their goals.

Rating: 5

In order to really understand what Joe’s Goals is about, you have to know that (a) Joe’s Goals is not a to-do list, and will not be the best tool to use as such, and (b) it is also not a planning tool.

What Joe’s Goals IS designed to track, however, are those recurring activities/behaviors (goals) that a user would like keep track of, such as: working out, updating blog, giving wife/girlfriend a compliment, reading, etc. Although the examples just stated are all positive goals, you could also track ‘negative’ goals as well (a misnomer, I know); i.e. ones that you would like to do less frequently (e.g. buying lotto tickets, eating junk food).

 Joe’s Goals has a very straightforward grid layout where the column lables on top correspond to the seven days of the current week, while the leftmost column containts the user-defined goals. It is 100% Ajax based and everything you need to do can be accomplished by clicking on the grid itself, without the need to switch screens back and forth. Arrows on the grid allow you to scroll both backwards into the past (to check past performance) and forwards into the future. You can also define multiple tags for each goal and select a specific tag view instead of looking at all of them.

Interacting with the grid is very simple. After setting up my goals I can check or uncheck each grid to record an event. If I have “Post to Freeware Blog” as a goal and I make 2 posts on that day, I would click twice on the grid for that day for that goal, rewarding myself with 2 checks. Conversly, if I had, say, “Eat Sweets” as a negative goal and I ate a whole bunch of candy that day, I might give myself 2 or 3 ‘negatives’, etc. The interface allows you to give a weight from 0 to 5 for each of your goals, and actually keeps a tally of each day’s score, as a saintliness index of sort. You can actually get historic reports on these for 30, 60 and 90 day periods.

Other than goals, you can also define a so-called logbook, which is simply a grid that will hold and display notes on your defined subject, useful for when a mere check will not be able to convey satisfactory information.

One of the more interesting functionalities that Joe’s Goals has on offer is the option to share one’s goals with others, such as friends or significant others. This can have an obvious value in, say, getting people on the same page and/or to provide a form of social accountability. I didn’t really test this functionality myself but I think it’s quite an interesting one.

I am giving this one 5 stars for innovation and originality. I don’t think Joe’s Goals is for everyone, and I am guessing that quite a few people will not understand exactly what’s on offer here. Having said that, what Joe’s Goals actually does it does pretty well, and I expect it will get even better in the future.

Click here to go to the Joe’s Goals website. You can also go to Joe’s Blog for some interesting info and stats.