Goals

Goals are a lens, not a list

A goal in Really Focus isn't a task. It's a lens the assistant reasons through when it builds your briefings, prioritises commitments, and decides what to nudge you about.

If you tell the assistant you're working toward $200k ARR by December, it weights revenue conversations higher. If you tell it you want to reach out to two dormant clients per week, it watches for adherence and warns you when you slip. The goal itself is never something you "complete" by ticking it off — it shapes how the assistant looks at everything else.

Two kinds of goal

Aspirational

An outcome with a target date. You'll know when it's achieved.

• "Hit $200k ARR by Dec 2026."
• "Land a six-figure enterprise contract by end of Q3."
• "Cut admin time below 5 hours/week by March."

Maintenance

A recurring practice with a cadence — weekly, monthly, or quarterly. The assistant watches for adherence rather than completion.

• "Reach out to 2 dormant clients per week."
• "Publish one piece of writing per month."
• "Quarterly business review with each retainer client."

Goals are personal, not team-wide

Each goal belongs to you, not your workspace. If you share a team with collaborators, your goals stay private — the assistant only ever uses your own goals as a lens for your own briefings.

Create one

In the app

1. Open Goals from the side navigation. The page is grouped into Aspirational, Maintenance, and Archive.

2. Click New goal. Fill in:

   • Title — the headline. "Hit $200k ARR by Dec 2026", "Reach out to 2 dormant clients per week".
   • Description (optional) — the why, the shape, any constraints. The assistant reads this when reasoning about the goal.
   • Type — Aspirational or Maintenance.
   • Target date (Aspirational only) — when you want it done.
   • Cadence (Maintenance only) — Weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly.

3. Save. The goal appears under its section and immediately enters the assistant's reasoning.

Or just ask the assistant

On Telegram (or anywhere you can chat with the assistant), describe the goal in plain language and it will create it for you:

• "Set a goal to land a six-figure retainer by end of Q3."
• "Track that I want to reach out to two dormant clients every week."
• "What goals do I have right now?"
• "Pause the dormant-client outreach goal — I'm focused on delivery this month."
• "Mark the $200k ARR goal as achieved."

Link goals to accounts and scopes

A goal becomes much more powerful when you link it to specific accounts (clients) or scopes (projects). The assistant then weights anything happening on those accounts higher when deciding what's relevant.

From the goal card, click Link and pick the accounts or scopes that move the needle for this goal. Or just tell the assistant: "Link the $200k ARR goal to Acme Corp and Globex."

Linking is a hint, not a hard filter — unlinked work still counts. It just nudges the assistant toward the right things first.

Status: Active, Paused, Achieved, Abandoned

Every goal has one of four statuses:

• Active — the assistant uses it as a lens.
• Paused — temporarily set aside (e.g. while you're heads-down delivering). The goal is preserved, just not weighted.
• Achieved — you got it. Moves to the Archive but stays as context.
• Abandoned — you've dropped it. Also archived.

Signals: how the assistant tells you where you are

Each time the assistant reviews your goals, it stamps every active one with a signal — a one-word read on how it's trending.

• On track — you're doing what the goal implies.
• Advanced — concrete progress this period.
• Stalled — nothing visible has happened lately.
• At risk — the deadline is close (aspirational) or you've missed cadence windows (maintenance).

Signals come from real evidence — your meetings, time entries, ingested emails, and memories. A "weekly outreach to dormant clients" goal goes at risk if no relevant activity shows up in the week's data; an aspirational goal with a target date inside 30 days and no recent progress signals the same.

Signals are visible on the goal card and inside every briefing — they're the assistant's way of telling you the truth without pestering you.

The weekly Goals Review

On Sunday evenings, in your local timezone, the assistant runs a dedicated Goals Review cycle. It only fires if you have at least one active goal, and at most once per week.

During the review the assistant:

• Re-evaluates every active goal against the past week's evidence.
• Updates each goal's signal.
• Writes a progress note — a short, honest paragraph you'll see on the goal card. ("Two outreach emails this week — on track. The Acme thread didn't move; consider a chase next week.")
• Raises nudges for at-risk goals so they appear in your Monday briefing.

Progress notes are written only on Goals Review and Weekly cycles — daily briefings stay light. This keeps the prose fresh rather than churning new notes every morning.

Goals in your daily briefing

Even outside the weekly review, your active goals are in the assistant's context for every cycle. That means:

• Commitments tied to goal-linked accounts get prioritised in the morning briefing.
• The end-of-day briefing flags slippage on maintenance cadences before they snowball.
• Pre-meeting prep notes mention any goal the meeting might move.

You don't need to do anything for this — the goal exists, the lens is on.

Tips for goals that actually work

• Be specific. "Grow the business" doesn't help the assistant. "$200k ARR by Dec 2026" does.
• Use the description. Two sentences about the why and the constraints sharpen everything the assistant decides about the goal.
• Link aggressively. A goal with three linked accounts gives the assistant much more signal to work with than an unlinked one.
• Keep the count low. Three to five active goals is plenty. Twenty active goals is the same as no goals — the lens loses focus.
• Pause, don't delete. Seasonal focus shifts are normal. Pause maintenance goals you're stepping back from rather than abandoning them.

What's next

• Schedules — build your own goal-review cadence on top of the built-in Sunday cycle.
• Connect Telegram — the easiest way to manage goals in plain English from your phone.
• Back to Getting started