Setting goals is a deceptively simple task—after all, you just pick a goal and work toward it, right?
Not quite.
There is no right way to create goals. You may encounter roadblocks or a lack of accountability or just need help figuring out where to begin. Luckily, there is plenty of advice to guide you through setting and achieving your goals.
Finding the best books for setting goals that work for you can help you stay motivated, focused and dedicated to actually reaching them. Start with these 15 books about goal setting and discover tips for creating the right goals for you.
Goal-Setting Books to Help You Achieve Your Dreams
One of the biggest challenges when setting goals is figuring out where to start. These five books about accomplishing goals can be a good place to begin your journey toward achieving your dream goals.
1. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
By James Clear
Rating: 4.8 (Based on over 138,000 reviews)
It can be a good idea to create habits that you repeat over and over to establish them as you try to achieve your goals. Perhaps you want to learn how to speak a new language, pursue a hobby or hit a particular goal day after day.
James Clear explores how you can reach your goals each day by developing simple behaviors that can help you achieve them step by step, such as finding time to create your habits and sticking with them. By overcoming a lack of motivation, tracking your habits and building an environment for success, you can use time each day to build a successful plan to reach your goals.
Buy this book on Amazon.
2. Do It for Yourself (Guided Journal): A Motivational Journal (Start Before You’re Ready)
By Kara Cutruzzula
Rating: 4.7 (Based on over 2,260 reviews)
Guides have their place in teaching how to set and achieve goals, but when we lack accountability or motivation, we sometimes need something more interactive and unique—something that makes us think differently.
Do It for Yourself allows you to build up your courage, set a deadline for taking the first steps toward your goal and—most importantly—understand your “why.” Split into five stages with exercises like, “Are you ignoring your intuition?” “Creating an anchor, mantra or mission statement,” and deploying the “[seeds] of a future opportunity,” the journal aids its readers in finding their momentum and overcoming their fear to reach their goals.
Buy this book on Amazon.
3. Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals
By Michael Hyatt
Rating: 4.6 (Based on over 2,360 reviews)
Whether you want to wipe the slate clean in January or start a 12-month plan at any time, a new year allows for making 12 new months better than the last. In this goal-setting book, author Michael Hyatt is here to help you not only learn to set better goals but to actually achieve them and set yourself up for success.
With five steps—and, purportedly, in just five hours—Your Best Year Ever will guide readers through overcoming roadblocks and setting goals to achieve throughout the year. Hyatt provides a clear and practical plan for a truly productive year alongside research-backed methods and advice, including the 10 aspects of life to direct your goals, the benefits of regret and how to curate your social circle.
Buy this book on Amazon.
4. The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life
By Robin Sharma
Rating: 4.4 (Based on over 34,900 reviews)
To achieve success, you have to find habits that maximize your productivity, and to form those habits, you have to set goals. In this case, one very specific goal: learning to wake up at 5 a.m. and using that extra time in your day wisely.
In The 5 AM Club, a book written in the form of a parable, author Robin Sharma guides readers through the process of beginning work earlier and maintaining productivity throughout the day. With topics including what influential figures focus on to become—and stay—successful, the “20/20/20 formula” and a “presleep” routine to end your day right and wake up refreshed, Sharma provides readers with an educational and compelling guide toward making the most of your day.
Buy this book on Amazon.
5. How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters
By Michael Bungay Stanier
Rating: 4.4 (Based on over 520 reviews)
We all have goals in life, but how many are worthy of our time, energy and effort? And how do we discover which ones are most important? Moreover, how do we go about setting them?
How to Begin is here to help you do just that. Not just your usual guide, it offers an example for its readers, as author Michael Bungay Stanier creates and perfects his own “worthy goal” to help you navigate yours.
The book itself guides you through the goal-creating process, providing insight into topics including the three qualities that make a goal truly worthy, the creation and testing process of a worthy goal and how to begin taking action to achieve it. Whether learning to set goals for the first time or ready to try something new, this book will help anyone define and set truly important goals.
Buy this book on Amazon.
Related: The 10 Best Goal-Setting Apps to Help You Stay on Track
Books About Goal Setting to Get You Ahead This Year
Where should you start when setting goals? Trying to answer that question can be daunting, but figuring out where to start can help you build a foundation that will set you up for success. These five books on goal setting can get you started on a path that can lead to your triumph in reaching your goals.
1. The Miracle Equation: The Two Decisions That Move Your Biggest Goals from Possible, to Probable, to Inevitable
By Hal Elrod
Rating: 4.7 (Based on over 1,800 reviews)
We all have big dreams. While some appear achievable, others seem like pipe dreams—something we may aspire to pursue but struggle to think we will ever truly attain.
Hal Elrod challenges that belief. Through a combination of “unwavering faith” and “extraordinary effort,” he believes that anyone can achieve their own “miracles.” They just have to be willing to try. In The Miracle Equation, Elrod guides readers through topics including how to become a “Miracle Maven,” defining what truly matters to you to discover your mission and his “five-minute rule” for feeling negative emotions—and then moving on.
It may not be easy to achieve your miracles, but anything is possible with hard work and a healthy dose of self-belief.
Buy this book on Amazon.
2. Your Goal Guide: A Roadmap for Setting, Planning and Achieving Your Goals (Goal Defining, Productivity, Work From Home)
By Debra Eckerling
Rating: 4.5 (Based on over 60 reviews)
How often have you set your goals, only to watch them fail because you spent too little time considering what you want? This stage of goal development is the focus of Your Goal Guide.
One of many books about goal setting, Eckerling’s guide is unique because it’s divided into two sections, alongside an appendix of resources and worksheets to assist you further on your road to achievement. While part two combines tips for success and overcoming roadblocks, part one focuses entirely on Eckerling’s D*E*B Method—that is, “Determine your mission, Explore your options, Brainstorm your path.” Alongside advice and case studies, the book provides a comprehensive and interesting guide for learning how to reach your goals by taking it slow and starting from the beginning.
Buy this book on Amazon.
3. What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting
By Tara McMullin
Rating: 4.4 (Based on 45 reviews)
Why do we seek to set goals? Do we want to improve ourselves or continually strive for that next thing?
Sometimes we might genuinely be focusing on our own growth, but at least sometimes, our reasons for setting goals are a product of the beliefs or desires that keep us on the road to seeking more—more power, more money, etc.
Tara McMullin is here to help us look past those beliefs and toward new destinations and strategies. With chapters like “Who Am I Without the Doing?” “The Satisfaction of Practice in an Achievement-Oriented World” and “Growth Without Striving,” What Works encourages us to focus less on the hustle and more on finding true satisfaction in our lives and goals.
Buy this book on Amazon.
4. The Art of Setting Smart Goals: Set Winning Goals and Live a Life of Abundance, Success and Achievement
By Anisa Marku
Rating: 4.0 (Based on over 170 reviews)
It can be challenging to identify the specific goals you want to reach or the steps you need to take to persevere through struggles and achieve your goal.
Anisa Marku breaks down successful steps you can follow to go from a kernel of an idea to reaching your goal—and beyond. Identifying what you want to accomplish, why you want to accomplish it and how you’re going to accomplish it can help you go from an idea to achieving your goals with success.
Buy this book on Amazon.
Books: Goal Setting, Planning And Building Your Future
It can be helpful to have both short-term goals that allow for quick advancement as well as long-term goals that you slowly chip away at and that provide lasting change. The following books can help with setting some of these longer-term goals.
1. All It Takes Is a Goal: The 3-Step Plan to Ditch Regret and Tap Into Your Massive Potential
By Jon Acuff
Rating: 4.8 (Based on over 440 reviews)
Could “having it all” be as easy as setting realistic goals? New York Times bestselling author Jon Acuff sure thinks so in his ninth book, All It Takes Is a Goal. In his signature mix of humor, honesty and hope, Acuff shares how anyone can have a career they love, a supportive partnership, reliable friends and enjoyable hobbies—all while staying active and fit.
The secret? According to this groundbreaking book, it all starts with setting attainable goals and remembering to be present during the rest of your life. Don’t just take our word for it! Check out the book to learn how Acuff bases his theory on real life, which he conducted with his clients, who all saw improvements in their personal lives, relationships and careers.
Buy this book on Amazon.
2. Goals: How to Get the Most Out of Your Life
By Zig Ziglar
Rating: 4.7 (Based on over 750 reviews)
Legendary motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar penned this powerful goal-setting book in his signature humorous style. Ziglar wrote more than 30 bestselling books on personal growth, leadership, sales and success and traveled over five million miles across the globe, inspiring people to reach their fullest potential with his talks, classes and mentorship.
With Goals: How to Get the Most Out of Your Life, Ziglar not only breaks down the goal-setting—and goal-getting—process into nine digestible steps but also explains the main reasons why people don’t set goals and how that holds them back. Whether this is your first introduction to Ziglar or if you’ve been a fan for years like we have, there is something useful for everyone in this inspiring book.
Buy this book on Amazon.
3. Go for Stupid: The Art of Achieving Ridiculous Goals
By Steve D. Sims
Rating: 4.7 (Based on over 150 reviews)
Societal norms have taught us to avoid the big, flashy and uncomfortable for fear of embarrassment and ridicule. But while some people may have escaped this box, many are still partially trapped—or haven’t left at all.
Go For Stupid shocks its readers, boosting you to move past fears of embarrassment and into a space where you can achieve what you set your mind to. With topics including the importance of mindset, examples of past stupid goals and the importance of asking why, author Steve Sims reminds readers to stop overthinking and start doing—no matter what other people think.
Buy this book on Amazon.
4. Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide
By Michael B. Frisch and Caroline Adams Miller
Rating: 4.5 (Based on over 180 reviews)
Take on your goals with happiness as you challenge yourself to find success by setting goals in 16 key areas of your life.
Authors Michael B. Frisch and Caroline Adams Miller use a unique approach in Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide, which serves as both a teaching book and a workbook. Each chapter includes a checklist with action items or lists about your goals and how you plan to accomplish them. This interactive approach can help you with your goals for your family, work, health, finances, friendships and more.
Buy this book on Amazon.
5. The 100-Day Financial Goal Journal: Build a Plan for Your Financial Future
By Alyssa Davies
Rating: 4.5 (Based on over 140 reviews)
When setting financial goals, it’s easy to fall off course. Whether derailed by something as necessary as an unexpected emergency or as frivolous as a treat for yourself, you have to find a way to hold yourself accountable.
But that’s not to say you have to save every penny you make. Life without its pleasures will drag you down, and if you have the money, you should be able to enjoy at least some of it.
The 100-Day Financial Goal Journal is both an accountability partner and teacher, helping you keep track of your goals while guiding you through setting and achieving them. For budgeting beginners learning to set financial goals to strict budgeters looking to save for the long term, this detailed and user-friendly journal is a perfect helping hand for a savings journey.
Set New Goals And Find Success
Whether you’re hoping to set and achieve short- or long-term goals, you’ve got to start somewhere. With our recommended goal-setting books, there’s no need to be intimidated to start your journey toward success. Whether you gain insight from one of the step-by-step guides or learn about habit-forming strategies and techniques, these books about goal setting are sure to help.
This article was updated March 2025. Photo by Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock.com
