The Method
The outcome frame is a sequence of eighteen questions that turns a vague wish into a well-formed outcome.
It draws on work in linguistics, psychology, and systems theory about how people get clear on what they want. Most goal-setting starts with planning. The outcome frame starts one step earlier — by testing whether the goal is worth having at all.
What it does
A well-formed outcome is not just a clearly written goal. It is one that survives being questioned from every angle that matters. Five conditions define it:
Stated in the positive. Something you are moving toward, not away from. The mind cannot move toward the absence of something — “stop feeling stuck” gives it nowhere to go.
Specific enough to picture. “Be successful” is a direction, not a destination. If you cannot see it, you cannot recognise arriving.
Backed by evidence. Sensory-specific, measurable signs that prove you have it. Without them, people reach the goal and feel nothing, because they never defined what arriving would look like.
Ecological. It fits the rest of your life — your relationships, your responsibilities, your health — rather than colliding with them. Most goals fail here, not on effort.
Self-initiated and self-maintained. Within your own control. If your outcome depends on someone else promoting you, funding you, or approving of you, you have handed the result to a person who did not agree to deliver it.
All eighteen
The order matters. Each movement does work the next one depends on, which is why they are asked one at a time rather than handed over as a worksheet. Under each question is the condition its answer has to meet before it is worth moving on — the part most versions of this method leave out.
What specifically do you want?
Well-formed when: Stated in the positive — something you're moving toward, not away from. Specific enough to picture. And yours, not inherited from a parent, a boss, or a peer group.
What will having it do for you? For what purpose?
Well-formed when: It has to reach a core value, not another goal. If the answer is "so I can buy a house," ask what that would do for you — usually two or three times before you hit something that isn't a thing.
Where are you now, in relation to this goal?
Well-formed when: An honest inventory of the present: circumstances, resources, skills, relationships, energy. A snapshot, not a verdict.
What stops you from having what you want?
Well-formed when: Described from inside your own experience, not as blame pointed outward. "The market is tough" becomes "what is going on in me that makes this feel difficult."
When, where, how, and with whom do you want it? And when, where, or with whom do you NOT want it?
Well-formed when: Full context. Try the sentence: "I want [goal] by [when], in [where], experienced [how], and shared with [whom]." Naming where you do not want it matters just as much.
Does it fit other situations in your life?
Well-formed when: Adaptable across the contexts you actually live in — work, home, health, community. A goal that requires every other part of life to hold still is not one you can keep.
How would you know when you have it?
Well-formed when: Measurable, sensory-specific evidence. Something you could see, hear, count, or hold. A feeling on its own is not evidence — this is the question most people answer weakly.
What will you see, hear, and feel when you have it?
Well-formed when: Rich sensory detail from inside the experience. If you stay abstract, pick a scene: the first morning after. Where are you standing?
What do you look like, sound like, and feel like to others when you have it?
Well-formed when: Written from outside yourself, as if watching on a screen — posture, voice, energy, what other people say about you.
Is this outcome only for you, or does it affect others?
Well-formed when: The ripples mapped outward: you, close family, work, community, wider. What each one gains, and what each might lose or fear.
Is it OK for you to get what you want?
Well-formed when: The permission question, asked about the same outcome you named in question one. Listen for the quiet belief that you don't deserve it.
Is the outcome worthwhile?
Well-formed when: The cost counted honestly — time, energy, money, priorities delayed — and weighed against what it means. Peace with the cost is the signal.
Does it fit into your life as a whole?
Well-formed when: Congruent with your identity, responsibilities, and existing commitments. If it doesn't fit yet, redesign it — timeline, scope, support, boundaries — rather than abandoning it.
How will it affect the significant people in your life?
Well-formed when: Specific people, named. Both the gift and the cost. Then what you'll do to protect those relationships while you pursue it.
Is it representative of who and what you want to be?
Well-formed when: Two tests, not one. That it fits who you're becoming, and that it's within your control — something you can start and sustain without anyone else's approval.
What do you stand to gain?
Well-formed when: Past the external markers into the inner return: your inner life, your relationships, your work, your energy and confidence.
If you get your outcome, will you lose anything of value?
Well-formed when: What must be protected — marriage, health, integrity, family rhythms — and the specific guardrails that protect it. If the answer is "nothing," look again.
What is your first step?
Well-formed when: Small, concrete, and doable inside about seven days. Plus when you'll do it, and who you'll tell.
Where it comes from
The outcome frame is not one person’s invention. It is a distillation of about seven disciplines — linguistics, cognitive and behavioural psychology, systems theory, and others — that spent much of the twentieth century arriving at similar conclusions about how people form intentions and act on them.
Several of the questions have recognisable ancestry. The insistence on positive phrasing comes from work on how language shapes what the mind can represent. Evidence criteria come from research on why vague goals fail to motivate. The ecology questions come from systems thinking, and the idea that changing one part of a life sends ripples through the rest.
What is newer is the sequencing and the well-formedness conditions — the rules that decide whether an answer is finished. Those were refined through practice, and written up in Zēteō, which gives each of the eighteen questions a full chapter.
Common questions
SMART goals test whether a goal is well-specified. The outcome frame tests whether it is worth having.
SMART assumes you already know what you want and helps you write it down properly. The outcome frame spends its first four questions establishing what you want and why, then later questions checking whether it fits your life, affects the people around you fairly, and reflects who you are becoming. SMART never asks any of that.
About thirty minutes to work through all eighteen honestly. They are meant to be answered one at a time, with room to think between them, not filled in like a form. You can stop partway and still get a summary of what you have.
Question seven — how would you know when you have it. Almost everyone answers it with a feeling rather than evidence. The useful version names something you could see, hear, count, or hold on an ordinary Tuesday. It is worth slowing down for.
Yes. GoalX has a coach-led mode: the coach reads each question aloud and types the client’s answers as they speak. The coach gets a private panel with the well-formedness condition and what to listen for; the client hears only the question. There is also a way for the coach to pass a private aside to the guide mid-session.
No. You choose before the first question. The eighteen questions are identical either way — only the framing around them changes. The universal track uses no religious language at all.
No. There is no database, no browser storage, no account, and no analytics on the conversation. Your answers live in the browser tab and are destroyed when you close it. At the end you can download your summary and transcript or email them to yourself — that copy is the only one that exists.
Skip asks them one at a time and will not let you skate past an answer that is not yet true. Free, no account, nothing stored.
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