Vague goals don't fail loudly. They just quietly never happen. So I changed how I set them.

Before I plan what I'm going to do, I write what I want to be able to say I did. Not goals. Accomplishments. Goals are forward-looking and vague. Accomplishments are past-tense and specific. "Grow the business" is a goal. "Closed our first enterprise customer" is an accomplishment.

Once I have the list, the work becomes obvious. I'm not deciding what to prioritize, I'm reverse-engineering what has to happen for each of those stories to be real.

The uncomfortable part: you have to commit to a story before you know if it's achievable. I've had years where December arrived and I hadn't done what I wrote. But I still got closer than I would have.