I have been utilizing an informal system of star charts off and on for a while. Usually things have to be getting pretty bad in a certain category: work, home, finances, etc, in order to prompt their creation and use. The theory is, we are forgetful people, and placing a chart in a prominent position in your home will be enough to change behavior in a positive direction.
The trick is, the items you write down have to be actionable. One could, of course, write down "don't f**k up so much" or "stop being a jerk" which although worthy goals are not indeed actionable. Neither is "ship a product" or "lose weight" or "go to venice." Actionable is that little thing you do every day that will make the achievement of the goal inevitable. It may be true that writing e-mails offline only, for later review and careful consideration, will reduce the number of self induced e-mail based traumas. If this is your disaster du jour, then only the actionable step is on your star chart and not the goal itself. For venice, perhaps that means skipping the second latte and putting the money in a jar. In a hundred years, presto, you'll be in venice. You get the idea.
I like to have the standard 2 dimensional x/y axis star charts have a scope of about a week. Lots of things can be solved with diligent effort within that time. Sleep deprivation, for example, or a backlog of chores, or getting back on an exercise program or writing on your weblog. Other things require broader planning, and more axis for the charts. This is where things get interesting from a design perspective. Say you want to go to venice and you have your daily activities toward that. You might have weekly, monthly, or quarterly activites that feed into that as well. Perhaps it is a stretch to take half a day a month at the library to read up on the area, or to check out another Italian tape to learn in the car. If you take the concept of a standard x/y star chart, but accomodate these periodic and one-off activities, the chart will no longer be square. Perhaps it has areas that fan out from each other, like a world map that is flat but sliced to show correct proportions. Perhaps it is circular with a small center and dartboard-style target areas in concentric circles, with broadest time periods on the outside. These are fascinating representations of your goals, especially if you can view them on a per-goal basis, alternating with an event list for the day. It goes beyond the concept of a reminder system into a visualization system. That's why I ultimately think this is a software product and not a piece of paper. But an x/y starchart is a simple concept to start with.
One of the high level benefits to providing such a system, is people need a defense against the culture of sloth. The problem with sloth is it is not nearly as fun as most people think. If we could fantasize about accomplishment in the same way we fantasize about sloth, just think what we could do. A visualization tool makes all that possible, eliminates guilt from the variety of trade-offs along the way, and scales expectations to the resources at hand.
For example, this morning I tried my first day of working at home. By all measures, it was doomed. First, I actually scheduled a few errands in the morning. My best working time, gone. Then, I thought I would spend a couple minutes on the bills. There is no such thing. After that, I mostly felt like reading Vanity Fair magazine and sitting on the couch. Then I remembered I forgot to call into a conference call a couple of hours before. You can imagine the guilt and distraction. So the work at home thing was a complete bust, at least for this day. There I am, brain fried, looking through VF hoping for a break from all the annoying things I've been feeding my brain. Let me share that VF is a lousy life goals visualization tool. Nonetheless, it tries. One ad for Tommy Bahama crows about the "endless weekend." This is a theoretical place where we can walk on beaches and the invisible waitstaff irons the linen clothing we so stubbornly insist on wearing. Is this what we really want to aspire to? Gaugain, in Tahiti, worked and drank his horse off every day, painting up a storm, undoubtedly suffering but likely normalizing out to the initial happiness level he brought with him when he arrived.
But I wan't thinking about all that. That's analysis. What I thought of, in the brief moment of admiration of the Tahiti lifestyle, was "I'm doing the wrong thing." Meaning, if I actually want to escape, and am tempted by that liquor (figuratively), perhaps I should do the right thing here at home and render the escape plans moot. The concept of sloth should not hold such sway. It's a myth, anyway. That's what I want to do with starcharts. Visualize your life, right now, absolutely terrific, going exactly where you want it to. All of a sudden you don't need anything else.
This is what I mean by reverse-engineering happiness, by the way.