How to Use the Great Lock‑In Trend to Choose Your Top Money Goal with a Focus‑Energy Matrix

Author Zoe

Zoe

Published on

The Great Lock‑In trend has turned early fall into a kind of “mini new year” on TikTok: a bounded stretch from roughly September through the end of the year to lock in on personal goals, including money goals. Reporting from the Associated Press and Forbes describes it as a seasonal “hyperfocus” window and temporal landmark—something that makes it feel easier to reset intentions and routines without waiting for January. In a year where many people feel squeezed by an uncertain economy, Vox notes that this kind of structured arc can restore a sense of agency through simple, repeatable habits rather than extreme challenges.

In this guide, you’ll use that same Great Lock‑In energy to choose one top money goal and design a plan around a Focus‑Energy Matrix and a weighted decision matrix. The aim is not a perfect choice, but a good‑enough fit for your current season.

Values warm‑up (before you touch the numbers)

Before we rank anything, let’s surface what actually matters to you in this Lock‑In.

You can journal or just think through these three prompts:

  1. Feelings first:
    “Over the next 6–12 weeks, the feelings I most want around money are… (for example: calmer, more in control, less scattered, more hopeful).”

  2. Safety vs. growth:
    “Right now, I’m more pulled toward:
    – shoring up safety (like buffers and debt), or
    – funding growth (like future plans, moves, or opportunities)? Why?”

  3. Season check:
    “Given my current workload, caregiving, and mental health, what level of challenge feels sustainable: gentle, moderate, or intense?”

Keep your answers nearby; they’ll guide how you weight criteria in your matrix and how ambitious your Great Lock‑In plan should be. Sources on the trend—from the AP to the New York Post and Gymshark—consistently stress small, realistic goals, progress over perfection, and pacing yourself so you don’t burn out halfway through the season.

Step 1: Do a gentle Great Lock‑In audit

Most financial and wellness experts quoted in coverage of the Great Lock‑In recommend starting with an audit rather than jumping straight into action.

Drawing on the Associated Press and Forbes:

  • Review the last 1–3 months of money flow. Scan bank activity, card statements, or a simple spending log for where your money actually went—especially categories like food, transport, and subscriptions. If you use a lightweight tracker such as Monee, you can quickly see which categories spike more often than you expected.
  • Notice your “stalled resolutions.” AP reporting suggests revisiting goals you set earlier in the year but didn’t sustain—like “spend less on takeout” or “build savings”—and asking why they stalled (too vague, too big, wrong season?).
  • Name your pain points and bright spots. Where do you feel the most stress (for example, high‑interest balances or no buffer)? And where do you already feel solid (perhaps a steady income or a habit that’s working)?

Vox’s coverage of the trend emphasizes that Lock‑In routines work best when they’re coping tools, not self‑punishment: they’re there to help you reclaim control in an uncertain economy through small, controllable money rituals.

Step 2: List your money goals, then narrow with basic priorities

Now capture everything your brain is juggling.

  1. Brain‑dump your financial tasks and goals.
    Include items like:

    • Build or top up an emergency fund
    • Pay down high‑interest cards
    • Catch up on bills
    • Start or increase retirement savings
    • Save for a move, education, or a big purchase

  2. Sort them using an Eisenhower‑style money grid.
    Financial therapist Lindsay Bryan‑Podvin uses the Eisenhower Matrix to classify money tasks into:

    • Do Now (urgent + important) – e.g., past‑due bills, high‑interest debt, essential insurance.
    • Do Later (important, not urgent) – e.g., retirement enrollment, future home savings.
    • Delegate – e.g., autopay for minimum payments or automatic transfers to savings.
    • Delete – items that don’t truly matter right now.

    This reduces decision fatigue and ensures only a few items qualify as genuine “Do Now” candidates for your Lock‑In focus.

  3. Layer in classic financial planning priorities.
    Forbes contributor Andrew Rosen outlines a typical sequence:

    • Tackle destructive high‑interest debt first.
    • Build emergency savings (often a few months of expenses).
    • Then increase retirement savings.
    • Only afterward fund other aspirations (home upgrades, college, etc.).

    Another Forbes piece from Financial Finesse encourages listing major goals, estimating costs and timelines, and then ranking them by importance and feasibility—accepting that some will be scaled back, delayed, or paused.

  4. Embrace “one goal at a time.”
    Simple.Money argues that focusing on a single financial goal boosts motivation and makes it easier to allocate money, time, and attention effectively. The expert summaries across all sources converge on this: one well‑defined goal beats five competing ones during a Lock‑In.

From your “Do Now” list, choose 2–3 serious contenders for your top money goal. You’ll feed these into the matrix next.

Step 3: Build your weighted decision matrix

Now we turn your short list into a structured decision.

You’ll rate each potential goal against shared criteria, using:

  • Weights (1–5) for how important each criterion is to you right now.
  • Scores (1–5) for how well each goal meets that criterion.

Here’s a blank matrix you can copy:

Criterion Weight (1–5) Goal A Score (1–5) Goal B Score (1–5) Goal C Score (1–5)
Reduces financial risk / stress
Fits my current budget and life season
Shows visible progress in 6–10 weeks
Aligns with my values for this fall
Energy required each week feels sustainable

How to fill it in:

  1. Set your weights (1–5).
    Using your values warm‑up and the audit:

    • If you’re losing sleep over risk, “Reduces financial risk / stress” might be a 5.
    • If your schedule is packed, “Energy required each week feels sustainable” might also be a 4–5, echoing AP and New York Post advice to avoid all‑or‑nothing sprints and treat the Lock‑In like a manageable 5K.
    • If you crave quick wins, “Shows visible progress in 6–10 weeks” might get a higher weight, in line with coach Lori Sullivan’s suggestion to keep the window to roughly 10 weeks so it doesn’t collide with holiday overload.

  2. Score each goal (1–5) per criterion.
    For example (keep these as your own judgments):

    • A high‑interest card payoff might score 5 on “Reduces risk,” 4 on “Visible progress,” but maybe 3 on “Energy required.”
    • A starter emergency fund might score 4 across risk, fit, and progress.

  3. Calculate weighted scores.
    For each cell: Weight × Score. Then:

    • Add each column to get a total score per goal.
    • The highest total is your provisional top money goal.

You’ve just built a tailored decision tool that combines classic priority guidance (from Forbes, Financial Finesse, and Simple.Money) with what actually matters to you this season.

Step 4: Stress‑test your decision by swapping weights

To make trade‑offs explicit—and to avoid over‑trusting a single math pass—stress‑test your matrix.

  1. Identify your tension points.
    Maybe you feel torn between:

    • Safety now vs. faster visible progress, or
    • Emotional relief vs. strict budget fit.

  2. Swap two weights and recompute.
    For example:

    • Lower “Visible progress” from 4 to 2 and raise “Reduces risk” from 4 to 5, or the other way around.
    • Recalculate the totals.

  3. Notice what changes.

    • If the same goal still wins, your choice is robust across different emphasis.
    • If a different goal rises to the top, that reveals a real trade‑off, not a mistake.

  4. Write down what you’re okay giving up.
    Inspired by the trade‑off framing in Financial Finesse:

    • “For this Lock‑In, I’m okay seeing slower visible progress on travel savings so that I can reduce high‑interest debt.”
    • Or, “I’m okay with a smaller emergency buffer in the short term so I can catch up on a specific bill.”

The aim isn’t to find the “objectively right” answer, but to choose consciously, with your compromises written down rather than hidden.

Step 5: Plan your Lock‑In with the Focus‑Energy Matrix

Now that you’ve chosen a top goal, you can use the Focus‑Energy Matrix—as described by Red Centre Global and YouExec—to decide when and how to work on it.

The matrix has two axes:

  • Focus: low → high
  • Energy: low → high

And four zones:

  • Purposefulness (high focus, high energy).
    This is where your most important money work belongs. The Focus‑Energy literature notes that high‑quality decisions and deep work happen only here. For your Great Lock‑In:

    • Block 15–30 minutes most days in this zone for your top goal (for example, early morning or a quiet evening slot).
    • Coach Lori Sullivan shows that 30 minutes per day over about 70 days adds up to roughly 35 hours of focused effort—enough to make meaningful progress on one unmet goal.

  • Procrastination (high focus, low energy).
    You care but feel tired.

    • Use this time for lighter planning: journaling about money beliefs, reviewing your decision matrix, or reading about your goal—not for big irreversible choices.

  • Distraction (low focus, high energy).
    You have energy but your attention is scattered.

    • Batch low‑focus money admin here: cancelling unused subscriptions, setting up autopay or automatic transfers (a form of “delegation” in the Eisenhower sense, as Lindsay Bryan‑Podvin notes), or tidying digital files.

  • Disengagement (low focus, low energy).
    This is your rest zone.

    • Avoid major financial decisions here; being “locked in” doesn’t mean eliminating rest. Vox’s coverage of the trend frames Lock‑In routines as coping tools, not a demand to be “on” all the time.

Once you’ve mapped your day into these zones, schedule your Lock‑In as a 6–10 week experiment (drawing on Sullivan’s and the expert summaries’ recommendations). Treat it like a focused season, not a life sentence.

Step 6: Turn it into daily Lock‑In habits

Great Lock‑In guidance from the AP, New York Post, Gymshark, and Forbes converges on one point: daily, realistic habits beat dramatic overhauls.

Borrowing from those examples (daily walks, career habit trackers, journaling, digital detox), design micro money actions that match your chosen goal and your Purposefulness zone:

  • If your goal is high‑interest debt payoff:

    • Check your balance and planned payment once per week.
    • Use one Lock‑In session to look for recurring expenses to cut and re‑route the savings to extra payments.

  • If your goal is a starter emergency fund:

    • Schedule a small automatic transfer on each payday (“delegate” it to your system).
    • During daily check‑ins, log spending and look for one tiny saving you’re willing to repeat (like packing lunch three days a week), echoing the wellness sources’ emphasis on modest, sustainable shifts.

  • If your goal is retirement enrollment or increase:

    • Use one high‑focus session to complete forms or online setup.
    • Then treat ongoing contributions as “set it and mostly forget it,” reviewing only during planned check‑ins.

Forbes’ career coverage of the Great Lock‑In suggests using a habit tracker; you can adapt that to money: log one micro money action per day during your Lock‑In and review weekly which ones move the needle most for your chosen goal.

Normalize slip‑ups. New York Post coverage highlights self‑compassion and warns against all‑or‑nothing thinking; one off week doesn’t invalidate your Lock‑In. You can always resume.

Step 7: De‑risk your experiment and commit

A Lock‑In decision is powerful precisely because it’s bounded. To keep it safe and flexible:

  1. Set your guardrails.

    • Make sure essential bills and minimum debt payments are covered or automated first (aligning with the “Delegate” quadrant of the Eisenhower approach).
    • Decide in advance what is non‑negotiable (for example, housing, basics, a minimum buffer for emergencies).

  2. Define your “abort or adjust” conditions.

    • Borrowing the AP’s advice to give yourself permission to opt out: write down conditions under which you’ll shrink, pause, or swap your goal (such as a job change, health issue, or caregiving shift).

  3. Schedule reflection points.

    • Every 1–2 weeks, briefly revisit your matrix and Focus‑Energy plan:
      • Are you still in the Purposefulness zone for your main work, or slipping into distraction?
      • Do your weights still reflect your values, or has something shifted?

When you’re ready, you might use simple commitment language like:

“For the next eight to ten weeks, I’m choosing to lock in on [your goal]. I’m okay letting [the goals you’re pausing] be ‘good enough’ for now. I’ll review this plan on [date] and make changes if my life or values shift.”

A decision made—even imperfectly—is often more powerful than a perfect decision deferred. Your matrices don’t replace intuition; they clarify it, so you can bring your best focus and energy to the money goal that fits this season of your life.

Sources:

Discover Monee - Budget & Expense Tracker

Coming soon on Google Play
Download on the App Store