How to Answer the "A Life Goal of Mine" Prompt on Hinge

Give one real goal and say it in a way only you would. On our live profile reviews, our coach read an answer about a dual life in finance and novel writing, spread across three cities as the seasons change, and said it fell flat. It is the resume answer everyone gives, with nothing made unique or interesting. The same coach praised another answer on that profile for saying an ordinary thing in a creative way, and that contrast is the whole lesson.

This prompt asks for a goal. In a different review, a student's answer described the kind of person the student is: open-minded, emotionally stable, no drama. The coach said the prompt and the answer did not fit together. Some prompts do ask for that, and some answers do state a goal, but putting a description of yourself under a "life goal" stem is just weird.

That review had a second note. The answer led with comfort and not with value, so it told her the writer was safe and did not tell her why the writer was worth meeting.

A simple check: finish the sentence "A life goal of mine is..." with your answer. If it does not read as a sentence, either change the answer or pick a different prompt.

The finance, writing and three-city answer was not a bad life. It was a weak answer, because it is the thing everybody would write: a resume list with nothing made unique or interesting.

Look at what happened in the same profile. The first prompt said a thing everybody says, about what the writer is attracted to, and did it in a creative way. The coach said the writer had made it interesting by doing it that way, and called the prompt excellent. So the fix is not a rarer goal. It is a rarer way of saying a normal one.

Our coach teaches show, do not tell. A title like "dual life in finance and writing" tells her your job. A scene tells her what a day looks like.

In another review the coach gave examples of the swap. Do not say "go on an adventure," say bungee jump in Paris. Do not say "the things I like," describe one particular gesture. The same logic fits a goal: name the place, the project or the first line of the book, not the category.

The reader should be able to ask a question about it. If your goal is "travel more," there is nothing to ask. If it is a particular trip with a reason behind it, she can say something back.

A Sunday-routine answer in the same review was called long, with things that were cool and interesting but not crazy exciting. The coach wished it could be done much, much shorter.

For a goal, that means one sentence. If your answer has a list of three cities and two careers, you are describing a lifestyle, and a lifestyle belongs in a different prompt.

In another profile review, the coach said the prompts were too long and had too much selling yourself. They were also almost polarizing, and then they backed away at the moment where they could have been polarizing.

Both problems are easy to fall into on this stem. A goal is a tempting place to prove how successful you are by stacking achievements. The better move is to state the goal plainly and let it carry an edge. A small, odd, ambitious goal says more than three impressive facts.

A goal is one of the easiest things for a woman to reply to, because she has one too. A specific goal invites her to trade: she can ask why that trip, that project or that place, or tell you hers. A generic goal, like seeing the world or being successful, ends the conversation before it starts, since there is nothing in it to ask about.

That is the real measure of this answer. It does not need to impress her. It needs to leave a door open.

Our coaches' standard method is to write more answers than you need. Try a few goals on this stem, and choose the one that is most specific and most clearly yours. If none of them passes the sentence check above, change the prompt before you change the goal.