How awesome it would be if every time we set a goal for ourselves at work we actually succeeded in meeting it. Caught up with e-mail: check. Finished proofreading a list of accounts: check. Dusted and restocked all the shelves in the store: check. Talked to boss about salary increase: check.

And what about those bigger goals, like representing the company at a convention, or spearheading its marketing plan, or winning an award from your peers?

Hmm, sorry, it’s probably not going to happen, at least not all at once. Unfortunately, when we set unrealistic goals — and this happens a lot with women who work inside and outside the home — we often set ourselves up for an episode of job-related stress.

While we can pat ourselves on the back for our penchant to be overachievers, we also have to realize that we are not superwomen. A goal that sounds realistic for a particular day might actually need a couple of days, or even a week or more, to be fully realized. And you know it is not a matter of procrastination on your part; it’s just that stuff happens and gets in the way.

One approach to managing stress on the job is to get some help in setting realistic goals, and that help might come in the form of software, believe it or not. Your computer and smartphone run your life anyway, right?

A little bit of online shopping produces several possibilities, including:

– GoalPro from Success Studios, which looks like useful software for work and home goals. You can set categories such as “business,” “family” and “health,” then break down your dreams and schemes into “support goals.” In addition, calendars and graphs let you monitor all tasks toward your goals and to see how close you are to success. There’s even a place to type in a journal entry.

– Lifetick from Meridian 86, which claims to be “designed n a way that makes achieving goals part of your everyday life and something to look forward to.” In addition to computer and smartphone tools for logging goals and tasks, the software has areas for upcoming tasks, overdue tasks, inspirational quotes and a “Goal Countdown Timer.”

– GoalsOnTrack, which uses a dashboard design and offers sections for goal prioritizing, goal visualization, task tracking, building success habits, graphing progress and journaling.

– Single-Step.com, from Self Evident Enterprises, whose motto is the Lao Tzu saying, “A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step.”

All the software I browsed did have one thing in common: an underlying goal of helping you manage the stress that often comes with the hectic pace of your job and your life while being realistic (and optimistic!) about all that you can eventually accomplish.