Goal Setting

Now is the time of year when we either check off our 2024 goals or silently update our 2024 goals to be our 2025 goals. The interesting thing about goal setting is that even if we don’t achieve our goals completely, they help us progress towards what we care about.

In the last few years, I’ve done my best to set goals for myself to achieve each year. Each year, I write my goals down in notion so that I can track my progress. Through practicing this, I’ve noticed a few helpful things.

First, actively reflecting on where I want to be a year from now helps me understand what’s important to me. Going through the exercise of sitting down and choosing what you want to work to accomplish is very powerful. It gives clarity to how you’d like to spend your time over the following year and illuminates your highest priorities.

Whenever I set my goals I like to first spend time deeply reflecting on the items I believe I want to accomplish and then whittle down why I chose those things. Doing this helps ensure that I set goals that I truly care about and am interested in accomplishing for the right reasons. It’s often useful for me to think backwards here and say “If I accomplished this goal today how would my life be different and why would it matter?”.

I also like to bucket my goals into different categories to help make sure I’m progressing in the areas that matter most to me. I roughly break down my life into sections like: content creation, fitness, coding, and relaxation. For each of these segments, I set goals related to the topic and together they help me ensure I’m progressing in all the parts of my life that make me, “me”. I’ll also set “vanity” goals for achieving specific values — reaching 100,000 followers on X for example. I say these are vanity goals because they might feel good to achieve but they aren’t fully in my control or what should make me happy. I do my best to make all my goals hinge on inputs I can directly control.

Setting goals each year also helps me push myself and achieve more. Achieving something you set out to accomplish feels amazing. With each thing you accomplish your confidence grows and you feel more comfortable setting bigger and loftier goals. This snowball effect of setting and reaching goals helps me push myself each year to do and accomplish more.

A year flies by, but you’ll be surprised how different things can look from January 1st to December 31st if you document your goals and work towards achieving them every day of the year.

Finally, setting goals each year helps get me excited about what I want to achieve. Sometimes it feels weirdly similar to a video game in the sense that I’m working to level up my character which is only done through completing challenging or arduous tasks that could require things like time, effort, and discipline.

The start of a new year is a great time to refocus your efforts on what truly matters to you. Remember to take time to decide what it is you want to focus on and choose your goals carefully. If you don’t, you’ll waste time and energy on things that don’t matter to you.

It’s also worth noting that you don’t need to wait for a new year to accomplish new things. While the start of a new year is great, you can also set goals to accomplish on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. Doing this allows you to ensure that you’re always striving to be better and make progress towards your highest priorities.

As a final note, make sure your goals are visible. Put them in a place that you’ll see several times a day — your bathroom mirror, your desk, or your refrigerator. Doing this will help ensure that what you want to achieve is always front and center. Remember, they should be since they’re hopefully what you care most about accomplishing.

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