2025 Personal Goal Setting: Part 1

In this 2-part series, we are going to walk through setting your personal goals. Many people set soft goals and resolutions at the start of the year, but few keep them. The aim of these 2 posts is to help correct that, so you can accomplish something wonderful in the next year.

Today we’re going to cover:

• Some initial questions to answer and reflect on

• What makes good vs. bad goals

• Different categories of goals you should consider

• Actually setting your 2025 goals

Let’s get started!

❓ Initial Questions to Answer

Take some time to reflect on the following questions, and answer them in your notes. I like to think about them while walking around outside. Usually, I’ll use a voice transcriber to collect my responses.

Try to be honest. Your answers should make you feel both inspired and uncomfortable at times.

• What areas of your life feel most rewarding, and how can you enhance them?

• What areas feel stagnant or unfulfilling, and what would improve them?

• What accomplishments would make you proud to look back on at the end of 2025?

• Did you set goals in 2024? How did they go?

⭐️ What Makes for Good Goals?

Oftentimes, people set goals that are just bad goals to begin with. A goal often starts with a desire, but a desire is not the goal itself.

Here are some tips for setting solid goals:

• Make it Achievable – If you want to start mountaineering, it probably isn’t realistic to summit K2 in the first year. That would be a bad goal.

• Make it Challenging – Similarly, don’t short yourself. You should have to push yourself to achieve the goal.

• Make it Measurable – Saying “I want to run in 2025” is close to a goal, but it’s hard to say when it’s accomplished. If you run once, does that count? How about 10 times? How about 100?

🤔 Categories of Goals to Consider

• Career (ex. “Get promoted to manager”)

• Finance (ex. “Invest an additional $100k”)

• Health and fitness (ex. “Get below 170 lbs”)

• Relationships (ex. “Talk to a loved one every day”)

• Personal development (ex. “Start going to therapy each month”)

• Philanthropic (ex. “Donate $10k to charity”)

• Travel (ex. “Go to 10 different countries”)

✍️ Setting your annual goals

Start by picking around 3 categories to focus on. Use your answers to the questions in the first part to determine what these categories are. You can choose more than 3 categories, but remember: each additional goal you add makes it less likely you’ll achieve the former ones.

Next, think about an end-state goal. This will differ depending on your categories.

If you choose a financial goal, like saving money, it might be an ongoing process of saving a certain % of your income each month. In terms of the action of setting aside a certain amount of money each month, January will look the same as December (although your bank account will look much different!).

If you want to start a habit, like meditating each day, you can ramp up the difficulty. Start with a minute each day, and get to 20 minutes by the end of the year.

Remember, the important thing is that the end-state is achievable, challenging, and measurable. Imagine yourself a year from now, and you’ve achieved your end-state goal. Are you proud of yourself? So proud that you want to tell everyone?

Coming Next Week…

Next, we will map out these goals into small, bite-sized achievements. This will 10-100x the likelihood you’ll actually achieve the goals you set this week. It will also show you exactly what you need to do each day of the year.