The packages are all unwrapped, the feasts and roast beasts have all been devoured, and now it’s that funny time of year between Christmas and New Year’s where we try to squeeze in as much rest and reset as possible. I love this little stretch of time. Weirdly, I love the future planning for the next year that happens—”setting goals” or, I guess, “making resolutions” for the new year. But just like everyone else, over the years there have been so many goals and resolutions that found themselves by the wayside come Valentine’s Day. I’ve tried so many different goal-setting methods, planner tools, and visioning activities—you name it, I’ve probably tried it. And if I haven’t, I probably will, just because I really like this stuff.
The last couple of years, since becoming a mom, there are things that haven’t worked as well for me, things I need to rework or reimagine or simplify in order to make them useful and successful. And frankly, I haven’t really given myself the time to do it. But this year, I’m carving out a bit of time to look at the next year and see what’s in my toolbox that I can use to have the kind of year I hope for.
Before you get nervous that this post is going to be a huge list of “resolutions,” let me assure you it will not be. These are just some tools and ways of thinking that I’m working through for myself this year (with some special mentions of ones I’ve done in the past) to live 2025 intentionally rather than reactively. Honestly, reactively is how I’ve been living since my son was born, so I’m hoping I can ease myself back into a thoughtful directed focus for this year. I’d love for you to join me and let me know what you do this time of year in the comments!
Note: I absolutely know this is not something that everyone does, if this is not your cup of tea, no worries, I’m in no way saying that you should do any of this, but if you are so inclined then i hope you will find these ideas helpful
First Things First: What Do You Call This “Stuff”?
Resolutions, goals, intentions, dreams, vision planning, manifesting, mindset… The list goes on. There are so many terms and phrases that get thrown around this time of year! A lot of them are used interchangeably, too, so let’s clarify what we’re talking about here:
- Resolution: A firm decision to do or not do something (source: Oxford Languages). That’s it, its just a decision, not the thing you are deciding on, I use this word interchangeably with decision, and I think it feels way less stressful, personally. (This poor word gets a really bad rap)
- Intention: A thing intended; an aim or plan, often tied to one’s mindset or values. what one intends to do or bring about. Kind of like a goal, but this one always seems a little more like a wholistic vibe you are trying to create in your life
- Goal: The object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result (Merriam-Webster).
- Planning: The the deliberate process of envisioning a desired future outcome, setting objectives, and determining the steps necessary to achieve those objectives..
- Dream: A cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal.
- Vision: An aspirational description of what you want to achieve or create in the future.
- Manifestation: Bringing thoughts, intentions, or desires into reality, often through visualization and aligned action.
- Mindset: The established set of attitudes held by someone.
The thing is, not all of these are on the same scale. Some are much larger, like a vision or dream, while others are more finite and specific, like a goal. Some are strategic (vision) and others are tactical (planning & manifesting). Which means just picking one and trying to make it the catch all, may not be the most successful approach. Its a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. I like to break it down into three parts: What’s my vision and motivation for the year, what are the specifics I want to accomplish (this includes any mindset shifts I want to achieve) and then how am I going to achieve this.
Tools and Strategies
1. A little reflection goes a long way
Start with a little reflection, think about the Big Picture and Your WHY. Taking a quick peak at how things have been going can give us a better understanding what we want, and why we want it. Sure, we want to be and do and have it all, but it’s just not possible. (By all means, if you’ve figured it out, please do tell me! 😉) Especially with social media i have to check my motivations for things i think i want. “Do I want this because there are a bunch of influencers saying this is what i should be doing or do I have my own reasons?”
I like to use a version of the “level 10 life” for this. This originally comes from a book called the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, which I have not actually read. But the tool has been floating around for a while and it is a nice short hand for doing some of the reflecting work as well as breaking up life things into manageable chunks. This is a great little blog post that breaks it down. Its also fairly flexible so you can choose areas that are important to you. It is a nice way to make sure you are touching on all the multi-facets of you and your life.
Weather its level 10 or just a “year in review” journal entry, I like to start by answering a few questions (you can do these by area of as an overall summary, whatever feels right):
- How did last year go? What were my highlights? What could have gone better?
2. Looking Forward
Once I’ve reflected, then I start to look forward to the new year with questions like:
- What am I moving towards this year?
- What am I moving away from this year?
You can use the level 10 frame work for this or just wing it, but for every answer I try to ask WHY? Why do I want to move towards these things and away from others? I think understanding why I want something helps me tap into a deeper motivation that is more sustainable. It also helps me eliminate some things from my list as well.
There are lots of ways to craft your answers to the towards and away questions. These are a few of my favorites. I don’t always do these every year, but it is so helpful to have a little bit longer term idea of where you are going. I have found Vision boards and hot pens from previous years and its actually really cool how much of them I’ve accomplished, and usually they were not on the timeline I expected (some happening faster and slower).
- Hot Pen Vision: Imagine that it is 3 or 5 years in the future, and write as if you are making a journal entry on that day describing your life, how its changed, what you have accomplished, and major turning points that you are proud of! Paint the picture for yourself! This doesn’t have to be long, but try to keep it positive, as if you have achieved everything you wanted to, and you are excited to take on the next things.
- Vision Boards: A collection of images, words, or other representations of your goals and dreams. (Research shows visualization can boost motivation and focus; Psychology Today.) Vision boards are a wonderful way to visualize your goals and keep them front of mind all year long.
- Retreats: “a period of time spent in a quiet, secluded place to relax, reflect, or escape from the demands of everyday life, often involving a change of scenery and a focus on personal renewal or rejuvenation.” My husband and i have started doing “date night retreats” to plan out our collective goals and intentions, and share our personal resolutions, its a great way to get each other on the same page and help each other to stay on track. Its also fun to do this with a good friend as well. We try to make it fun too so it doesn’t just feel like we are making a huge list of to dos.
At some point in this process I like to step back and sort of summarize how I’m feeling about the upcoming year with a word or phrase. Some of mine from previous years have been things like: Growth, progress over perfection, Confidence, and Patience. This helps guide my decisions and keeps me focused with as I start to dive into the details of what i want for the year. .
3. Break It Down
We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a year but underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years (a principle popularized by Bill Gates). Basically We are really bad at scaling our planning to our goals and vision. We tend to think that we can do more in a day than we can, but also think our big dreams will take much longer than they need to to accomplish. Part of the problem is aligning what we plan daily with what we hope to achieve annually or even further out. Often, we set goals on a yearly scale when we should be breaking them down weekly or even daily.
All that being said, I’m not an expert, and I haven’t figured out a silver bullet for the old “too much to do, too little time” problem. But here are some tools and strategies I’ve used that seem to help:
- Weekly and Monthly Goals: Setting Yearly goals is a really hard timeline to stick to, its much easier to set smaller goals that will build to the bigger vision. You get the little dopamine hit of achieving goals more often which will help keep you on track!
- Bullet Journaling: Absolutely one of my favorite methods for getting things done! Specifically, brain dumps, collections, and the list mechanics. (The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll.) I also use this to help me organize the hundreds of things I want to do in year and then break them down into areas and things that are higher priorities, or if something has lots of steps to be able to get to my end goal. If you haven’t tried this do check it out. The internet has taken the method and really played with it, making the term sort of synonymous with these beautiful artistic journals, but the method itself is super simple and fast and does not require any of the artistic elements you may come across (although they can be very fun if you have the time)
- Daily To-Do Lists: Identify one non-urgent priority each day. Also see the
- Trackers: Daily trackers can help build habits. Not breaking a streak is a surprisingly effective motivator (Atomic Habits by James Clear). If you just google “free Habit trackers” you will find thousands that you can choose from.
4. Build Systems that make achieving your goals more automatic!
There are so many ways to approach building systems, but the basic idea behind it is if you can free up your brain from all the urgent, but unimportant stuff in your life,
- Habit Stacking: Pairing new habits with existing ones (Atomic Habits).
- The 12-Week Year: breaking your year down into 4 mini years For goal setting really helps me tackle some of the bigger harrier goals that i have by forcing me to bite off smaller chunks, and helping me not
- Essentialism: It is so important to get in touch with and prioritize what truly matters to you. this book is so helpful in thinking about how to get to what is essential to you, and access the power of saying no. (Essentialism by Greg McKeown).
- Daily Themes: take some of the mental load off your plate by having routines that are always on the same days, I always do Money/Laundry Mondays, Re set Sundays, Tidy up Tuesdays, Etc. You get the idea,
5. Resources
Here are some books, talks, and videos I’ve found insightful and helpful:
Books/Articles:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll
- Essentialism by Greg McKeown
- The 12-Week Year by Brian P. Moran
Videos & Articles:
- James Clear on Building Atomic Habits
- The Bullet Journal Method Explained
- The Power of Visioning – ZingTrain (hot pen Visioning)
Bullet Journal Supplies:
- Dotted Notebooks: Leuchtturm1917 and Archer and Olive if you want to get into the artistic side of this.
I hope this helps! Let me know what strategies you’re trying this year in the comments.