Welcome to the second week of 2025! How are you feeling about your goals for this year? Whether you’ve already set ambitious targets or are still pondering what you want to achieve, you’re in good company. It’s perfectly fine if you haven’t set any goals yet—many people are still figuring things out. But if you have, I’m curious: How did you set your goals for 2025? Let’s dive in and make this year your best one yet!
The Level 10 Life
There are many different ways to set goals. Perhaps you set goals before but if you haven’t I’ll try to share some things that I found useful. One thing is taking a good look at where you are right now. I want to share a tip for making things you want to focus on more clear. I’ve seen this in the bullet journal community occasionally, and it’s called a level 10 life. I first stumbled on this idea on Little Coffe Fox’s blog.
The method is simple. You divide your life into different areas. In each category, you then rate where you feel you are on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the highest. You can do this as a bar graph or other type of chart. Creating a visual view of the different parts of your life can help you in knowing what areas you wish to improve. After all, if you don’t know where you want to go it doesn’t matter where you’re going right?
No matter the method you choose, choosing or setting goals for 2025 involves some reflection on your part. It doesn’t have to be heavy, but it can be. Perhaps you look at goals you had for the previous year, note down which ones you didn’t accomplish, and think about why you didn’t do this or if they’re still relevant. There are plenty of resources out there to get it going if what you need is a prompt for you to start reflecting.
Choosing Your Goals Using Categories
Based on the idea of a level 10 life, I looked at the following categories; friends, spirituality, career, finances, family creation, giving and contributing, physical environment, health, and fitness, and romance. I have done this exercise before and if I were to compare the charts they would look different for sure. If you choose to set goals for the new year, start by taking inventory of where you are. Don’t be afraid or worry whether this a good way to set a path forward.
Avoid Spreading Yourself Too Thin!
One thing I learned the hard way is not to set too many goals. One of the “goals” for this year is to not take on too many things at once. But isn’t it a good thing to have many goals set for the new year? Not necessarily it can also be overwhelming and cause you a lot of stress. Something I want to try for 2025 is to focus on fewer goals, but accomplishing them. When I look at different goal-setting videos on YouTube, a common thread for many of the videos is that it’s better to focus on fewer things and to know what you want and go after that, instead of spreading yourself too thin.
Combining Analog and Digital – And Why
Depending on how you are as a person, it can be a good thing to keep your goals in a digital or analog format. Personally, I combine both since that is what works best for me. I did a little 10 life exercise filling in the charts digitally in a notebook in Goodnotes, but I also need to keep my goals very visual. One example is I decided to participate in the Down Dog January challenge. The challenge is this: complete one type of workout in any of their apps every day of January.
I decide what kind of workout I want to do, but I create something visual to keep track of if I did my workout or not. This is something I do every month, but this month is for Down Dog workouts only. Each month I draw a very basic grid to represent the days and weeks of the month. In each box, I write down the date and the exercises I wish to accomplish, and I have a small circle next to it where I can check off if I did it or not. I also draw a small cloud shape in each box and here I try to keep track of how many hours of sleep I got that night.
I don’t think you have to be a visual person to draw benefits from this, but it helps to keep the chain going. This is something that several workout apps use to their advantage as well as yours. It encourages you to not miss your streak. This could be used both positively and negatively. It can be positive because you see how far you have come and how far you have to go, the negative thing is if it adds to your stress levels.
Resources I Found Useful When Setting Goals for 2025
- The Level 10 life article found on Littlecoffefox
- The 6 questions found in the workbook from Mel Robbins Make 2024 your best year
- Caitlin Da Silva’s newsletter The Monday Sip – you can sign up for this on her web page.
- The 12-Week Year – this book is on my TBR for this year, but I’ve heard great things about it
Set Your Goals for the Year with Confidence!
If you’ve already set your goals for this year, fantastic! If not, don’t worry—there’s still plenty of time, and it’s perfectly normal to refine your goals as the year progresses.
I hope this post has provided you with valuable insights and examples for goal-setting. Now, I’d love to hear from you:
How do you set your goals for the year?
- Do you prepare them in advance?
- Do you set them as New Year’s resolutions?
- Or do you create and adjust them as the year moves along?
Share your methods and tips in the comments below—I’d love to hear your opinions!
to hear your opinions!