Planning Your Best Year!

Welcoming 2025 with Intentionality..

2025 is almost here, and it’s time for new beginnings and new resolutions! In today’s edition, I wanted to share with you how I do my yearly planning, and the lessons I have learnt over the years –

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Start with a Personal Vision

The highest level of vision is the dent you want to make in the world. On a very philosophical note, the greatest human desire is to have mattered, our time on this earth has to matter to someone or for something! And this is pretty broad – you matter to your family, obviously! You matter at work, but probably less than you think. So is there another calling for your time on earth? Are there things you want to do as an individual that will stay as your legacy? Are there paths you want to explore and walk on that you are naturally drawn to?

If the life vision is too overwhelming, just start with who – Who is the person you want to be in 2025? Is it someone who is fitter? Is it someone who has built an AI application? Is it someone who has danced on stage? Is it someone who is more present in their kids’ lives? For example, back in 2023 I wanted to be a person who performs more as well as writes more – so that was a good starting point for my goals.

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Making Sustainable Goals

“General ambition gives anxiety, specific ambition gives direction”

Based on your vision of what or who, pen down your concrete goals for 2025. For each goal, there might be starter steps (steps that you need to take before you start working on your goal). Identify those starter steps first, and schedule them right away. If it makes sense, break down the big goals further, and then identify what you should do every week and then add those recurring events to your calendar.

I will give you two examples (one goal that I achieved in 2023, and one goal for 2025). First, translate your who to a very concrete, measurable goal –

Example 1: Write more in 2023 → Write at least 12 articles in 2023

Example 2: Get fitter in 2025 → Decrease my body fat percent by 5%

Starter steps

1. [Writing] Identify an appropriate avenue for publishing/writing and identify the audience – For example, I doubled down on writing a personal newsletter sharing some updates and learnings from the month, and decided to share it with my extended friends and family as an email.

2. [Fitness] Get a body scan and blood work to measure my current body fat and other health metrics, consult with a nutritionist and general physician and finally, find a trainer/gym/fitness class that fits in my schedule

The Main Step

1. [Writing] Schedule recurring time to write. This is again something I broke down further – I scheduled three sessions: one for ideas and outline (deciding what goes in this month’s newsletter), second for actually writing, and the third for final edits and sending over. The public commitment of a monthly newsletter also served as a good accountability mechanism for me 🙂

2. [Fitness] Schedule fitness sessions for every week. Think about accountability – One way is to pay a trainer so you will end up going to the gym, or pay for a fitness class or have a gym/fitness buddy 🙂

Recurring Review

It is important to keep yourself on track by checking your progress every so often (e.g. quarterly). It’s definitely the years of planning in tech (in the form of OKRs) rubbing off on me 😀 But hey, if it works for billion dollar businesses, we can definitely take some lessons for our lives too!

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[image generated with Flux AI image generator]

Conscious Decluttering

As you plan for what you want to do in 2025, it’s equally important to plan what you won’t do! Time is finite so saying yes to something often means saying no or limiting your energy in other areas. Schedule some time for digital decluttering, ideally before 2025 begins (how about this weekend?) –

• Are you subscribed or following accounts on social media that you no longer have a reason to? Taking a step back, this is a good time to consciously think about how you want to use social media. While a complete disconnect might sound like the right new year resolution, it may not be realistic or sustainable. So I have found it much more realistic (and helpful) to aggressively trim who I am subscribed to and only consume content that is aligned to my paths in life.

• Are you on email lists or group chats where you are not actively engaging with the content and/or people? I have personally decided to exit most group chats where I am a passive member, since it’s not something that is adding value to me, and neither am I adding value to the group.
  
  Do this check for in-person meetings as well, either at work or even hangouts with friends. If you don’t come out of the interaction more energized, then maybe it’s not serving you. I understand we all have social obligations or we feel that we shouldn’t be rude. But saying definitive No’s make our Yes’s stronger, rather than having all lukewarm Yes’s which leads to a lukewarm life!

New year is a new opportunity to redefine your life paths! Let’s make sure to say a strong YES to the paths important to us, and a NO to the distractions! Let’s welcome 2025 in a PolyPathic style 🙂

PS: If you need help planning a polypathic 2025, you can schedule time with me here!